If we live long enough, like Moses, we will pass through a season in which, by God\u2019s grace, we begin to reenvison what the promised land really is. We may sense an inner shift as we open to the possibility that maybe we are not going to see all our dreams come true in this lifetime. While some of the things we had hoped for and dreamed of have<\/i> come to pass, others have not.\u00a0 <\/span>God\u2019s Spirit starts witnessing with our spirit in subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways about a change that is coming\u2026a change that will involve letting go as God begins drawing us more completely to himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As the old hymn goes, \u201cthe things of earth will grow strangely dim\u201d as the presence of God becomes more and more real.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For Moses, his ultimate letting go into the presence of God took place on the highest peak of Mount Nebo, where God guided him to sit and survey the Promised Land one last time.\u00a0 <\/span>He was 120 years old but his vigor was unimpaired, the Scriptures say.\u00a0 <\/span>He was still able to climb mountains! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Since my Sunday school days, I have been troubled by this part of Moses\u2019 story:\u00a0<\/span>that he got to see the Promised Land but was not allowed to go in. I learned this was Moses\u2019 punishment for striking the rock at Meribah rather than just speaking to it, demonstrating a lack of trust in God.\u00a0 <\/span>Back then I accepted this as the consequence for Moses\u2019 sin and allowed myself only a vague sense that perhaps it seemed a little harsh. But over the years I have become bolder in admitting that it seems inordinately cruel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The words God spoke to Moses as he looked out on what might have been \u2014 \u201cI have let your eyes see it but you shall not cross over\u201d\u2014<\/i> seem like the coldest, most punishing, most withholding kind of words that could ever be uttered to one who had been so faithful.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n God\u2019s instruction that Moses should ascend to the top of Mount Nebo\u00a0to look at the Promised Land before dying seemed a little bit like rubbing his nose in it.\u00a0 <\/span>AND it brought up such a painful possibility\u2014the possibility that this could happen to me!\u00a0<\/span>The idea that I, too, might work hard and serve long\u2014straining towards some goal or dream\u2014only to have God say to me at the end, \u201cYou can look, but you can\u2019t go in\u201d was almost too much to bear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This part of Moses\u2019 story does speak to the fact that when one chooses a spiritual path in leadership, the stakes get higher and higher. Behaviors and attitudes that were good enough last year may not be good enough this year.\u00a0 <\/span>A level of integrity that was adequate for one level of spiritual leadership now disappoints others and our very own self as\u00a0we move into new levels of responsibility.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n There is a peace on this path and deep reward, but there is an even greater responsibility to live authentically, increasingly given over to grace working together with our own best efforts. \u00a0There is no doubt that t<\/span>he more spiritual the destination the greater the importance of our character and utter responsiveness to God at different points in the journey.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n There is a price to be paid for this kind of courageous leadership and somehow Moses knew this and had accepted it.\u00a0 <\/span>Even so, I have read and re-read the book of Deuteronomy looking for some evidence of an inner struggle, some indication that Moses argued with God one more time on the side of that mountain.\u00a0We can be fairly certain that if Moses felt like arguing, he probably would have!\u00a0 <\/span>But I don\u2019t think he did.<\/p>\n It is as if everything Moses had gone through had prepared him for this moment. Whatever letting go he had done in order to leave the house of Pharaoh to find God\u2014and himself\u2014in the wilderness prepared him for this final letting go.\u00a0 <\/span>Settling down by the well in Midian and being content to be a soul in God\u2019s presence had prepared him to sit on the side of this mountain utterly content, once again, to be a soul in God\u2019s presence.\u00a0 <\/span>He no longer needed any role or responsibility or task to define him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps his experience of being called by God, arguing it out and having God answer each and every objection with the promise of his presence prepared him to say yes more easily to the calling that was before him now. Maybe all<\/i> of his experiences of discerning and doing the will of God had brought him to the place where he knew, down to the bottom of his being, that the will of God was the best thing that could happen to him under any circumstances. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Certainly, he had some sense that the terrible loneliness he had moved in and out of throughout his life would now finally be eradicated because physical death was the final transition into Pure Presence. Finally, there would be nothing standing between him and the lover of his soul.\u00a0 <\/span>For Moses the presence of God was<\/i> the Promised Land.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Next to that, everything else had already paled in significance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If we look carefully at Moses\u2019 life we can see that the deep acceptance characterizing Moses\u2019 response to God on the side of the mountain was actually rooted in the intimate journey of encounter he had been on all his life. In Exodus 33 Moses had undergone a fundamental shift in the life of\u00a0a leader\u2014a transformation of the deepest kind\u2014in which visions of grandeur and the allure of greatness no longer hold the attraction they used to. \u201cIf your presence will not go, do not\u00a0carry us up from here.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Moses had been so changed by the journey that he was completely at peace with himself and God. Nothing of this world had any hold on him at all. By this time Moses and God were like an old married couple who had loved and fought for so long that now they had reached some sort of understanding.\u00a0 <\/span>They had been through so much together that now it was enough to sit and rock on the front porch of life, content just to know that the other one was there. That was all it took to make life good.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n When a leader “arrives” at this kind of peace, acceptance, and union with God, we have really gotten somewhere. We have come to the place where the presence of God becomes ultimate and everything else pales in significance.\u00a0 <\/span>All the great ones of our faith teach us that it is possible for a leader to have encountered God so richly that no matter what we are working toward here on this earth, we know we already have what we most\u00a0deeply want\u2014the presence of God, which can never be taken from us. As the apostle Paul put it, \u201cIf I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer.\u00a0 <\/span>I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.\u201d (Philippians 1:22-24)<\/p>\n A leader who has come to this deeper understanding of what the Promised Land actually is\u2014that it is union with God now and for eternity\u2014is a leader who is free indeed. Such a leader is free to spend oneself in God\u2019s service as long as God calls them to do so AND they are free to let go when God tells them it is time.\u00a0 <\/span>Such a leader is free to lead from that place where God is present to them and let the chips fall where they may.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The choice to lead from one’s soul is a vulnerable approach to leadership, because the soul is more tender than the mind or the ego.\u00a0 <\/span>This is a place where we don\u2019t have all the answers\u2014or at least not necessarily when everybody wants them!\u00a0 <\/span>It is a place where we are not in control; God is.\u00a0 <\/span>It is a place where the quickest way is not always the best way, because the transformation that is happening in us is more important than getting where we think we need to go.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As we stay faithful to the journey into the center of our being where God dwells, we are freed from our bondage to the expectations of others and our own inner compulsions so we are less and less mesmerized by human voices. We are less swayed and manipulated by the expectations of others, and more and more given over to God. In our encounters with God we die not only to the expectations of others but also to ourselves\u2014our addiction to performing, to looking good and being perfect, to attaining more status than is good for us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because we know ourselves to be deeply loved by God we experience an inner freedom beyond what we ever thought possible.\u00a0 <\/span>We can handle an enormous amount of success and failure without losing our identity. We\u00a0let go of our attachment to money, success, some way we have come to\u00a0define ourselves, our relationships, a particular leadership context\u2014receiving them as gifts without being overly identified with them. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We find we are able to love others deeply and unconditionally because we have faced the darkness and the light within ourselves and have found ourselves to be unconditionally loved by God. We are able to love and lead with abandonment and freedom because we know that ultimately we have nothing to lose.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When we are willing to lead from this place, we finally have something real to offer that actually corresponds to what people around us are seeking.\u00a0 <\/span>And the quality <\/i>of our leadership is decidedly different.\u00a0 <\/span>Rather than leading from the unconscious patterns of the false self, we are leading from selves that are being transformed by our encounters with God in solitude and silence. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than leading from frenetic busyness, we are leading in a paced way, taking time to notice the burning bushes in our own lives. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than leading from over-stimulation and increasing exhaustion, we are discovering rhythms of work and rest, silence and word, stillness and action that God built into the universe for our well-being. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than being subject to other people\u2019s expectations and our own inner compulsions, we are operating out of a deepening sense of God\u2019s call upon our lives.<\/p>\n Rather than leading from a simplistic view of the spiritual life, we have inside-out understanding of the shape of the spiritual journey that comes from having been faithful to our own journeys.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than arguing, fighting and trying to defend ourselves against every criticism and challenge to our leadership, we regularly and routinely carry the people we are leading into God\u2019s presence and intercede on their behalf.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than bearing the burden of leadership alone, we open up our loneliness to God and to those with whom we can cultivate healthy interdependence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And rather than leading from intellectual striving and human strategies, we discover with other like-minded souls how to open to the gift of discernment so we can do God\u2019s will together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This journey to the mountaintop is the ultimate antidote to our grandiosity, if we will let be. It helps us find our place in the scheme of things lest we become\u00a0overly inflated in our view of ourselves and our role in kingdom work.<\/p>\n For a leader, the promised land is something you see that can\u2019t be beaten out of you even when other people don\u2019t see it yet\u2014even when they say\u00a0it is impossible, unrealistic, idealistic. It is the phoenix that keeps rising out of the ashes of every failure. It can never\u00a0really die.<\/p>\n But paradoxically, by the time a leader\u00a0gets to this promised land, it has usually been stripped down to its barest essence. By the time you get there, maybe you can still see it\u2014as Moses did\u2014but it doesn\u2019t matter nearly as much. What matters is the presence of God right there with you on the mountainside and saying yes to God in the deepest way because you are not clinging to or grasping at anything. This vision of the promised land right-sizes any particular leader\u2019s role in the kingdom endeavor; we become heralds of a future and a kingdom that is not our own and yet is absolutely certain.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. \u2014Bishop Ken Untener, in memory of Oscar Romero<\/p>\n \u00a9 Ruth Haley Barton, 2018. Adapted from Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry<\/em><\/a> (InterVarsity Press).<\/p>\nYou Can Look but You Cannot Go In<\/h3>\n
High Stakes Leadership\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/h3>\n
Our Greatest Good\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
No Arguments on This Mountain<\/h3>\n
A Leader Who is Free Indeed<\/h3>\n
Transforming Leadership<\/h3>\n
Beyond Grandiosity<\/h3>\n
\n<\/i>The kingdom [of God]\u00a0is not only beyond our efforts,
\n<\/span><\/i>it is even beyond our vision.
\n<\/span><\/i>We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
\n<\/span><\/i>of the magnificent enterprise that is God\u2019s work.
\n<\/span><\/i>We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
\n<\/span><\/i>liberation in\u00a0realizing this.
\n<\/span><\/i>This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
\n<\/span><\/i>It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
\n<\/span><\/i>a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord\u2019s\u00a0grace<\/i>
\nto enter and do the rest.
\n<\/span><\/i>We may never see the end results, but that is the difference<\/i>
\nbetween the master builder and the worker.
\n<\/span><\/i>We are workers, not master\u00a0builders; ministers, not messiahs.
\n<\/span><\/i>We are prophets of a future not our own.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
![\"Strengthen](\"https:\/\/transformingcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/ad-tcommunity16-1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"