God longs to bless and reward obedient leaders. Read Jeremiah 29:1-14.

Jeremiah had warned Judah for decades to repent of their violations of the covenant they had made with God. Eventually God gave Babylon military success against Judah. Babylon invaded Judah three times. Once they simply made Jerusalem and Judah subject to their rule and forced them to pay an annual tribute, once they took several thousand captives back to Babylon including the king and his family, Daniel and others that were the brightest and best Judah had to offer, and during the third invasion they destroyed the city of Jerusalem, mercilessly massacred thousands, and took virtually all the able bodied back to Babylon in chains.

An essential role in leadership is encouraging and developing strengths in others. Read Isaiah 7:1-9.

When Isaiah was writing these words Assyria was the dominating world power. Knowing that no one nation could stand against Assyria, the kings in other countries were making alliances to put up a unified front against the advance of the Assyrian army. Pekah king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom of the nation of Israel made an alliance with Rezin King of Aram, modern day Syria. Both Rezin and Pekah knew that if they could get Judah, the Southern kingdom of Israel, to become part of the alliance they would be much stronger, have a source of food supply from the rich farm land of Judah, control some vital trade routes and have their nations protected from any flanking maneuvers by Assyria.

Wise leaders do not try to buy loyalty but rather help their team find purpose and meaning in their work. Read Ecclesiastes 5:10-20.

God created people to be motivated by rewards. The Bible is full of God’s promises concerning specific rewards to individuals or entire people groups who follow Him. But, according to Ecclesiastes 5:10-17, even though it is true that people are motivated by rewards, paying large sums of money to try to buy loyalty or ensure satisfaction is a dead-end tactic.

Becoming a leader is not a quick, simple process. It may be possible to become a self-made leader but that would be rare by any standard and impossible for a Christian. If the Spirit of God is not in control of leading and directing a Christian leader, they may develop skills but those skills bring glory to themselves not to God. Most highly successful, effective Christian leaders receive input not only from the Spirit of God but also from another leader that invests in them. Joshua is a tremendous example of such a leader. Read Numbers 27:15-23.

This portion of scripture is right at the end of Moses life when he was publicly passing the mantle of leadership to Joshua. There are excellent leadership lessons for both the mentor and the person receiving the mentoring in these few verses: