Daily Verse
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Godly Leadership
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Tuesday's Reflection
Numbers 27:17 — Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd.
Moses did not want the job. At the burning bush he offered God five reasons why someone else should go. He had a speech impediment. He did not know God's name. Nobody would believe him. He was not good enough. Please send someone else. God was patient with four of these objections and angry at the fifth. He sent Moses anyway. And Moses went, reluctantly, and led one of the most difficult groups of people in human history for forty years in the wilderness.
What is remarkable about Moses as a leader is not his confidence — he never really had much of that. It is his intercession. When the Israelites built a golden calf while he was on the mountain receiving the law from God, Moses came down and found the camp in chaos. He could have stepped aside and let God's judgment fall. Instead he went back up the mountain and stood between God and the people. He said: forgive them. And if You will not — blot my name out of Your book rather than destroy them. He offered his own place before God in exchange for theirs. That is not management. That is shepherding. A leader who is more concerned about the people in their care than about their own position is rare. Moses was that kind of leader, not because it came naturally, but because forty years of walking with God had shaped him into it.
The prayer at the end of his life tells you everything. He did not ask to enter the Promised Land himself. He asked God to appoint someone who would lead the people well — so that the congregation of the Lord would not be like sheep without a shepherd. Even at the end, it was about them, not him.
Prayer: Lord, make us the kind of leaders who intercede for the people in our care rather than protecting ourselves at their expense. Give us Moses' heart — willing to stand between our people and the storm. Amen.