The Dialog

Can you honor a leader you disagree with? Every Bible hero we love had to. Joseph had Potiphar. David had Saul. Samuel had Eli.

We don't mean a leader doing something immoral or unethical. We mean a leader doing something you don't like and don't think will work. My co-host Nick Surface and I keep going on spiritual authority, right where Episode 34 ended.

Do you have to honor a leader you disagree with?
Hebrews 13:17 says to obey your leaders and submit to them, because they keep watch over your souls. My dad says it this way: we don't honor because they're honorable. We honor because we're honorable.

Why didn't David take the throne from Saul?
He was anointed, and he had more than one chance to take Saul's life. He wouldn't do it. As Nick puts it, spiritual authority comes down to one question: where is your trust?

Is it a principle issue or a preference issue?
Ask that before you leave. You can get over preferences. Deciding a church is bad because it isn't what you want is pride and entitlement.

Who holds leaders accountable?
God does, because nothing is more valuable to Him than a human soul. Find leaders you're willing to submit to. Then pray they stay submitted to God.

Scriptures
Hebrews 13:17 · Ephesians 6:1-3 · Psalm 51:17 · 1 Samuel 24 and 26 · 2 Samuel 15

Books and people
John Bevere, Under Cover
A Tale of Three Kings
Erwin McManus: fit the values, even if you don't fit the vision

Chapters
0:00 Cold open and show intro
0:52 How much should you hold your leaders accountable?
1:55 What does the Bible expect of leaders and followers?
2:51 When the leader isn't wrong, you just don't like it
3:17 Hebrews 13:17: obey your leaders and submit to them
4:41 "We don't honor because they're honorable"
6:27 No disclaimer for good parents (Ephesians 6)
8:23 Marriage, divorce and good justifications
10:15 God always holds authority accountable
11:38 Hold on: is that always true?
12:31 David was anointed and still honored Saul
13:18 Have a dream? Submit it to your leader
15:00 Where is your trust? (Jesus in the desert, David and Saul)
17:46 Every Bible hero had a terrible leader
19:21 Absalom and A Tale of Three Kings
21:28 You pick your leaders. Then you decide to honor them
22:19 The pastor is not God
24:08 Disagreeing with a leader you still honor
26:00 Fit the values, not the vision (Erwin McManus)
27:03 "My way or it's wrong" is entitlement
27:43 Principle or preference? (church financials)
29:07 "A pastor shouldn't talk about politics"
31:13 The follower's job and the leader's job (Hebrews 13:17)
32:33 Leaders answer to God for people's souls

Previous: 1.34 / How did the early church grow under persecution?
Next: 1.36 / Are you saying what people need to hear?

New episodes most weeks.
Follow Nick on IG / https://www.instagram.com/nicksurface1/
Follow me on IG / https://www.instagram.com/joshuakcraft/
Go to my website / https://jkc.is

What is The Dialog?

