Are you positioned where you are for such a time as this? (121-3)

God provides Christian leaders with power and position to accomplish His ends. Christian leaders make a wise choice when they view their positions as God’s tools to accomplish His purposes. This concept of leader-as-steward is foundational to servant leadership and ethical leadership. Read Esther 2-7.

King Xerxes had banished Queen Vashti in a fit of anger but soon felt the emptiness created by his decision. His advisors consoled him with a plan to bring the most beautiful women from all over his kingdom and allow him to choose his next queen.Esther was an orphan who had been raised by her older cousin Mordecai. She was lovely in form and feature and had developed the poise to match her physical beauty. When the king’s officials saw Esther, they brought her to the palace to be a candidate for queen. The officials did not pay attention to Esther’s heritage as a Jewess and based on advice from Mordecai she did not disclose her Jewish heritage. After a four year search for a replacement for Vashti, Xerxes selected Esther as his queen.

Sometime after Esther had become queen, Xerxes selected Haman as his prime minister for all of Persia and gave him almost unlimited power. Haman hated the Jews living in Persia and after clashing with Mordecai, the man who had raised Esther; Haman hatched a plan to execute all the Jews living in the Persian Empire. Esther was possibly the only person close enough to Xerxes to intervene for the Jews but if she did, she risked her position as queen and quite possibly her life since all Jews were to be executed (4:9-11).

Esther sought Mordecai’s advice. In 4:14 Mordecai spoke words to Esther that should ring in the ears of every Christian leader, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

The idea that leaders should use their position to rescue and to develop those under their charge is a foundational truth in the Bible’s model of leadership. In essence Mordecai reminded Esther (and each of us) that it is not the king or Haman or any other powerful person but only God that is in charge. Every leader’s power and position is given by God for His purposes. To fail to conclude that you have come to your position for such a time as this is to miss what Biblical leadership is all about. Leader-as-steward is foundational to understanding how to live as a leader that will honor God with your service.