I turn twenty-four this week. Birthdays have never really been a big deal to me. I have never been the one who wants the red carpet for the entire week or for some of you committed people, the whole month. As I get older, birthdays have started to become days of reflection. I look back. I want to see how the version of myself changed over the last year. I ask myself, “what did I learn?”
That word – learn. It is what I want my reputation to be at the end of this year. I hope when people talk about me they say I asked questions. I hope they say that I was willing to listen. I hope that they say I was teachable. I don’t want to be clumped into the sum of people in my generation that are trying to stand a little taller than they really are because they have made themselves a manmade platform from hands that are saturated with pride.
I am talking to my young people here. The confession that we still have much to learn is as far away as the humility that comes with it. I will be the first to say that I have fallen into the trap of pride and thought that I knew more than I really did. It wasn’t until I was trapped that I realized that the only thing that set’s us free is to admit that the reality is we don’t know anything. We think that saying we don’t know how to do something will come with the territory of being removed from any leadership positions we might have been entrusted with. It is quite the opposite though. Good leaders know when to not put off a false persona of being all-knowing.
We know that when the Lord said to Solomon, “ask for whatever you want me to give you,” that Solomon asked for wisdom. Solomon did ask for wisdom but there was a reason he asked for it. Solomon asked for wisdom because he knew he did not have it. In fact, Solomon completely confessed his inadequacies before the Lord.
“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.” 1 Kings 3:7
Solomon got it right. He acknowledged who he was, a servant. He stayed in the humble place. He did not let himself start down the road of identifying himself to be more than who he really was. Sometimes we think too highly of ourselves. When we shift our gaze off of ourselves and back to Jesus we quickly see how wretched we are without Him. We are nothing apart from Him.
From the start, Solomon told the Lord, “I am only a child. I don’t know how to carry out what is asked of me in this role.” I wonder what it would look like if we went before the Lord and used this language Solomon used? He gained wisdom because he asked for it. You cannot obtain something that you don’t think you need.
Young leaders, we need wisdom. We are only children. We do not know how to carry out the duties that come with the things the Lord has given to us. We live in a time where overnight you have tens of thousands of people looking at what you post. It is easier than ever to be heard. Some of us are even being given a microphone. Some of us are standing on stages in front of people. Whether that is a stage of athletics, or music, or speaking, the stages exist. If we don’t see that we are in desperate need of the Lord to give us wisdom on how to steward them rightly then two things are inevitable – 1. We won’t make it. We will crumble because our character cannot sustain it. 2. Yes, we will lead people but we won’t lead them the right way.
My prayer over the last couple of months has not been for the Lord to increase the number of people He puts me in front of. My prayer has been for the Lord to let me lead the ones who are in front of me the right way. I am afraid that what is happening is that we are becoming obsessed with the “who” and have given such little emphasis to the “how.”
Sometimes the wisdom the Lord provides is Him putting people in our lives who have done what we are doing for way longer than we have. Ask them. Shadow them. Learn from them. It is how the narrative is supposed to go. You learn from someone and then you teach someone. All of us need to have someone who we are learning from.
I believe one of the greatest things the enemy is letting my generation believe is that we already know everything. No leader that is prideful is a good leader. Pride will take you out. Right now, you might be thinking that you are doing fine on your own. If I were the enemy, I would let you think that too. I would let you take a lot of ground in the way you are operating and the moment that you reached a pinnacle I would let you fall apart. The good news is humility will defeat the tactics of the enemy every time.
I still have a long way to go. I still have so much left to learn. Here is the deal, whether you admit it or not, so you do you.
The question is – what will you do about?
Let’s flip the script. Let’s be leaders who are students, not leaders who are self-confident.