Ancient philosophers used the dialog to find answers to life’s greatest questions. The Dialog is a search for truth in modern life through the lens of ancient philosophy, history, and theology. This podcast will challenge your assumptions, change your thinking and show you how to master modern living.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I'm interested in one thing, the future, and believe me, I know the only way to get there is together. What we've got here is failure, milk cake. You may think you know what you do, but believe me, you don't what the truth. You can't handle the truth. For centuries, philosophers have used the dialogue to search for truth, because it's through conversation, through the logos, that we find it. This is the dialogue where ancient philosophy, history, and theology meet modern life. Together we'll wrestle with big questions and give our answers to the way we live. Let's start the conversation. I have to ask myself this question, how much does God make me responsible for holding leadership that he puts in place accountable? Right? So, Like, the great benefit that we have in the Western world today is we can choose our leaders, right right. That wasn't true in history, but some of the best way, or really the best way to hold a leader accountable now is to leave. Like, if you don't like your boss at your job, you can leave your job and go work somewhere else. And that's that's that is on a level of accountability measure because if you're a good employee or you're a really good team member and you leave, then that that says something. You know, there's a statement. People don't quit jobs, they quit they quit leaders. Right, if you don't like the church you're going to, you can leave. You don't like the pastor, you don't like the youth pastor, you don't like the kids person, whatever, you can leave. But I don't know if God gives you the position or the authority to remove that person. Right, And this is like what's really challenging about authority, right about just generally navigating authority, because what's the biblical expectation? So there's two things, right, what's the biblical expectation for a leader and what's the biblical expectation for the person who's not the leader? Right? That's a great que I mean, those are those are the right questions. I don't know that those are the questions that are always asked, but those are the right questions. So if I'm not the leader in a structure that I'm in, what's the biblical expectation for me as it relates to the leader. And again I would go back to John Beavie's Undercover Book because he talks about his own journey as it relates to that, and he has a lot of a great powerful perspective. I do too. There's certain stories that I can't tell and that I shouldn't tell because of how unique they are to my journey and how dishonoring they can be to other people. But one of the things that. I've learned in my life is I get the ability to pick my leaders. Okay, and then I picked the leader, and the leader is not doing something immoral. The leader's not doing something unethical. The leader's just doing something that I don't really like and I don't think is going to work, right, And then I have a decision to make. Am I going to submit to that leadership? Or am I gonna not submit to the leadership? Right? Right? So what's the biblical expectation out of me? Hebrews thirteen seventeen says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls. And allow them to do this with joy and not with suffering, for that would not be to your benefit. Right. So Hebrews thirteen seventeen says, and. So the you know, to go back to what we talked about on the last podcast, it's like, well, how do we navigate this stuff effectively? How do we really set ourselves up to win? You have to have an understanding of spiritual authority. I'm I'm not advocating that my answer become other people's answers answer that listens to this podcast, But what I am saying is God to God, and this is something I think a lot of people miss in their walk with God. Authority is a huge deal mm hmm, Like in the in scripture, in God's world, who has the authority is a massive thing that Christians often miss. And if we and if we lean too far into Western thinking, what we begin to think is that we're always we we have the power and ability not just to question authority, but we have the power and ability to dishonor disrespect and reject authority that God's put in place. And Scripture says, and again I'll go back to Romans nine. Scripture says not not even to reject evil authority like that. So so Pastor Keith, you know, my dad says it this way, like we don't honor because they're honorable. We honor because we're honorable. Right, So, like I said, there's two questions. One is what's the biblical expectation for me? And the second is what's the biblical expectation for a leader? Yeah? Right, I think that's so well put, Josh, that you've made it that sa as well, because it really is. You highlighted a couple of things. And sorry, I'm just gonna pause and be the highlighter here for a second. Yeah, you said it's not it's not immoral, and it's not unethical, but I don't like it, and I don't think it's gonna work. And that's that's where a lot of you know, I think you're even probably given a little bit more credit. And I don't mean this to sound disrespectful to people like I've I've had people like tithing is the obvious one, right, people get bent out of shape and you tell them that they should tithe, And to me, it's so obvious, it's. So clear in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Since people love to throw that like, well that's an Old Testament thing out which I anyways, we won't get into