AMEN 2013: Following the Leader

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2013: Morning Devotions

James Rafferty

Principles of Biblical Leadership – Part 1

Okay, so we're going to be looking at biblical principles of leadership, principles of biblical leadership.

We're going to be looking at 3 particular individuals to fashion or look at for examples, to fashion our lives after.

And the third 1, the 1 we're gonna look at this morning, might be a surprise.

I would call it the Saul surprise, is going to be Saul.

Saul gives us an example of biblical leadership.

I actually thought that I was going to use Saul in contrast to true biblical leadership.

And We can open up there to his story in 1 Samuel 10.

1 Samuel 10, and we're going to begin here with verse 1.

It says here, 1 Samuel 10 verse 1, then Samuel to flask of oil and poured it on his, Saul's head, and kissed him and said, "'Is it not because the Lord has anointed you, "'commander over his inheritance?' So here we see the beginning of Saul's leadership abilities.

Now the reason why I think Saul is such a commanding example for us as a principle or revealing the principles of leadership is because there's such a contrast for us between what Saul was under the anointing of God and what he wasn't when he rejected that anointing.

In other words, we see in our memory and in our recognition of Saul, we see a man who turned away from the Lord, who misled the people, who did some terrible things.

And that is Saul without the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and Saul is us without the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

And then we see a Saul who was anointed with the Holy Spirit, and he did some incredible things.

God used him in a mighty way, in a powerful way, and that is us, with the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

It really is an example of righteousness by faith.

It really is an example of what we need as we wake up in the morning, each and every morning, as we begin our work day, our work week, our lives.

We need the presence and the anointing of the Holy Spirit each and every day.

It's also an example of how righteousness by faith works.

Righteousness by faith is not something that takes months and years, even days.

Righteousness by faith is a moment-by-moment experience.

It happens in the now, today, this morning, right here, presently.

It is not an experience that's based on what you did yesterday, or last year, or the generations of your inheritance or heritage in Adventism.

It's not an experience that's based on anything that you have done.

But it is completely and totally dependent on the anointing of the Spirit of God.

The anointing of God's Spirit, the presence of God in your heart, in your life, everything depends on that.

Righteousness by faith is not reputation.

It's not based on the accumulation of good deeds, of things that you can bring to the Lord and offer to the Lord.

Righteousness by faith is based entirely and completely on our dependence on Jesus Christ each and every day.

And so Saul gives us that, he delivers that to us in his life and his experience.

We could look at Saul and we could think, ah, I don't even wanna go there, I don't even wanna spend time there.

But there is a rich lesson for us in the life and experience of Saul.

Notice here in verse 6 as we continue the story, then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, Samuel says, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.

Regardless of what we want, isn't that what we need?

To be turned into another man, to be turned into another person.

I know that in 24 years of marriage, and my wife and I have 2 children and we've had numerous pets, that we need to be turned into other people.

Before I got married, I was, by my own standard, perfect.

The toilet paper was put on just so, and the toothpaste was squeezed from the bottom, and there was nothing that needed to be rearranged in my home.

And I began to realize imperfections in my own self that had passed my notice.

When you live by yourself, you don't notice things about yourself that you do when you're married to another person who is different from you, who has different habits from the habits that you have, who does some things that may not be totally in harmony with your agenda and with the way you do things.

And then of course we had children, children who remind us of ourselves, the selves that we are so good at covering up and pretending that we have arrived because we're able to do that.

And sometimes they allow us to be who we are.

My kids bring out myself much more than I'd like to confess, though I am confessing it.

You will be turned into another man, verse 7, and let it be when these signs come to you that you do as the occasion demands for God is with you.

When you are carrying out your impulses, you will be doing what God wants you to do, because you're anointed with God's Spirit and God is with you.

That's really powerful, that's really beautiful when you think about it, because we often go by a checklist, we often look at the outline of what it is that we're supposed to do, whether it's the protocol of man or whether it's the protocol of inspiration.

