Importance of the Doctrine and Experience of Holiness to Spiritual Leaders
“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”
A mighty man inspires and trains other men to be mighty. We wonder and exclaim often at the slaughter of Goliath by David, and we forget that David was the forerunner of a race of fearless, invincible warriors and giant-killers.
If we would in this light but study and remember the story of David’s mighty men, it would be most instructive to us.
Moses inspired a tribe of cowering, toiling, sweat-begrimed, spiritless slaves to lift up their heads, straighten their backs, and throw off the yoke; and he led them forth with songs of victory and shouts of triumph from under the mailed hand and iron bondage of Pharaoh. He fired them with a national spirit, and welded and organised them into a distinct and compact people that could be hurled with resistless power against the walled cities and trained warriors of Canaan.
But what was the secret of David and Moses? Whence the superiority of these men? David was only a stripling shepherd-boy when he immortalised himself. What was his secret? To be sure, Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and, doubtless, had been trained in all the civil, military, and scientific learning of his day, but he was so weak in himself that he feared and fled at the first word of questioning and disparagement that he heard (Exodus ii. 14), and spent the next forty years feeding sheep for another man in the rugged wilderness of Sinai. What, then, was his secret?
Doubtless, they were men cast in a kinglier mould than most men; but their secret was not in themselves.
Joseph Parker declared that great lives are built on great promises, and so they are. These men had so far humbled themselves that they found God. They got close to Him, and He spoke to them. He gave them promises. He revealed His way and truth to them, and trusting Him, believing His promises, and fashioning their lives according to His truth—His doctrine— everything else followed. They became “workers together with God,” heroes of faith, leaders of men, builders of empire, teachers of the race, and, in an important sense, saviours of mankind.
Their secret is an open one; it is the secret of every truly successful spiritual leader from then till now, and there is no other way to success in spiritual leadership.
1. They had an experience. They knew God.