that, but but I think it's so sometimes you just have to look you're not even that you don't even know what scripture says, so it's really hard to have that. But like, let's assume that you do know what scripture says, and it's not a matter of like this person is scripturally you know, off base, it's just I don't like what they're doing. You know. I think that that's a lot of people don't even get to that point if it is what I'm saying. I think a lot of people they they don't like something and they don't know scripture well enough to even know if it's scriptural, and so they're already kind of like ready to walk out because they've got a hunch or they don't like the way this person, you know, does a certain thing because you know that that's not what the Bible says. Okay, where does it play that in the Bible? What you're saying, And they can't even get that far. So I think you're kind of you're almost giving a lot of credit here in some of your analysis. But I still want to continue down there, but I just want to kind of give a little bit of a reality. Check as well. Well, here's the thing, right, so you know, again, well I want to focus on all these other dynamics. So just focus on the parenting dynamic because all of us have that, all of us fed parents, So I don't pick my parents. But then the question is does the Bible still say to obey them? Right? So if Hesian six's one Fijian six one and two, it's his children, obey, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. And then it says to honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment, with a promise that it may go well with you and you may live long. In the land. It doesn't give a disclaimer for if they're good parents, right, right, So that's that's what people miss. So the thing that we miss or the thing that we like to do as human beings. I think this is true about everything. I don't think this is just true about story. We go, Okay, where's my out? Yeah? Right, yeah, of course. So when do I not have to submit? When do I not have to obey? When do I not have to honor? When can I tell the whole story about what happened to me? When can I reject this person? When can I when do I not have to do this? So to go back to tithing, it's like people go, well, they're they're looking for an out on what the Bible tells them to do because of all the different million reasons why they don't why they don't feel like they should do it, or they don't want. To do it right. People that. Are good and again, like I'm what I'm saying on this podcast, and I want this to be like clear if you're listening, is you as an individual just have to decide where you land on this stuff. I know where I land. This is not me making blanket statements and saying this is right and this is wrong. I'm just saying you've got to be able to have this conversation with yourself. And that's how well do I honor authority that's been put in place. Because like people that people that are married that get married in their Christians and they go, Okay, we're gonna you know, when you get married, you make you make a marriage covenant and you say, you know what, we're gonna be together no matter what happens till death to his part. What you do is you invite God into that relationship, right, you invite God. Basically, what you're saying when you get married is it's it's not just up to us. Now, we invite God into any dynamic that would exist between us that we could not figure out on our own. We believe that God's capable of doing that. Okay. And then and then, I've known so many of those people just like you have that go and get divorced, and they have really great reasons for getting divorced. Now, am I saying that those people shouldn't gotten divorced. No, I'm not saying that. But I'm not gonna be a person that gets divorced. Well yeah, but Josh, Scripturally Jesus said, unless it's it for immorality, you know, it's like sexual immorality, you should not be getting divorced. This is pretty right. I mean, but if you sit down with your friends who've been divorced and just like I do, and they give you all the reasons, you're like, well, I can see why. That you felt like you needed to do that, But. That's still having justifications, like this is the this is the dynamic between us and God about everything. Having justifications doesn't mean that God approves of it, of course not. Yeah, I mean that that's like, yeah, Eve had a great justification for taking for for eating the fruit man it looked good. Yeah, right, So so to me having there's a million people are good. People always tell me like when, especially when I talk about authority, stuff like, you don't understand, you don't understand. I have all these reasons. There's a million reasons not to submit to authority. Okay, there's a million. There's way more reasons not to than to submit to authority. But in my mind, what I can't reconcile that with is God's way. God's way is not is not a lack of submission. God always throughout history, God always holds authority accountable because He's the one that places them there. Now, it might take longer than you think it should, it might not go the way you think it should go. But there's name after name, story after story person. How did it end for the Christians? Well, what ended up happening was God put these Roman emperors in place. I believe that was true. And then God said, you know what, We're gonna shift this thing in a different direction because you guys aren't going to listen to me because every person, so this is what I believe. Right, and so we should believe. I feel like every person who's on the planet is created in God's image, and so the Bible says as deep calls into deep, So God talks to us like God, we have a