Be strong and still
iStock
"Wait for the Lord; be strong & take heart & wait for the Lord." (Ps 27:14) There's strength in waiting. #leadership
In the verse above, David implores us to be strong while we wait on the Lord to act.
I've found that even when I don't feel very strong, I can act and think as if I were.
When I got into radio advertising sales out of college, they trained us to smile into the phone; the person on the other end could "hear" us smiling, whether we actually felt happy or not. The silent smile erased verbal stress tones and projected an audible confidence.
When we act strong, it's as if we are strong. No one knows the difference. (Except us!)
Acting aside, there's an even greater imperative in the above verse. It's repeated twice for emphasis: "Wait for the Lord." It is in the waiting that we are strengthened; and it is this strength that enables us to keep waiting.
Later in Psalms, we encounter a complementary command:
"Be still & know that I am God." (Ps 46:10) Relax; we aren't in control. #leadership
We are told to simply be still (in other words, to wait.) And in our stillness, the verse exhorts us to calmly meditate on the fact that he is God.
As we wait for the Lord and meditate on him, he strengthens us, encourages us, and acts for us.
Do you need to wait – rather than act – on anything in your life right now? Sometimes we must temper our action with a period of waiting.
When we are still, we can gather our strength and confidence.
In the stillness, God prepares us to act.
Excerpted from Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership, by Tom Harper (DeepWater Books, 2019). For more information about the book, visit https://deepwaterbooks.com/.
 | Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More » |
More on Servant Leadership
- Are you an adaptable leader? (by Miranda Carls)
- When wisdom begins with ‘I don’t know’ (by David Bowman)
- The secret weapon a pastor needs for church growth (by Mark MacDonald)
- Read the room to lead the room (by Jenni Catron)
