This is a series on 11 Leadership Lessons from 12 Disciples, based on the recent sermon Jesus Calls the Twelve, on Luke 6:12-16.

Lesson #1: Pray humbly then proceed boldly

Before choosing the twelve, what does Jesus do? Luke 6 tells us, he spent a whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12). Silence and solitude: today this would be shut off the phone, shut down the computer, stop Twittering, Facebooking, blogging. Shut it all down. Don't ask everybody, "What do you think I should do?" Don't post it on your wall, "Everybody, give me your advice." Just shut it all down, go get with God, silence and solitude. Bring a pen, paper, a Bible, get some time with God, and talk to him. "All right, Lord, I've got an important decision to make. I'm here humbly requesting you help me. Speak to me through Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, conscience. Help me know what to do." This is exceedingly important, because we live in a world where hurry, worry, and busy dominate. No time for solitude, no time for silence. And so rather than going to God, we sometimes even go to technology to ask everybody else, "What should I do? Give me advice. Give me feedback." And that's not always evil or bad, but Jesus' example is: start with prayer. Life, ministry, and major decisions have to be bathed and birthed in prayer. That's the way it works. And it says previously in Luke that Jesus has done this before, so this is a fairly common occurrence for him. He's got to choose twelve apostles, that's a big deal, so he's going to spend a whole night in prayer, looking across all those who are following him, and coming to hear him preach and teach. "Father, what about this one? What about that guy? What about this person? What about that one? Judas, you sure? We need to talk about that guy, not so sure I want him on the team." So when you declare, "I'm going to be a member of this church. I want to serve in this ministry, paid or unpaid. I want to marry this person. I want go want to this college. I want to get this degree. I want to do this career. I want to live in this house. I want to take on this responsibility. We're going to birth these children." Before you make those big decisions, "We're going to deploy these leaders," pray, because what happens is most people pray after they've made the decision. Like, "Oh no, Lord, help, fix it. Whoops." God is a gracious God, and he can and does often show up and help, but it's so much better to seek God before making the decision, and the resulting devastation.

Proceed boldly

And once you pray humbly, and you get time with God, okay, "God, this is who I am. This is what you want me to do. This is the decision I need to make," then you could proceed boldly. "No, this is what I need to do. The Bible says, I got time with the Lord, and then I double-checked with spiritual authority and godly people to make sure that I actually heard the Lord, not the voice in my head. And yeah, I have conviction here. I have a sense of calling, and I know what I'm supposed to do, so I'm going to do it." Those who pray humbly can proceed boldly. Those who do not pray humbly have a hard time proceeding boldly. It gets hard. There's opposition, life, ministry gets difficult. And all of a sudden you're like, "Am I doing the right thing? Should I have even started this? Should I have volunteered for this ministry? Should I be pursuing this life course? I don't know, maybe I made a mistake." Crisis ensues. Grace and I, before we launched Mars Hill, and before we even announced that we officially would, we felt called to it. God had called us both to it, but we took some time, a week in fasting and prayer just to double-check. "Okay Lord, double-checking, is this it? You want us to start Mars Hill or not? Yes, okay, cool. We're in this together, and we're going to do it." And there's been some hard seasons, tough seasons, but we know this is what God asked us to do. Also, I prayed a lot before I married Grace, and God convicted me, revealed to me, "Yeah, marry that girl." Okay. Every marriage hits hard spots, every life hits hard spots, every career hits hard spots, every ministry, paid or unpaid, hits hard spots, and when you've prayed humbly, you can proceed boldly saying, "I'm going to hang in there, I'm going to keep going because I know this is what I'm supposed to do, and I trust God to get me through it." To be continued.