spear within us that God is always trying to convict. He's always being merciful towards us. He's always giving us his grace. Okay, And how much grace God gives a person, it is not up to us, right, especially in leadership, where I can say, well, this person's in leadership, or this person's a pastor, they shouldn't be a pastor. This person's a parent, they shouldn't be a parent, blah blah blah. Like the person who's a pastor of the church ultimately is not the pastor of the church because they just decided to go pastor a church. They're the pastor of the church because God established him as an authority. Now, how well they handle that authority is really between them and God. It's not between them and everybody else. Hold hold on though, Is that always true? Because like last week you talked about a couple a couple of churches that have sprung out out of our current church, and you said two left, one left with the with the blessing and with like under authority and two left not the right way, shall we say, just to oversimplify it. So do you I mean, do you? I'm just I'm just do you think that every single person in there, because I mean that that's a little bit of a nuance to. That I think. I think personally with those people, I think they were supposed to pastor churches. I think I think it was a dream that God put in their heart for a reason. And I think because they didn't handle it right and they didn't submit to to to their spiritual authority at the time, God didn't bless it. M okay. So like David, like what would have what would have happened? So David was anointed, and this is and this is like the the problem for a lot of us that sit under leaders. Right, David was anointed, He had words, he had all this stuff, He had massive victories that he'd won. He was more he was more well respected than Saul in the whole nation. Everyone loved David more than they love Saul. Rights all through the story, Right, I don't know what it would have looked like if Day said I'm going to take this kingdom from him? Yeah, I don't know if God would have blessed it, but God blessed David because of how David approached Saul, even though David knew what was in David's heart that David was supposed to do. So that's the challenge, is like God can put a dream in you, and he can say, and I told that story about Chris Hodges or whoever last time, right, he can put a dream in you. But the test usually if you feel like if you're sitting under a leader and you feel like that there's something that's the next level for you, that if you went and pursued it, that that leader would have a problem with it. It's almost like what you should do is submit that to that leader and allow them to say when and if you should do it, because that's how you know God's going to bless it. That's some of my own personal kind of. Perspective and learning just watching that happen in my life, right, is watching guys like that who probably could and should have a lot more success than they have, but it's almost like because they didn't honor the authority and they if you listen to their story, they probably got one hundred thousand reasons then are good reasons why they didn't honor authority. But because they didn't God, it almost seems like and I've seen this happen one hundred times, man, you know, it's like God almost limits what they're able to do because of their inability to honor authority. Because if you can't, if I feel like on a level, if you if you can't be a person who's honoring of authority, then what you do in your own life is it means you can't handle the authority that God gives you very you will. Yeah, I could not agree more. And I think that it's so interesting, isn't it? Like with Jesus, the temptations in the desert were so like so much about him, Like, hey, if you're the son of God, do this, Aka, just go ahead and take it in your own time. And David, it's always the thing, are you on the throne or is God on the throne? Because if you're truly submitted, which is what God cares about, he looks, he cares about the heart he broken, broke, a broken spirit, and a cold try heart, he will not reject. So like, if this is what God really cares about, how much of a test. Is it going to be to be like you have every word from God? You have multiple opportunity to take Saul's life, and it's like he didn't do it just one time. He gave him multiple opportunities where Saul was delivered into his hands. All his friends are saying, this is it, This is how God's going to bring you in. And David explains, he says, if whether he dies of old age, whether he gets killed in battle, or God does it some other way, I know he'll bring it ak. Where is your trust? That's really what spiritual authority comes down to, is where is your trust? Because if you think like because this, people wouldn't say this, but this is what's underlying all of it is it's a lack it's a real lack of honor, and it's a lack of trust in God. Because if you're going like, let's say we're at our I'm just gonna use our church book though the same church, it's easy. I'm at Elevate Life Church, blah blah blah, something came forward or the pastors or whoever did the leaders? You know, because I've had people not like me. I'm sure you've had people not like you, it's gonna happen, right, This leader did something I don't like and I'm just I can't. Be here because of it. No one thinks this, but it's like, okay, So basically what you're saying, like, because I don't think it's biblical, Okay, let's say you're right. So what you're saying, if I understand your logic, is that we need to have leaders in place that get everything biblically accurate in order for things to go right. Is that that's what you're saying, Because where does that