[This is my fourth post of ten in my “Vintage Wednesday” series on “Leadership Authority,” re-written/updated from a blogpost back in May of 2011.]

The fourth of Watchman Nee’s Ten Commandments of Spiritual Authority states that:

4. A leader is one who recognizes God’s authority manifested in real-life situations.

Leadership is influence, pure and simple. Leaders see what others cannot and act accordingly.

The magicians from Pharaoh’s court recognized the finger of God in the plague of dust and gnats and attempted to influence Pharaoh (see Exodus 8:16-20). Similarly, the Philistine priests and diviners recognized God’s authority and prescribed a remedy to their afflicted people (see 1 Samuel 5-6, especially 6:1-9). Interestingly enough, they even referenced the Egyptians and Pharaoh while making their case.

A person who has spiritual influence is one who not only knows God but has also experienced God. His or her wisdom is derived from seeing God’s finger in the “normal stuff” of life and responding rightly to the means and methods of Sovereignty. I’ve written in another post about Isaiah being the only person in God’s presence who actually saw what was going on and responded. He was tuned in while others were simply “in church doing time.”

Consider yet the stories of Simeon and Anna. Unlike the religious leaders of their day, they truly recognized the Son of God and the authority God had placed in a tiny baby!

Leaders are those who typically “see” more than those around them. They recognize true authority when it is manifested.