And we're not always in the moment with God, imbued by his spirit, anointed by his spirit, recognizing his voice and doing what it is that God wants us to do, which is, according to this verse, what the occasion demands.

And sometimes it seems like what the occasion demands is different than what Moses commanded.

Moses said that this woman should be, what?

Well, this occasion demands that this woman should not be condemned.

The Spirit of God was upon him, and he did as the occasion demanded, for God was with him.

What a beautiful promise, what a powerful promise that is given to who?

To us, to Saul, to us, to the worst of us, to each and every 1 of us.

You shall go down, verse 8, before me to Gilgal, and surely I will come down to you to offer burnt offerings and make sacrifices a peace offering.

7 days you shall wait, wait, till I come to you and show you what to do.

Biblical leadership is anointed by God's prophet, changed into another person, affirmed and directed by the spirit of prophecy, Samuel.

We wake up in the morning and we wait for the Lord.

We long for, we crave for, we ask for, we need the anointing of the Lord.

Now, of course, there are many times when we don't do that.

We've got pressing needs on the schedule, on the agenda.

We might pause for a moment, but that's all.

We leave Jesus by the bedside, in the home, wherever he is, and we're gone.

We blunder and we fall and we stumble and we hiccup and we make all kinds of mistakes.

And Often, that is the beginning of a continual downward motion in our Christian experience.

And what we need to remember is that God longs for us to learn the lesson that day that we need Him every moment.

And that we don't need to somehow wait for the weekend, for the Sabbath, or for an opportunity to come to some kind of convention where we can get things back together with God because we've messed up.

No, we can in the moment, even in the full revelation of our weaknesses and failures, we can ask God for his presence, for his forgiveness, for his power in our lives.

Saul never learned that lesson and continued in that downward spiral.

We're going to touch on that a little bit later.

But the thing that I think is beautiful here is that Saul, at this point in his life, is a type of Christ.

That seems hard, that seems difficult, but Jesus was the Messiah.

Principles of Biblical Leadership – Part 2

And it was amazing to me to think that Saul could communicate to us so powerfully and so directly about Christ.

The Bible tells us that his name is called Jesus because he's going to save us from our sins.

There was 1 or 2 thoughts here that I wanted to share with you just in closing yesterday's meeting because we kind of ran out of time.

And that is that Saul was confronted with this idea that because there were people who weren't supporting him as he was anointed king, that they should be punished.

And in this moment of victory, the men who brought up this idea were wanting to bring the people forward who hadn't supported Saul and punish them.

In 1 Samuel chapter 11, verses 12 and 13, it says, the people said to Samuel, who is he who said, shall Saul reign over us?

Bring the men that we may put them to death.

But Saul said, not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has accomplished salvation in Israel.

You know, I think it's not only in times of great trial, but it's also in times of great victory when Satan tries to come in, he tries to slip in among us and cause disunity and disruption and mar what God is doing.

And that's exactly what's taking place here.

And I'm so thankful that Saul was not just anointed with God's Spirit and used of God in order to gain the victory.

But even after the victory, he continued to abide in Christ.

He continued to walk with the Lord, and he knew how to respond in this situation.

And the last thing that he needed to do, that anyone needed to do at this time, was punish and seek personal revenge for little incidences.

I think about the trials and the conflicts that we have been through or perhaps are going through right now.

And I think about how God wants to unify us.

He wants to bring us together and God is working on our hearts.

He's working on us individually and collectively.

And there may be people, there may be individuals that we have struggled with in the past that we have history with.

There may be people here that you have history with.

And God wants to do a new thing and He wants to renew hearts and He wants to grow us.

And He wants us to believe that He's doing that and that we can let go of that stuff, whatever that stuff is, that we can just let go of it.

And we can believe that God is working in a powerful way to bring us victory.

The salvation that was accomplished that day was all about what God had done, not about what Saul had done.

And so Saul tended to keep that forefront in his brain at this point.

He tended to recognize that this was the day of salvation that God had wrought.

And it had nothing to do with him or with him taking personal vengeance.

