What Are You Leaning On?

Nine years ago, Beth Moore joined us at Catalyst Atlanta and delivered a moving message on identity and insecurities as a leader. When we start out to lead, we usually begin the race with pure motives and a complete reliance on God. However, over time, we can convince ourselves that we are in a race that we can run on our own. 

In this clip, Beth Moore unpacks the following verses from the book of Job in order to show us the results when we begin to attempt to build the supernatural with only our natural hands:

“Such is the destiny of all who forget God;
so perishes the hope of the godless.
What they trust in is fragile;
what they rely on is a spider’s web.
They lean on the web, but it gives way;
they cling to it, but it does not hold.”- Job 8:13-15
 
Watch the clip to hear Beth challenge us to be people who not only have the power to start, but also the spirit to stay. 
 
Prefer to read rather than watch? Here’s the transcript to Beth’s talk:
 
Listen to Job 8:14-15, because I thought this was even better. What he trusts in, and let me give you the context for it. The verse just before it says, "Such is the destiny of all who forget God." So the next verse says, "What he trusts in," and that word trusts in is our word, those consonants KSL, "is fragile. What he relies on is a spider's web. He leans on his web, but it gives way. He clings to it, but it does not hold."
 
My husband and I have some acreage where for whatever reason the trees are just right for writing spiders, and that's like Charlotte out of Charlotte's Web. The kind that make these elaborate webs. And the spiders can be this long from tip to tip. And they're the most interesting things with yellow and black coloring on their bodies, and these long rigid legs. And I love to watch them.
 
And what the scripture is saying right there is this. That we when we forget God, and I mean we can be all up in working for God and forget him entirely. Or somehow as Galatians 3:3 says, it says, "What in the world made you think you could start something in the Spirit and just end it up in the flesh?" And unless you and I plan to be different than that, that's exactly what we'll do. Start out ... I mean, I just don't think people give way to this leadership calling, because they just had some kind of persona gain in mind, as much as it was true commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
But then somewhere along the way we begin to lose our focus and lose the intimacy of that relationship. And before we know it, we've gone from working in the Spirit to working in our own flesh, trying to make supernatural things happen with our own natural hands. And it never works. And we forget the things of our first love.
 
And so the writer of the scripture is saying that when we rely, when we forget God and we rely on our ourselves we are leaning. Our security, it is about as secure as a spider's web. Now you can lean on it to the degree that you can lean on a spider's web, go ahead. But what will happen is it will cave in, and leave nothing, nothing, but a substance of our own stupidity, left all over us when we're done.
 
You know what occurred to me earlier? I thought to myself, what's even scarier is sometimes you don't just get the spider web, you get the spider with it. Anybody know what I'm talking about? We can get the spider with it. So I'll tell you this, I do believe in a real live evil force that is demonic, this Satan our enemy. And I'm going to tell you something, just on having lived a few years longer. He is real, and he will do everything he can to render you ineffective, if not make you quit entirely. We better know who we are. We better know who we're not. We better know how we want this thing to turn out, and get ourselves pointed that direction.
 
The question today is not just do we have what it takes to start? But do we have the Spirit that it takes to stay, to stay? I believe that a whole lot of leaders come to a place of deadness in their leadership, not over the killing of one event. But over the slow death of discouragement. Know who you are. Know who you are not. And know what you want to be when this thing sees the setting of the sun.