If you’re a leader, for God’s sake, lead.

Steve Brown:
If you’re a leader, for God’s sake, lead. Let’s talk, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life here to let Christians know that God isn’t mad at them. Keep listening and you’ll hear that because of what Jesus has done, you’re welcomed home into the family of God because of his radical grace, free from the penalties of sin and never alone in your suffering.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. If you have your Bible and I’m not gonna read the text to you, I’ve done that a couple of times. We’re looking at the first four verses of the 13th chapter of Acts. And we’re posing a question. The question is this, how do you know if you’re going in the right direction? Or if you’re following Jesus, how do you know where he’s going? And that’s true of an individual and it’s true of a church. And we spent a couple of days talking about how God prepares circumstances. He does that in a church. And he does that in individuals. God created you the way you are, before you were ever born, he began to lay out an amazing set of circumstances for your life. And that is individualized. You didn’t choose who your parents were. You didn’t choose where you were born. And you say, well, my parents were bad and I was born in a really dark place. Even that cause that prepares you to be sensitive to the pain of other people, but whatever. God has prepared those circumstances. And the first thing you do, is you check the Bible, you listen for the speaking of the Holy Spirit as in acts 13, one through four. And then you ask, what am I good at? What do I like? Where do I feel called? Where do I feel a passion? And that’s because God creates circumstances, prior circumstances. It’s a good thing to remember. And then secondly, I want to show you something else. God will not only prepare circumstances, he will prepare leaders. When Moses was called to lead God’s people, do you know what he said? Now, this is in the original Hebrew, just so you know, and you should understand the original text. Moses said, no way, I ain’t doing that. I can’t talk, I can’t lead. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m in trouble all the time. And God said, you’re the man. And then I love what follows then I wish I had time to spend time with you on it, but we’re studying Acts we’re not studying Moses life, but he didn’t want to be a leader, but God works that way. He calls a man or a woman and they may not even be the ones we would vote on. Would you have chosen the disciples that Jesus chose? I mean, you talk about a bunch of ragamuffins. I mean, those are not the people that you would want to lead your church. I have a friend, his name’s Ken Smith, who has another friend and we’re all old. And Ken was sitting down with his pastor and he said to him, what are you looking forward to in heaven? He said, I’m looking forward to seeing Jesus pick up the church and shape the church in front of Satan’s face and say to him, this is all I had and I still kicked your posterior. Listen, it is amazing. God, the way God calls a leader, but if we don’t have leaders that people will follow, then we’re not going to go where Jesus goes. I think one of the real problems in our nation right now, is that we have a shortage of those kind of leaders. One of the real problems in the church is that we’re constantly trying to lead by committee. One of the problems is that we don’t understand that God calls a man or a woman, anoints that man or woman and he says, that is my man, that is my woman, follow them. And the church knows that this is anointed and it’s important. I served for a hundred years on the board and the executive committee of Christianity Today. That was insane. I never knew what I was doing, but one of the agreements that was never stated, never written down, but was always there is that whatever Mr. Graham, the direction he went in, unless there were serious reasons not to go in that way. We were going to follow him. Why did we do that? Because we knew that Mr. Graham had founded Christianity Today, that he was an anointed and humbled servant and a leader. And even if wisdom suggested we go in a different way, once Mr. Graham said what he thought we ought to do, then we agreed as a board. And God honored that because God honors leaders that are humble and wise and have been anointed by him. That’s why when you go after your pastor, you ought to be very, very careful. That means that in a Christian organization, when you get the board to fire the leader, you gotta be very, very careful. It doesn’t that mean you never fire a pastor or you never get rid of a leader? Of course not. That’s dumb. But it ought to be a rare occurrence because when God moves, he almost always moves with a leader. And that leader, if that leader is building an empire is autocratic, beats people over the head with a Bible, who was never a kind or a servant, then that’s not an anointed leader. An anointed leader is found in John 13, where Jesus said, you call me teacher and Lord. And that’s what I am. In other words, I’m the man. Did you take notice of what I just did? I just washed your feet. That’s what real leaders do. There’s a humility about them. They smell like Jesus. They manifest the Fruit of the Spirit, but when they say move it, God’s people will follow them. You think about that. Amen.

Well, it’s Wednesday. And sometimes if I have time, I take some time on Wednesdays to answer one or two questions. And as you know, Pete Alwinson will be in on Friday and we devote the entire broadcast to answering questions. And we’ve been doing that for over 25 years. And frankly about 50% of our answers have been wrong. So, you’ve got to get a Bible and find out which are right and which are wrong, but we love you yet your questions. And we take you and your question seriously, and you can ask your question anytime the Spirit moves, just pick up your phone and dial one 1-800-KEY-LIFE and then follow instructions and we’ll record your question and sometimes put that on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or if you want to, you can send your question by e-mail to [email protected]. And if you can help us financially, please do, and we’ll rise up and call you blessed and use your contribution for the glory of God. And if you can’t, we understand, do say a prayer for this ministry. Alright, let’s turn to one or two questions. This is an interesting question, when I looked at it, it causes me to wince because I get it a lot. It’s an e-mail and it says this, I lost both of my parents at a young age. Now that I’m a Christian, I live with a terrible guilt and pain that my parents may not have been saved. Is there a chance of salvation after death? No, there isn’t, the Scripture said.

It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that is judgment.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t hope. God works within families and his ways are circuitous and sometimes we don’t see how he works. We make coming to Christ a very difficult thing, you know, we do week long seminars on how to lead people to Christ. Guys this doesn’t take a surgeon, a brain surgeon it’s fairly simple, the gospel. The gospel is you’re a needy person and Jesus will fix that need, your sin and your life. He did that on the cross, run to him and that’s it. And you’d be surprised how many people have done that and we don’t know it and they don’t know it either. When we get to heaven, we’re going to be really surprised at the people we find there. Ones that sometimes the church rejected and other Christians rejected. I believe that with all of my heart. And let me tell you something else, dear friend, when you became a Christian, you got to remember a principle. God, when he calls one, he calls a bunch. And that includes what the Scripture talks about, as a family covenant. Your parents were under a special concern by the God of the universe who had decided that he was going to call you to himself. And there is really good hope, that at some point in your parents, even if you didn’t know about it, at some point in your parents’ life, they became aware of their need. And they ran to him, even if it wasn’t formal, even if it wasn’t in church, even if it wasn’t during the invitation at the end of the church service because God loves people and he hugs people and it’s dependent on who he hugs, not what they do or who they are. And so, don’t give up hope. I think that heaven is going to be a surprising place. And it may be a surprising place because your parents are going to be there. At any rate, God is kind, he’s compassionate, he’s just, and he’s good. And, you can trust him. I’ve got one more question and I don’t have time to answer. Why didn’t grace curse the fig tree? Cause he didn’t like figs. No, that’s not it, to illustrate a point about his power and fruitfulness. And folks, that’s it. And I’ve got to go, but before I go, I must say, Key Life is a listener supported production Key Life Network.