sounds like that's all based on man and not based on God to actually be able to work through in grace, which is where we're all living under. And nobody would say that. Nobody would say, well, they have to get everything right. But when you're leaving because you don't like something or because you think something is wrong, you're essentially going along with that line of thinking because the other side of it goes, well, if you're supposed to be here, and even if that person is wrong and everything you're saying is right, if you're supposed to be here and God's put you as this church as part of this representation, which reminds you it's not. The bricks, it's the people. You're essentially walking out on the family of God because you basically are not trusting God that he's going to bring it right. And so when you switch back to you know what, Lord, it's messy, but you've worked with messire. I trust you. I find that that makes it submission a lot easier because you remember who you're submitting to. And so I just I don't think that I'm not like for church hopping. I'm not for you know, I'm like, look, if you're gonna be planted, and you know you're supposed to be in a place, be in a place, and be all in that place and love the people you're with and and you know, be the part of the of the body that you are. Well, you know, you don't know how hard it is, You're right, I don't. But every single Bible hero that we love had a terrible leader. Joseph had Potterphard. They did. Look at all the people we love, Joseph had potterpher Moses had you know, Moses was was basically on the run for his life. We could keep going online. David had Salt, Samuel had Eli, right do you, I mean, should we keep going? We can do this. Jesus had, you know, I mean Jesus had the high priests. The disciples then had had the same high priests, like nobody And it's not that there's like almost no examples where it's like and their leader was wonderful. It's almost always that they're with somebody and that's how they learn and grow. Well, it's uh, yeah, man, what's so interesting? So, like, I think a lot of people read the story of David and they won't. They won't. They'll be like, oh, that's so amazing that David was that way, But then they don't they don't take on those implications for their own life, right, because like even David so David so Saul dies in the story, David basically ends up at war with his with Saul's son for the kingdom, right, and uh, we don't know who's gonna win because David just has basically the tribe of Judah and uh I think it was ish poschief was his name, but he had all the tribes. Yeah, right, And so. In that story, this guy comes and he kills he kills Saul's son and he comes to David and he says, hey, I killed your enemy, and David kills him because he's like that guy could have been God's anointed. Yeah, you touch the son of God's annoying then, you know. And if you read the Tale of Three Kings, it goes into this story where David's son Absalom says, and this is like, all of us have a potential to be Absolums. God establishes an authority in our life. David's son Absolom says, you know, I could do this a lot better than him, and it's not a good time in the kingdom. So Absolom takes a lot of David's men as his son and goes and basically becomes the king. He gets annoyed as king by himself. David doesn't fight him. Yeah, mild, right. And the conversation, we don't know what the conversation was in the actual scripture, but the conversation and Tale of Three Kings that David has with his men is what if God set up Absolum instead of me? Right, Like, what if God's establishing Absolom as the king and I'm and he's his hand's not on me anymore? And I think that's the response of a great of a person who really understands authority is okay, well, God could put me in authority and he could also remove me. But what I've seen so much in and again it's back to like these I there's rooms where I am the authority, and there's rooms where I'm not the authority. In the rooms where I'm not the authority, I have to decide how much honor that I should give that authority, right, and how much I should walk in being submitted to that. And that's just. As an adult man, as an adult human being in the Western world, that's really hard. You know. It's like, imagine going to your boss and saying, hey, I have a I have a I'm not saying to do this, but imagine going to your boss and saying, I have a dream for to start my own company, and I would love for you guys to bless me out to do that. Right. That doesn't usually happen for good reasons, right, And I won't go do it if you guys don't want me to, Like, I won't go start my own thing if you guys that's super challenging, right, But then imagine how we would all feel if we had a leader in place who was so submitted to God that they were just open to whatever God wanted to do and didn't like dig their heels in on stuff. Right. But it's like what you're saying, I think God's given us such a great gift at this at this point in history, Okay, I get to choose the leaders who I submit to. Right, there was a time in history that wasn't the case, Right, David and Saul Roman Empire all that. There's certain times in our life where we don't get to pick that, Like you don't get to pick who your parents are. But as an adult, you get to decide the leaders that you have in your life. So you and I decide them. And then the the second decision we have to make is whether or not we're going to honor them, yeah, right, and whether or not we're going to be submitted. Because what a lot of people do, and this is back to even how we started this conversation, is they'll they'll be in a place for a certain period of time, they'll start to interact