We all want to see and meet and know people who are real. Christians and non-Christians alike want to see people who say what they mean and mean what they say.  We don’t have to look very far to find good teachers and preachers and leaders and experts who can tell us a great many things about anything we want to know.  But I think what we want even more is to find leaders who live out that message they preach.  We want to find leaders whose lives speak even louder than their words.

In early 2006, my best friend told me about a little blond-haired woman from Laguna Beach who liked to sit in the dirt of Africa and love those that no one else dared to love.  In the world’s eyes and even in the eyes of many in the Body of Christ, she had totally “lost it”.

My best friend gave me the link to one of her teachings.  Curious, I clicked on the link.  I was baffled by what I saw.  For the first 30 minutes or so, she simply knelt on the altar with her head bowed and her hands raised, worshipping God and praying and laughing and crying.  I just shook my head.  I had never seen anything like this.  When is she going to start preaching? She tried several times to stand up and couldn’t, so overwhelmed by God’s presence.  I was totally perplexed (to say the least).

Over the next several weeks of listening to messages by this woman, God broke my little box of everything I always thought He was.  This woman had a doctorate in theology from King’s College in London, England.  She had studied with the best of the best.  She grew up in a privileged family in one of the wealthiest areas in America.  Yet, she had left it all to go to the poorest nation in the world, Mozambique, with no money and no resources and no place to live simply to test the Gospel of Jesus Christ and see if it really did have the power to transform an entire nation.

After planting 5,000 churches and caring for 2,000 orphans daily, she’s found the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be as vibrant and powerful and life-changing as it was when Jesus Himself walked the earth.  It’s the faithfulness of God and her sole devotion to Him and His Word that has dodged bullets and survived floods and famines and rampant disease and poverty and death threats and so many other forms of darkness.  And yet, when I listened to her speak, all I could see was a woman with simple, childlike faith, pouring out a kind of love that I had never felt or touched or seen in my life.  It was God’s love.  I had basically grown up in the church, yet I never knew God’s love like this.  She didn’t talk about the 5,000 churches or the 2,000 children that called her “Mama”.  She just talked about stopping for the one.  She talked about never turning anyone away.  She talked about rocking precious African babies plagued by AIDS for days in her arms and then finding out they no longer had AIDS.  God’s love, being poured out through her, had healed them.

Her name is Heidi Baker.

She didn’t tell me what humility was.  She showed me what it was.  She didn’t tell about God’s loved.  She lived it out so I could see it for myself.

For the longest time after I “met” this woman, I thought that I would end up in Africa, loving orphans and living among the poorest of the poor.  After all, why else would God have me listen to dozens of messages by her and be so touched by what I heard?

As it turned out, God hadn’t changed my calling.  He wasn’t preparing me for a life in Africa.  No, He was teaching me the most important lesson I have ever learned: How to Love and Be Loved by Him.  He showed me what His love looked like and how it had the power to transform an entire nation.  He showed me that the signs and wonders that were normal when Jesus walked the earth were still meant to be normal today.  He showed me that everything I needed to literally survive was found in His Word and His Word alone.  He showed me what it looked like to see a person who truly knows Him, whose prize and reward was Him alone.  He showed me what it looked like to lead while lying down.  He taught my how silly it is to run and strive and lead by the world’s standards and try to make things happen.  He showed that in Him, there is always enough.

I know I titled this post “If you want to lead, first learn to LOVE”, but basically, if you want to live, you have to first learn how to love.  It doesn’t matter what we do in life; if we miss this, we miss everything.

Now, I know that some of you might also be thinking: Can we move onto something besides leadership?  I’m not even called to be a leader. But you are a leader.  If you’re a Christian, you’re a leader.  Even on the day you were born-again, you were a leader.  Who to?  Non-believers.  Christianity is about showing people the way to Jesus.  And now, since most of you have been Christians for quite some time, the group you lead is even bigger.  Non-believers, people who’ve just become Christians, Christians who go to church but don’t know Him.  The more you know Him, the more people you’ll be able to lead.  Remember, the dictionary defines leadership as: to go before or with, to show the way.  There are no doubt millions of people who are not yet where you are.  To what capacity and in what area you’ll lead, God will show you, but you will lead.  In the Body of Christ, there’s no such thing as staying where you’re at.  Either you’re going forward with Him or you’re moving backwards.  Let’s link arms and move forward into new depths with Him — and while we’re at, let’s lead others and show them the way down this path too.

Since learning how to lead in God’s way is so important, I think we ought to continue on with it — for at least another week.

What do you think?

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To hear Heidi Baker teach… or laugh or cry or sing, click here.

Click here to check out her ministry’s website.

Click here to see a book that really messed me up in a really good way.

Tags: Christian leaders, God's love, Heidi Baker, lead, Leadership, learning to love, love

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