Leadership and the Power to Bless

UV 1543/10000 Leadership as the Power to Bless

Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Psalm 103 v 1

The power to bless is associated with divinity. Yet how did David dare to bless the Lord? It is on account of the divinity that dwells in every child of God that we can bless the Lord. David commanded his own soul to bless the Lord. To bless implies to lift up, to enlarge, to exalt, to cause good to happen. The Lord has no need of man’s help. Yet He feels gratified when we bless Him. He will not repent for having created us and thereafter redeemed us with Jesus. We are called to be leaders who are a blessing to the world and not a curse or a burden. If we have the power to bless God, then how much more we have power and responsibility to bless those whom we are leading or serving or teaching. The important thing to note is that we do not bless in our own right but in the name of the Lord.

David goes on to direct all that is within him to bless the holy name of God. What lies within us includes all of our faculties, all of our organs, all of our plans and visions, all of our achievements and failures, all of our memories, all of our desires and hopes. The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote : “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” This is not necessarily true but when read and lived in conjunction with our faith in the living God, then what lies ahead of us and what lies behind us will become tiny matters. The word “holy” also means holistic. We need to bless people in all dimensions of life and not just appeal to their intellectual or emotional faculties. Without factoring in God, how can we understand life? Without understanding life, how can we come up with an adequate response to our challenges? We need to bless the Lord’s name with all of our best- our faculties, our conscience, our dreams, our desires, hopes, thoughts, emotions, imagination, talents, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Since we are called to be His own, we are also called after the Lord’s name. With all these resources and abilities and potential that lies within us we need to bring glory to the Lord’s name. The means we adopt to achieve our goals should bring glory to His name. Our ambitions and goals should bring glory to His name. David went to battle the giant Goliath with inadequate training, inadequate experience, inadequate weapons but he went with abundant faith that made up for every inadequacy. He went in the name of His Lord and God, in the name of the God of Israel. That testimony is a blessing for three generations and a blessing to the name of the Lord. The Tabernacle or temple of ancient Israel had many parts with different functions and purposes but the ultimate purpose was to worship and glorify God. Similarly, all that lies within us is meant to glorify or bless the name of the Lord.

Our desire to provide for ourselves and our families is not something that is not of God but of God. It is blessed by Him. Our efforts to do so will bless the Jireh dimension of His name. Our desire to be channels of peace and to be problem solvers blesses the Shalom dimension of His name. Our desire for wisdom and counsel is blessed by the Rohi or Shepherd dimension of His name. Our triumphs and victories over trials, tribulations and persecution blesses the Nissi dimension of His name. The healing that we pray for ourselves and others blesses the Rapha dimension of His name. When we deal with our own inner weaknesses and the pulls and pressures to yield to external temptations or to conform to the world instead of His word, we are blessing the El Shaddai dimension of the name of God. Every exercise of faith blesses or lifts up the name of the Lord. When we use every talent and gift we have been endowed with and utilise every opportunity we are given, we are blessing the name of the Lord.
Prateep V Philip