[Blog] How to Lead Into and Through Chaotic Times

Chaos is an inevitable reality if you are leading and doing anything worthwhile. If stability is what you’re after, you’re also after ineffectiveness and mediocrity. Throughout God’s Word, we can find numerous biblical figures that demonstrate to us how to (and not to) lead through chaotic times. Here is what we can learn from 3 of their stories…           

David’s youthful courage saved King Saul and his army when the young man walked out on the field for individual combat with Goliath, but he probably didn’t expect the chaos his new fame would produce when Saul became murderously jealous. On the other side, David created self-inflicted chaos when he committed adultery with his soldier’s wife, had him killed in battle, and then lied to cover it up. Still, he repented and was known as “a man after God’s own heart.”   

Nehemiah created chaos when he launched a bold plan to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonians had destroyed the city and the temple decades before. He faced opposition inside from the Jewish nobles and outside from Sanballat and Tobias. With remarkable leadership skills, he marshaled his workers to complete the wall in only 52 days.           

Jeremiah was given an almost impossible task. He rebuked the people and their leaders for their disobedience to God, calling them “broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). His fierce denunciations, however, were combined with a tender heart, and he was known as “the weeping prophet.” After the people were carried into exile in Babylon, the false prophet Hananiah told the people what they wanted to hear: the exile would be over in two years. But God instructed Jeremiah to give them some very different news, “No, it’s going to be seventy years.” He continued:               

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. —Jeremiah 29:5-7                   

And by the way, “Hananiah will die because he misrepresented Me.” A few months later, Hananiah died.       

In our time of relative biblical illiteracy and social media misinformation, false prophets like Hananiah tell people what they want to hear about every conceivable topic. Jeremiah is our example of how to be strong, wise, and clear during a national time of chaos and in the face of fierce opposition.

Which of these stories can you relate to? God doesn’t want chaos to destroy us or the plans He has for us. Learn how to more effectively lead into and through chaos by visiting the link below.

This blog was extracted from How Leaders Create Chaos: And Why They Should! by Sam Chand. Find out how to be one of the first to get your hands on a copy of Sam Chand’s newest book on leadership by visiting us at http://samchandbook.com/.