Do all leaders sense that God has given them an assignment? Are all movement leaders like Jeremiah who realize at some point in their life that they had been “formed, chosen, set apart, appointed”? That’s what God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I chose you; before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). It appears that most leaders in the Scriptures had some sort of conversation or vision or wrestling with God in which they “realized”, in Wilberforce’s word, their line of usefulness.
Jesus certainly sensed it. At his first public appearance, he takes the scroll of Isaiah and reads “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Fred Smith argues that all leaders must choose their direction in life rather than being overly engrossed in the achievement of personal goals. Mike Murdock suggests that “we are here on assignment. Everything God created is a solution to a problem”–including you. The key to our leadership calling and perhaps impact is discovering our assignment. It’s our purpose–our specific object, the line of our usefulness–in life. That assignment, Murdock argues, always involves “solving a specific problem.”
As I think thru movement leaders in the past, I can’t think of an exception. All seemed captured by their “line of usefulness” — their assignment from God.
What is your assignment?
What problem had God created you to solve?
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