You’ve definitely heard that charity begins at home. Well, this is equally true for leadership. It doesn’t mean much if everyone at work addresses you as sir and madam and trembles if you’re near them, while your home is falling apart. Yes, huge respect for you at work, but none or very little respect for you in your home. This is a classic case of shiny outside, rotten inside. Yet this is many people’s reality today.
Read Joshua’s example in Joshua 24 verse 15:
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord – NIV
Here Joshua speaks to the nation – he is their leader. He is the one who became leader after Moses, and who led the people into the promised land. He’s thus actually busy working and addressing his ‘workers’. Well yes, he clearly leads by his example. He gives them the choice. Yes, they can and must choose for themselves. Simultaneously he says and lives a specific example to them. Perhaps from this we can boldly and clearly proclaim: Leadership, not only charity, begins at home.
This is a leader worth pursuing. This is a leader who does what he says. This is a leader with character. He doesn’t live in one way at work and another at home. No, his behavior is consistent every day and in every instance.
May Joshua be an example for you and me. Then there is David, whose one son falls in love with his sister and rapes her. His brother is so cross and has the brother murdered (read about this thriller in 2 Samuel 13). Not a very nice testimony of King David’s home and family. Yes, learn from Joshua how to do it, and from David how not to do it. Then go and live this consistently at work.
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