True leadership, as it is meant to be exercised, is a role of service. The selflessness of our King is astounding, not merely in His sacrificial death on the Cross, but that His whole purpose, focus and goal was to make those in His own Kingdom greater than Himself. He gave up His Spirit so that we could do greater works and on emphatically showed that He values our lives more than His own by dying in our place. He is constantly looking for ways to exalt others, promoting them to a place where they can demonstrate the greatness inside of them. When the disciples came back from doing great exploits in His Name, He does not rebuke them for their excitement at what they did.
When someone sits in meditation, it is said that they are “waiting” on the Lord. They are serving Him, focusing on Him and directing their attentions and energies upon Him. Here, in Luke 22, Jesus says that He is the One who “serves”. The word there means to “wait upon as a waiter or servant”. He is turning His attention toward us, serving us and waiting on us. He is not waiting impatiently and irritated, hoping that some day we will get it together, He is waiting for our hearts to turn to Him just a little so that He can meet us there.
Imagine it this way, He is like a spouse who is waiting for His mate to come home from a trip. At the very moment that we step into the door, He is there, waiting, excited to see how things went, how we are feeling, what we are thinking, or even just excited to share the air with us. It is easy to look at elderly couples at restaurants that eat a whole meal without speaking nearly at all and think that their love has grown cold. I know couples that don’t need words to express their love. They can just sit and be with each other, not communicating anything, even doing separate things in their home, but they are happy because they are doing their separate things together. The Lord is a lot like that, He just likes our company. He wants our presence with Him even more than we want His Presence with us. What we think, feel and say is valuable, but sometimes those things get in the way of just simple enjoyment of the One who is Love.
Moses knew the ways of the Lord, while the rest of the nation of Israel merely knew His works. As we draw closer to Him we become more interested in the WAY that He does things than what He actually does. The apostle Paul prayed for the Colossian church to grow in the knowledge of His will, but as you keep reading Colossians 1 you see that the reason we want to grow in the knowledge of His will is so that eventually we will grow in the knowledge of God Himself. The ultimate goal is always to apprehend God. His ways lead us to Him. The woman of the Song of Songs is told to follow the path made by the flock of the Lover to find Him. If we go in His ways, we will find Him.
Psalm 37:34 urges us to wait on the Lord and keep to His way. The end result is us being exalted. Here we see, yet again, that doing things His way results in us being exalted. So Jesus says, “I come to you as One who serves”, showing us the way that He does things. The wise believer then waits on Him, keeping to His way of doing things, following His lead and not only does he get exalted, he inherits the Land. As the Lord is already waiting for us, all we must do is turn to Him and we receive honor and our inheritance. As kings we receive the inheritance of kings, which is land; as priests we receive the inheritance of priests, which is the Lord Himself. Seek and you will find.
*Jesus, make us more aware of Your constant, loving watchfulness over us. Amen.*
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