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1 Samuel 9:21 NIV

21 Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?”

1 Samuel 10:17–27 NIV

17 Samuel summoned the people of Israel to the Lord at Mizpah 18 and said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the power of Egypt and all the kingdoms that oppressed you.’ 19 But you have now rejected your God, who saves you out of all your disasters and calamities. And you have said, ‘No, appoint a king over us.’ So now present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and clans.” 20 When Samuel had all Israel come forward by tribes, the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot. 21 Then he brought forward the tribe of Benjamin, clan by clan, and Matri’s clan was taken. Finally Saul son of Kish was taken. But when they looked for him, he was not to be found. 22 So they inquired further of the Lord, “Has the man come here yet?” And the Lord said, “Yes, he has hidden himself among the supplies.” 23 They ran and brought him out, and as he stood among the people he was a head taller than any of the others. 24 Samuel said to all the people, “Do you see the man the Lord has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.” Then the people shouted, “Long live the king!” 25 Samuel explained to the people the rights and duties of kingship. He wrote them down on a scroll and deposited it before the Lord. Then Samuel dismissed the people to go to their own homes. 26 Saul also went to his home in Gibeah, accompanied by valiant men whose hearts God had touched. 27 But some scoundrels said, “How can this fellow save us?” They despised him and brought him no gifts. But Saul kept silent.

Psalm 39:7 NIV

7 “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.

It’s time that we as leaders reframe failures.

It’s time that we make a choice to view difficult situations through the lens of hope and possibility.

After all, struggles and tension can refine and strengthen our understanding of God’s love and who He created us to be as loved sons and daughters.

However…if your identity is built primarily upon what you think YOU can accomplish, what YOU do, what YOU can achieve, then tough times can shatter your confidence.

Oh, you might be able to maintain a tough, professional exterior through it all, but inside, if you have built a fake altar of confidence in your own successes and achievements, it will ultimately crumble (and most likely your peace along with it).

But for those of us who hope in Jesus Christ, we have a foundation that never needs to be rebuilt because it never crumbles.

Our resiliency, or “bounce-back” factor, is never in question because it flows from who He is rather than how strong we are.

The stories of Saul and David’s journeys to leadership can teach us quite a bit about how our foundations can be developed and how they are revealed.

Saul was in every way the most likely choice for Israel’s first king. He was tall, handsome, and a fighter from an accomplished family.

He was literally the full package. Or at least he appeared to be the full package on the outside.

When it comes time to announce Saul as Israel’s anointed king, the people can’t find him.

The Lord finally calls him out as hiding in the bushes. Hiding.

Can you identify with Saul?

Have you ever hidden from a call to a new path or opportunity that wasn’t what you expected?

Interestingly (and in stark contrast to Saul’s successor, David), we don’t have much of a written record on Saul and God’s relationship.

In many ways, that absence speaks volumes to us about Saul’s dependence (or lack thereof) on God.

Saul’s interactions and conversations with God are largely hidden from us.

In contrast, David’s passionate and deep relationship with God is captured all through the book of Psalms.

David was constantly found pouring his heart out to God as his Maker and Friend, both privately and publicly.

Our words also matter.

They reveal what our thoughts and attitudes are focused on.

They reveal what our faith is rooted in.

When Saul stepped out of his hiding place, he opened his mouth and the cracks in his inner foundation began to show.

For a guy who had the physical look and commanding presence of being Israel’s king, Saul’s early words and actions start to reveal a man who saw himself based on who he thought he was, potentially who he thought others expected him to be, and certainly not through the perspective of an all-powerful and grace-filled God.

God called Saul to be Israel’s first King, and Saul called himself insignificant and small.

The gap between Saul’s perspective and God’s perspective was immense.

This gap was the root of Saul’s problem. It is often the root of our own problems.

If you call yourself something other than what God calls you, you will ultimately shift the foundation of your faith to a place that will crack and crumble under the weight of a struggle.

By the time David comes on the scene and enters into Saul’s direct service, after his victory over Goliath, God had already decided that Saul wasn’t going to stay the King of Israel for long.

Time and time again, Saul relied on the foundation of his own strength instead of God’s. His misplaced confidence continued to shatter with each misstep.

David, the next God-appointed King of Israel, starts his journey by watching Saul fall to pieces.

What a tough, but incredibly powerful real-time development lesson to go through!

Lost Perspectives and Hope

Romans 8:37–39 NIV

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hebrews 13:5–6 NIV

5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” 6 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

As Saul’s foundation crumbled, he ultimately becomes volatile and paranoid.