That phrase, the Lord has accomplished salvation in Israel, points to Jesus, the 1 who will save us from our sins.

And so we see here that Saul acts wisely.

In verse 14 of 1 Samuel 11, then Samuel said to the people, Come, let's go to Gilgal and let's renew the kingdom there.

I don't know, I think that that's insightful because here they are, the victorious, they're happy, they're celebrating, They're not seeking personal revenge for slights that were given in the past.

And yet Saul is encouraged by the prophet to renew the kingdom.

I think that sometimes we take it for granted in the context of victory and happiness and joy and what God is doing that there's no need for us to renew anything, that everything is okay, that we're all right.

And yet there is this need even for those of us who are consecrated, who are dedicated, who are doing God's work, there is this need for us to renew the kingdom, to renew ourselves to God, to take every opportunity that we have, like this opportunity, to consecrate ourselves again, to renew ourselves again, to renew our vows again, and often to God.

So, Biblical leadership directs, Samuel directed Saul, even in the context of victory, to the renewal of the kingdom of God.

Would this be a great time, a great opportunity for us to do that?

So all the people, verse 15, went to Gilgal and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal and there they made sacrifices of peace offerings before the Lord and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.

There is no greater happiness and no greater joy.

There's no greater happiness than that happiness that comes from being fully committed to God and His work, to basking in His victory and His salvation, to walking with Him with completely renewed hearts, consecrated 100 percent in harmony with God.

There's nothing on this earth, there's nothing that you can taste or experience on this earth that compares to walking closely with the Lord.

And this is what the people were experiencing.

This was what God had given to them in this moment.

So the principles of biblical leadership, the principles that God wants us to follow, lead to great joy among people.

There are people in your lives, there are people that you're going to come in contact with in your work that are miserable or that are trying to make themselves happy with the things of the world.

And Perhaps they've never tasted the joy that God has for them, that God wants to give them.

And He wants you to be a channel to communicate that joy.

So the reason why you are dedicated to God, why you give your heart to the Lord, why you connect with Jesus is not just to go to heaven yourself, is not just to be saved, is not just because you want something better for you.

The whole point really is that you could be a channel through which God could communicate this great salvation, this great joy, this peace, this experience to others.

That God could actually work through you to reach the hearts and lives of others.

Saul had won the battle that day, but it was more than just a battle, an outward battle that had been won.

There was an inward battle, and we know that because we know the direction that Saul took later.

There was an inward victory that had to be won against the subtle temptations of revenge and insecurity.

These battles were also won by Saul on that day.

Because Saul was anointed with the Spirit of God.

Something that is missing from this next chapter, we look here this morning as we begin the second outline of principles of biblical leadership with Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 12.

We look here at the life of Samuel, and we see a man who never left the church.

We see a man who was raised as a third or fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist, a young boy who was raised in the truth.

And we can see the impact that that can make.

Sometimes I meet young people who want a story.

They want to go out and sow their wild oats and They want to have some kind of testimony that they can share because they've been enamored with the different testimonies they've heard of certain prominent speakers who've been out there and done their thing.

And so they want to have that testimony also.

And they don't realize the influence that they can have by leaving all of that alone and just staying close to God in those early years.

I wish that I had that experience myself.

I was 21 when I first accepted Christ as my Savior and I'm so thankful that He took me from all of that garbage.

But I realize that it still has an impact on me today, that I have weaknesses and susceptibilities because of all of that.

And I wouldn't wish that on any young person in the Adventist church today in order to have a testimony.

Samuel is a powerful illustration of what God can do and how God can work through an individual who is consecrated to the Lord from their early years and never leaves his side, never ventures to sow any kind of wild oats.

Samuel's speaking to Israel now in 1 Samuel chapter 12, and he says to all of Israel, "'Indeed, I have heeded your voice "'in all that you have said to me, and I've made a king over you." That's difficult.

That's a struggle because Samuel knows ultimately this is not God's will.

Samuel knows that ultimately this is not God's will.

