Spiritual Leadership Starts With Your Own Life!

Psalm 101

Of David. A psalm.

1 I will sing of your love and justice;
    to you, Lord, I will sing praise.
2 I will be careful to lead a blameless life—
    when will you come to me?
I will conduct the affairs of my house
    with a blameless heart.
3 I will not look with approval
    on anything that is vile.
I hate what faithless people do;
    I will have no part in it.
4 The perverse of heart shall be far from me;
    I will have nothing to do with what is evil.
This is a psalm of David's response as he was anointed King of Judah, and then later over all of Israel.  David starts with God's steadfast love and mercy, but also translated "justice".  Justice can be summarized as "doing the right thing" as one is aligned with God.  David responds to God's anointing to him as king with a call to living rightly.  He realizes if he is going to be leader, he needs to lead by example, starting in his own home.  

As you might know, Martin Luther spent 1,000's of hours in the psalms, translating them into German. He also applied them as a model and prophesy for the future King, Jesus Christ.  He says this about this psalm, 

"I was startled to find that Martin Luther had done an exposition of the psalm that ran to eighty pages. The reason, I discovered, is that he was deeply concerned about civil government and wanted to expound the psalm as a listing of qualities toward which every Christian prince or magistrate should strive.” (James Montgomery Boice)

Fundamentally this is a psalm of living out the Christian life. We are saved by grace and God's mercy, which propels us to live a life set apart for God.  Right and wrong is pretty clear, and leaders need to emulate it, and stay away from others who live contrary to God's plan of righteousness.

Pray that you might lead by example, starting in your home.  Your influence will be in direct proportion to the type of life you lead.  Pray for your leaders, that they might lead by example and not in name only.  

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