He initially develops a close relationship with David, only to turn suddenly against David the moment that people dared to sing a playful song in the streets:

“Saul kills by the thousands, and David by the ten thousands.”

For a king who already had a shaky foundation of misplaced personal confidence, this song was probably the equivalent of feeling a small, sharp rock rubbing against your foot in the middle of a long run and not having the ability to remove your shoe. Ouch!

And through this, David never spoke a word against Saul.

Young David spent hours with Saul at his most depressed, his most un-kingly moments.

David personally witnessed the torment and weight that crushed Saul as a result of his disobedient choices and self-focus.

David didn’t brag and join in the singing that he was a mightier warrior than Saul.

Later in David’s life, long after Saul had died, David continued to have a heart of honor and compassion for God’s first appointed king of Israel.

Still, the playful song in the streets seemed to change Saul’s view of David.

The boy who once was a loyal servant-leader to Saul, who did all that was entrusted to him well, was suddenly a new threat in the eyes of someone who was now fully absorbed in himself.

The more Saul went his own way and desperately sought to build himself up, the more distrustful he grew toward others.

Let that be a powerful lesson for us.

When our focus and faith shift from God’s strength to our own, the results will always find us isolating ourselves in some way and losing the perspective that we need to effectively lead others.

Effective leadership requires us to have a strong foundation so that we can confidently stand in the tension when challenges come.

Strong foundations allow us to communicate clear direction when others start to slip off the path.

Saul’s leadership journey highlights the importance of building a strong foundation of faith in God from the very beginning.

Building leadership from the ground up means that we don’t remain passive or hide from our calling into new territories, instead we grow stronger with every step - small or large - taken in obedience to God.

1 Samuel 12:20–22 NIV

20 “Do not be afraid,” Samuel replied. “You have done all this evil; yet do not turn away from the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. 21 Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless. 22 For the sake of his great name the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.

1 Samuel 12:24 NIV

24 But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.

1 Corinthians 13:9–12 NIV

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

James 1:2–6 NIV

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

(re)Building from the Deep

After Saul’s first military victory, the prophet Samuel reminded the Israelites that God is their true King, and that both the King and all people must fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully.

1 Samuel 12:24 NIV

24 But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.

Let that be a statement that truly rings in our hearts and minds.

When we truly fear the Lord, we are filled with an awe and profound reverence in who He is, and we serve Him faithfully with ALL our heart.

This is a full-out, all-in, neck-deep kind of honor and respect.

It means that God needs to be our everything.

Out of love and grace, God doesn’t want to be second place in our lives.

He knows what happens to His beloved children when we forget just how big He is.

We too quickly become like Saul, bending the rules here and there in an effort to take back control in our own lives, shrink back from our calling, and ultimately struggle in vain to continually build up our defined identity and purpose through our own efforts.

Keeping God first in our lives means we will have confident faith that God’s promises are true, even when our eyes can’t see them or when our hearts grow tired and worn out.

Even so, we are promised that the struggle for faith is worth it in the end.

Over the years, there have been many things in my own life that I have had to remove, that I have had to painfully de-throne from being the center of my confidence.

When the pain comes from personal sin and mistakes, I can certainly understand that I will have to struggle to get back on track and recenter my foundation on God’s love, justice, and mercy. But when the world starts to fall apart without an understanding of why, the tension can get a lot more confusing.

Struggles which force us to stand on faith are typically the ones that we don’t understand and can’t rationalize.

They are the ones that seem blurry… and try as we might, we just can’t bring the situation into focus on our own strength.

This is when we as leaders need to reframe the potential of the struggle through God’s perspective. This is when we have the opportunity to build our resiliency.

When your faith is placed in God, the one and only King, who gave up everything to save you, you can rest assured that the struggle will not flatten you.

The struggle will not shatter you.

The struggle will not be your end.

When your faith to accomplish the impossible is rooted deeply in the One who placed every star in the sky and knit you together in your mother’s womb, you can and will move mountains.

“Consider it nothing but joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials. Be assured that the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace].” James 1:2-3 (Amplified Version)

That’s right people, inner peace.

Some translations of that verse read as perfection and completion...

Let that promise sink in right now. (And repeat it out loud to yourself several times.)

Leaders, fight to keep God as the only confidence of your lives, especially in the midst of tension and new paths.

Remember that any problem you face or failure you’ve had can never be bigger than your God. When you keep your eyes up and on God, you have confidence that your foundation will be solid, strong, and unshakeable.