Thought for Friday, January 18th

January 18, 2013

Follow The Leader

Are you good at following?

   For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone. Teach me thy way, O Lord; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name. I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore.

Psalms 86:10-12

“The man who does something under orders is not unhappy: he is unhappy who does something against his will.”

-       Seneca

There is a simple game that children like to play called ‘Follow the Leader.”  The premise of this game is simple: one child, chosen to be the leader, takes off on a pathway of merry mayhem and all of his or her compatriots are to follow along imitating with exact precision the direction, movements, sounds and any other behaviors performed by the leader.  To fail to do so means you are out of the game and you have to wait for a new game to start in order to participate.  Generally the person, who does the best job at following the leader, gets to become the new leader.

This game has some practical applications for us in our spiritual lives, though we need not ever think we will become the leader: for their can only be one leader and that is God, through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit: yet we need to be willing to follow the leader: by emulating His examples and His actions.

However, like with the children’s game we often find that we want to demand our turn to be the leader and we want God to follow our path and be part of our plan: when the reality is our plan will always fail, but His never will.

We read in Psalms that the steps of a righteous man are directed or ordered by God and as men we know we are not righteous because of ourselves: but only because we have God living in us through Christ Jesus and in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Are you ready to follow the only leader worthy of being followed?

Today’s Prayer

Father, remind me when I try to get ahead of you: or out of step with you: what always happens when I don’t let you lead and I don’t willingly follow.