with the humanity of leaders. So the pastor is not God. The pastor is not more godly than the person who comes to the church. They're just not They're a person who God's put in place as an authority, but they're just as human as everybody else in the church, right, and they just happen to have been given a leadership position. I mean, that's really how authority is. It's like, I mean, yeah, like me and Courtney like practiced having kids and stuff, you know, but if we would have never had kids, who would have never had kids, God never would have set. Me up as an authority. So my kids now have to deal with the. Fact that I, as Josh Kraft, with all my imper affections and all my flaws and all my issues, are their parent, right right, And he could have decided not to allow that to happen. So it's the same with kind of really any leadership dynamic. Right. So the closer you get, like the longer time you spend somewhere, the you know, to me, the longer time you spend somewhere, the higher the higher likelihood or the more contempt you can have for that place or those people. Right, because you come in, you come into somewhere for the first time, it's like it's like meeting you know, it's like meeting your wife for the first time everything. Oh my gosh, there's nothing wrong with this person. I found the perfect girl founder. It's amazing. We're never going to fight. This is unbelievable. And you marry the person and you live with them, and there's there's realities to the human being that they are. So a part of uh relationship, Like a part of having deep relationship and meaningful relationship with people is accepting someone fully for who they are as a person, and that includes like leadership. Like for me, there's so. Much man that I disagree with my dad about like all the time, right I That's that's as far as I'm gonna go and saying it though, because uh, my dad's a human being. He's on his journey. And you know what I know confidently about my dad as. A leader, because I've walked with him so closely throughout his life and throughout my life, is that he really wants to be a man after God's unhearted. So even like for me, as a person who serves underneath him, even if he's wrong, then I'll let God worry about that because he's striving to be the man God's created and to be what what more am I going to ask out of somebody, Yeah for sure, right, Like, because because I want people in my life to pa people in my life. The closer you get to me, the more you're gonna see all this just stupid stuff that's in my life and the dumb and the dumb ways that I process and how it's a miracle that God's even using me anyway, right, And what I need is people around me who are going to be understanding of that, who are going to love me in spite of that, whether that's my spouse or my kids, or my friends or whoever. So I'm not I'm not advocating for just this blanket submission to leadership, but I am advocating for this understanding that if you want to have deep relationships with people, then what what comes with if you want to have deep relationships with leadership? Like I was talking to a. Mutual friend of ours, part of another church a few weeks ago, and that they're having some tension points with like their lead pastor, and they don't really know what to do. And I'm like, man, you know, uh does this does this pastor? I learned this conversation, I had this, there was this that that call we did that call? I did a few weeks ago with ern McManus. He said something really interesting on there that if you might not fit the value the vision of a particular place that you're at, but if you fit the values, you can be a great person. There m's And. So this is the conversation I was having with his person, was like, this guy who's your lead pastor's he's striving to be a man after God's own heart. He's striving to do everything he can. He's just not maybe making the decisions that you would make. Right. He's like yeah, So I was like, well, you can win with that guy. The thing I have to admit to myself as a person in a leadership dynamic is not everything I think we should do, is the thing we should actually do. Yeah, right, and God establishes authority. But also, like you're saying, so much of our relationship to authority really does it really does show our faith in God? Because the question is do I believe that God is leading this leader? And God might be leading them to a place that I don't think we should go, But who cares? What I think? Like? Why? Why does? And that's some of the Western delusion to me of like the Western world is who? Uh, well not who, But like, why does what we think matter so much? Like why does it have to be this has to fit my flavor, this has to be the way I think it should be. Like otherwise. And we've talked so much about principles and preferences on this podcast. But why does this have to be my way? Or it's wrong? Right? It's one thing to say, hey, like I think I have a better way or I like this better. It's another thing to say, well, you're either going to do it my way or it's wrong. And I've had like so many, so many conversations with people so like, for instance, you know, just we don't release financial information from our church to anybody. We just don't do it, right. Yeah, it's not that's a preference issue. There's a lot of churches that do that. So if someone doesn't like our church and go find a church will give them all financial financials. We don't do that, right. So I had a conversation with a friend of mine a few years ago and he's like, well, that's just not effective leadership and that's just not how a church should be run. And I'm like, man, I understand that you feel that way. But that's. So if you feel that way, go start