Lead By Doing - Ezra

“O my God, I am utterly ashamed; I blush to lift up my face to you. For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, we have been steeped in sin.”

Ezra 9:6-7

When a company vice president learned that many of his best people had developed the habit of arriving late for work, he mapped out a plan of action. Instead of singling out his valuable employees, he decided to call a department-wide meeting and talk about the rampant tardiness, including himself as a part of the problem.

In the following weeks, this VP made sure that he always arrived at work on time. Before he knew it, arriving to work late was a problem of the past in his department.

People usually follow an example better than any amount of talking. If you want people to do what is good and right, do those things yourself.

The priest Ezra led the second wave of Jewish exiles back to their homeland after seventy years of captivity in Babylon. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he didn’t like what he saw. Many of the people had directly disobeyed God’s law by marrying people outside the Jewish faith. Even worse, they had started living like the pagans they had married (see Ezra 9:1).

For Ezra, what should have been a time of joy and celebration quickly became a time of mourning and repentance. Although he was innocent of any wrongdoing, Ezra led the people in confessing their sins.

In this situation, Ezra might have been tempted to distance himself from the people he loved. He could have just let God deal with them as they deserved. Instead, he prayed in repentance on behalf of all the people and included himself.

Ezra’s “repentance by example” moved his people to change their ways. They did as Ezra had done by confessing their sins and turning toward God (see Ezra 10:2, 11-12).

Leading the people who are closest to you toward the right attitudes and actions doesn’t begin with telling them what to do, but with doing those things yourself.