Leadership Through Faith
Leadership comes with a cost...
Happy New Year, everyone. It’s been a few weeks since I last posted an essay, but that doesn’t mean I’m not writing. In fact, I am writing more than I ever have in my entire life. Writing for me is not only physical but also spiritual. It isn’t just sitting behind a computer or holding a pen and paper—it is action in my life, lived experience.
I wrote this essay in the middle of serving at a youth retreat for my church. Lately, I have been blessed to be connected within a community and to serve as a youth leader for a group of high school boys who have taken me into their hearts and allowed me to walk alongside them and help navigate life in this season we are sharing together.
This essay was inspired by them and by the way I am learning to show up as a leader with faith—something I have never led with before and am currently rewriting in my own life.
I hope you enjoy.
The air was a mix of warmth and cold, and my body and mind weren’t sure what to make of it. The sun slowly peeked over the mountaintops, confusing the nighttime air that still lingered. These types of mornings always get me. They tend to stir an overwhelming feeling that surges through my veins.
Over the years, that feeling has changed into something different from what it once was. I would say it used to be a lack of feeling, rather than a lack of actual feeling. Isn’t it supposed to be that way in this world? Is that the feeling we carry is a blessing, a goodness rooted in God’s grace?
I know that a decade ago, as I exited and transitioned out of the military, that connection wasn’t there. It wasn’t until the last five years or so, when I cut my chest open before God and surrendered, when I repented, when I accepted the river of goodness that flows from the holy city, from the kingdom of heaven, that I began to feel it. I never fully understood it, and I am still learning to understand this feeling of grace and the goodness that God pours into our cups to wash away the sins we carry, the heartache that builds over years of living a human experience.
In Scripture, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for making their cups appear shiny and new on the outside, while being filthy on the inside, with all the things they wore. I am finding that God’s goodness and grace don’t affect the outside first. It works from the inside out. This goodness and grace clean, deepen, and restore the heart.
Slowly, I am understanding that God’s grace is not something we manufacture but something we receive. Like a river, it flows from Him, not from our effort. John 7:37 reminds us of that, “Let anyone thirsty come to me and drink”. God pours goodness into our cups not to decorate our lives, but to cleanse and restore what is broken inside us.
At the start of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus introduces the Beatitudes, another word for blessings, that define the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom. He says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see Go
d” (Matthew 5:8). Purity of heart is not an easy task. It is wholeness, integrity, and undivided devotion. It is one of the hardest paths a human can walk. In fact, the only person who fully walked that path was killed, spit on, beaten, and nailed to a cross. He died for those who believed in God and in Him as the Son of Man, God’s one and only Son.
Jesus Himself warned that this path would cost something. In Matthew 16:24, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” To walk with a pure heart comes at a cost. It requires letting go of self-interest. To live a life of purity of heart is to surrender. To experience that life is to admit that it may be the hardest thing one can ever do while living a physical existence.
This is where I am relearning that true leadership is not what I was taught growing up or shown as a young boy. True leadership comes with a cost. True leadership accepts suffering as part of something greater than itself. True leadership serves others, builds others, and teaches them how to endure the path of leadership. It does not hide what that path requires.
Jesus did not hide the cost of leadership. He lived it. He embodied it. He suffered for it. And He invited others to follow, not into comfort, but into purpose.
Jesus lived nothing but a life of a pure heart, and He was murdered for it. When He asked people to follow Him, to reject the things of this earthly world, to carry their cross and deny themselves, He was teaching what it truly means to live with a pure heart.
Leadership is not about having others serve you. Jesus explicitly rejected that model: In Mark 10:45, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” Leadership is about accepting the assignment God gives you, even when it leads through hardship. Leadership is not about boasting about what you have done. Leadership is about accepting the task God has given you.
Paul understood this deeply. In Acts 20:24, he says, “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” Leadership, in Paul’s view, was faithfulness to the task, not preservation of comfort.
This is what leadership through faith looks like.
It is costly.
It is surrendered.
It is rooted in purity of heart.
This is the true identity of servant leadership and stewardship, not driven by self, but shaped by obedience to God. And God measures obedience in trust, not amount. As a leader, we need to build trust with others that we care and don’t want control.
This is true leadership.
This is leadership through faith.