your own church and run it that way, like we're running it this way. Like what we're doing is not wrong, it's just not what you like, right, And so that's that's to me, like the immaturity. And I think that's probably what trips people up the most, honestly, is it's not a principal issue like this guy, this guy that, yeah, this guy that I was talking about. Me and Garrett both had separate conversations with him and asked him, like, hey, is this so this person was really involved in our church and they're a part of what we're doing. And then they were like, all of a sudden, they just didn't like anything we were doing. And so they sat down with me and Garrett had separate conversations, and me and Garrett both asked them the same question, and that's is this a principal's issue or a preference issue? Right? He's like, well, it's preference. It's like, okay, well you can get over preferences, man. Preferences are just like what flavor ice cream do you like? Right? But that's where most people get hung up with leadership, Like when we're talking about like when we're talking about leadership stuff, it's like people go, people will leave our church. My dad talks a lot about politics. People leave our church because they're like a pastor shouldn't talk about politics, which is fine, but then they add on this thing to it that it's not biblical to talk about that stuff like not only does this not and this is what we have to be I think really careful about is not only It's like one thing to say, hey, this doesn't really match the kind of environment I want to be in, totally understandable. It's another thing to become prideful about that and think that because it's not the environment you want to be in, that it's a bad environment. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's pride and time right, and I mean, yeah, is what it boils down to. I mean that's that's to me. Me Like when people start. Throwing around the word narcissists and they start like calling their parents narcissists or they start calling they start going, oh, this isn't you know this And we've talked about that on previous episodes too, Like this room doesn't serve me in this room, this is traumatic for me. It's like too much it's extreme. It's this extreme. Approach to preferences where it's just like, hey man, just be cool. I'm cool. Like I was talking to a friend of mine this week just about how you know, what's so hard for me is I'm if one of my friends who was like in our church with us was like, hey man, I don't really like what we're doing as a church anymore, and I'm gonna leave that. That'd be a fine conversation for me to have. Right. It's like, Okay, well you don't like it, I understand, you know, go Hopefully you go find somewhere that you like to go, and God bless you, and hopefully you figure that out. But what's most often happened for me and my relationships is people go, I don't like this, and this is bad and this is evil and I hate everything about you and you're my enemy. Now it's like, well, hang on just a second, right, And to me, that's like a misunderstanding of that's not understanding the importance of honor right, because there's two dynamics, like in Hebrews thirteen seventeen that I quoted a second ago. One is the responsibility of the follower, so to speak, and one is the responsibility of the leader. So the responsibility of the follower is to obey a leader and submit to them, right, So find my encouragement to everybody is find leaders who you're willing to obey and submit to. Find people that can that can disciple you that you're going to submit to. But then the second thing is true for leaders is they keep watch over your souls. So the accountability, you know, the thing that keeps me in the space where I strive to be a good parent is I'm responsible for the health of these people. Yeah. Right, I'm responsible for their mental health, I'm responsible for their physical health, I'm responsible all this. So do I need them to hold me accountable if I understand and carry that weight every day? And I think most leaders, like the vast majority of leaders, Christian leaders, business leaders, whatever, they really do understand the weight of that, right right. I don't think it's rare for a leader to understand the weight of that. I think it's rare for us to see that a leader understands the weight of that. But when you're putting a leader, and this is the scary thing, right from a leadership perspective, is God, God establishes authority, He ordains authority, but then also he holds authority accountable because nothing's more valuable to God than a human soul. Right, So God knows when he puts you in leadership, he makes you responsible for people's souls and the punishment of people pole pales in comparison to God holding me accountable. Right, So how much does God care about people being taken care of and people being loved well and people being led well that he would make a leader responsible for that person. And so what I should do is take the leadership roles that I have seriously. But also the second thing, which which to me is like the role that we all play, is understand that God's put this person in a position of leadership, He's going to hold them accountable. And my prayer is that God will lead them and guide them and they'll be submitted to that, because if they're not submitted to that, it's going to be really bad for them. Thank you for listening to the dialogue. Make sure to like, share and subscribe, and also if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them if you want to get in touch or learn more about me. What I think speak and write. You can go to Joshuacraft dot com or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.