And so he's wrestling because he has to do something that ultimately he knows is not God's will.

When I first became a Seventh-day Adventist, there were a lot of things that I read in the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, and I concluded in reading those things that there were a lot of things the church was doing that were not God's will.

And therefore, I could not work very closely with this church.

These were the conclusions I came to in the early years of my Adventist experience.

It took me on another road, a road that was parallel to the road I'm on now.

Samuel never ventured out on that independent track.

Samuel was in a situation where he was steadfast to God, and he was willing to allow them to have a king because he knew that sometimes you have to give people what they want, what they insist, stubbornly insist on having in order for them to learn and grow.

And Sammy was all about how God works and what God's will is and not what I think is the best solution for this.

So in those independent years, those independent moments that I had, I thought as others that I surrounded or surrounded me thought that there was another way that we could get the church back on track and that we could fix this and we could make sure.

Principles of Biblical Leadership – Part 3

I've been awake for several hours actually, and I'm still using my iPad mini, but I still have my backup Bible.

When I was a young man, I was raised in London, England.

That's where my mother hails from, actually, from Ireland.

And though I was born in the United States, I lived there for 10 years as a young boy.

And we lived in a house that was divided into what they call flats or apartments.

And we had above us and below us other families.

There were 13 children in the house altogether in the flats.

By design, my mom wanted us to have a lot of kids that we grew up with.

And above us was a family, a father and a mother.

I was raised in a single family home with my mom, and a son and 2, well, actually ended up being 2 sons and 2 daughters, but I was good friends with the boy, Paul.

We were friends for the many years that we were there.

And his dad occasionally became my dad, in a good sense, in a positive sense.

He would bring gifts for his son and also include me.

And 1 day he came home with a couple of gifts.

1 of them was wrapped and 1 of them was unwrapped.

And they were both cars, little model cars, really cool cars.

It had little doors that would open, you know, it was about this size.

It wasn't a really small 1, it was a medium-sized 1.

It had little doors that would open and darkened windows.

And we just, oh, we just wanted those so bad.

We could hardly, we were ready to just grab them out of his hands.

And but before he gave them to us, he said, now I have these 2 gifts, and of course 1 of them is wrapped and 1 of them is not wrapped.

And Paul, I'm going to give you first choice, and then James, you can have the 1 that's left over.

And immediately, Paul went for the 1 that was unwrapped.

He went for the 1, the Mustang, the cool, white with blue stripe Mustang with the doors that open and the darkened windows.

But When I unwrapped the other 1, what I found was something that was just even more incredible than the Mustang with the blue stripes and the darkened windows and the doors that opened.

This car had a trunk that opened and doors that opened and a front end that opened and it had the wheels that would turn just a little bit.

It was just an incredible car, so much so that, well, I won't tell you what happened after that, but I will say this.

Our danger lies in being content with what we've already seen and wanting that more perhaps than what God still has for us, what God still wants to reveal to us, what God still wants to show us.

This morning we're going to pick up in 1 Samuel chapter 15.

I'm glad you're here this morning to join me in this morning hour because I believe God wants to feed us until we want no more.

We need to just be overflowing in such a way that we just wanna overflow to others that we come in contact with and just have enough to feed them.

And there are times I know when we've experienced that.

We've looked at the experience of Saul in his good days.

We've contrasted that with the experience of Saul and his bad days.

We've been looking at principles of biblical leadership and not only what he did, but what he didn't do, perhaps as a warning for us.

We've looked at Samuel and how God led him and blessed him and anointed him.

And there were a number of points here that we made about Samuel.

And I want to just pick up here in 1 Samuel 15, because we talked about how God is the God of second chances.

And Samuel was mourning and weeping over Saul.

And he wanted to reach out to Saul again and again and God used him to do that.

In 1 Samuel chapter 15, Samuel goes to Saul again and he goes with the word of the Lord.

We should never take it upon ourselves To go to those who are straying from God on our own recognizance, on our own will.

We should always be basing our ventures into secularism or into the domain of Satan on the Word of God.

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