Why Leaders SHOULD BE Humble

The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down.

It could do nothing but for the woodsman.

Samuel Brengle, one of the most influential and widely acclaimed teachers of the Salvation Army, was once introduced as "the great Doctor Brengle." Reflecting on that incident, he wrote the following in his diary:

If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it. The moment he throws it aside; it becomes only old iron. O that I may never lose sight of this.

Have you recently enjoyed a "leadership victory" or been refreshed by a word of praise? Stay humble and give thanks to the Woodsman. Jesus swings the axe.

"Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

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C.W. Hall, Samuel Logan Brengle (New York: Salvation ARmy, 1933), 275. Quoted in Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders, page 63.