Four Faces of Anointing: The Man
Who would have thought that those Marvel comic book heroes we loved as kids would one day come together and walk right onto the big screen? With over thirty Marvel movies to date, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has rocked the box office with its action-packed, superhero stories. Starting with Captain America: The First Avenger, the franchise created a film that depicted civilian Steve Rogers undergoing a surgical procedure that greatly enhanced his strength and human ability.
Next in the Universe, there were those feats of fiction portrayed by men who had been given specialized suits complete with extraordinary powers to do heroics. Think Tony Stark and his Iron-Man weaponized suit of armor, Scott Lange and his size-shifting Ant-Man suit, or Peter Parker and his web-wielding Spider-Man suit. These were men saving the world with superpowers, conquering evil and tyranny wherever they found them. They are, of course, our favorite superheroes.
It would be great if we had specialized suits for leadership or at least a cool cape. But leadership doesn’t come packaged in clothing. Leadership in our world comes packaged in frail humanity. It’s the fourth face of a leader’s anointing.
The Face of the Man: Humanity
The fourth and final face of the anointing of a leader is the man. Every leader is human without a cape or superhero capabilities. As humans, we have our strengths and weaknesses, our ups and downs in life. We put our pants on each day—just like everyone else—one leg at a time. And when we look in the mirror each morning, we come face-to-face with the man or the woman in the mirror. No matter how we try to prepare or present that face to the world around us, we’re still human to the core. And this human face is what we must learn to manage and steward.
We have all met leaders who were amazing as leaders, but when we encountered them personally, we found something lacking. They had character or integrity issues. Their marriages were in trouble, their finances were a wreck, or their personal lives were complete disasters. These leaders may have understood how to manage the eagle, the lion, and the ox faces of the anointing, but they hadn’t learned to steward the leader in the mirror.
The apostle James pointed to a certain mirror that can help us see our lives for what they are when he wrote:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (James 1:22–25 ESV).
With these verses in James as his text, Charles H. Spurgeon in one of his sermons that appeared in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit said:
The Scripture gives a truthful reflection of man’s nature: it lets the man see himself, not as others see him, for others make mistakes, nor as he would see himself, for he is very apt to be partial to his own soul; but the Scripture makes him see himself as God sees him.
Our leadership in all its humanity is under the watchful gaze of our heavenly Father. He who made us knows our every weakness and fault, yet He loves us and has called us to serve Him and others. When we get to heaven, we won’t be seen as we are here—as somebody’s pastor or teacher or employer or leader. No, our primary identity will be as a child of God. In our leadership here, however, we are servants of the Most High with temporal assignments that we do “with skin on.” And this is totally dependent on two very human things—relationships and attitudes.
Relationships and Attitudes
Our relationships and attitudes tell a lot about us. In fact, these two things reveal who we really are at our core. They tell others how we feel about them, they determine how we interact and work with others, and they often show what’s going on inside our hearts.
Basically, there are three entities with whom we relate and around whom we express our thoughts and feelings:
God. Our personal relationship with God as well as our attitude toward Him is of primary importance.
Ourselves. We can call this our conscience. We want to have a clear conscience before God and others.
Others. This includes our spouses, family, friends, neighbors, and other people in our everyday lives.
We must learn to walk in authenticity, loving and honoring God and those He has placed in our lives. How we think about God, ourselves, and others is critical to leading well. We may make some mistakes along the way, so we want to humble ourselves and learn how and when to say sorry or ask for forgiveness. We need to go to the mirror of God’s Word, letting it reflect to us what we may have done wrong and what we should do in the future.
Our adversary, the devil, loves to find those areas of relationship or attitude that have not yet been filled with the grace of God. Because our humanity touches the humanity of others, we can end up in conflict or begin pulling away from each other. These are places where the grace and love of God need to flow. The apostle Paul knew how being angry overnight, for example, could give the devil an opportunity to work. So, he said in Ephesians 4:26–27 (ESV), “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”
Our enemy looks for those voids in relationships and the blind spots as well, where we assume everything is okay. It’s like he watches and says, “Let’s see what they do in the next few days. Will they address their anger at that person? Are they going to submit to God and His Word? Will they forgive what that person just did to them? He’s been tempted a few different times, and he’s refusing to deal with the issue. There’s the place I can insert my foot and cause the relationship to come apart.”
As leaders, we cannot ignore any breakdown in our relationships or attitudes. The success of leadership is dependent upon these relationships and our attitudes toward others and ourselves. We must steward our humanity well—even in the most difficult situations.
Bestselling author and leadership expert John Maxwell says, “As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person I should try to change is me.” All leadership begins with self-leadership. And all self-leadership begins with submitting to God’s leadership and His Word.
Stewarding the Face of the Man
Too often, we try to hide our humanity from those we lead. We may even try to put on a spiritual superhero costume, pretending to be someone that we are not. If we don’t deal with our issues, our weaknesses, our humanity, our leadership, and more importantly, our relationships will suffer.
We must take time to look at the man or woman in the mirror, asking God to show us those places in our relationships, actions, and attitudes that need to change. It’s time to ask ourselves some very practical questions like:
How are you spending your time? Are you investing in your relationships? Are you putting God first? Are you reading the Word and praying? Are you taking time to be with your spouse and family? Are you taking time to rest?
How are you spending your money? Where are you spending your money? Do you have a budget that you’re sticking to? Are you finding yourself without enough money to pay your bills? Are you tithing and giving to others?
How are you investing in others? What are you doing to enrich someone else’s life? Are you sending texts or emails, letting people know you’re thinking about them or praying for them? Are you praying for others? What about your spouse and your children? What are you doing to invest in those important relationships?
How are your relationships with the three entities going? Are you keeping your relationship with God as your primary relationship? Have you found yourself being short-tempered with other people in your life? Are you wanting to isolate from family or friends because it takes too much emotional work? Are you wanting to avoid the human in the mirror?
What are you doing to shore up your areas of weakness? Is there someone to whom you are accountable—someone that can pray for you or call you to account for your attitudes and actions? Are you intentionally addressing a weakness, endeavoring to work on it with God’s help, or are you trying to cover it up?
Stewarding the human face of leadership is a great responsibility, but if we do it well, we will experience the benefits of having good relationships with God, ourselves, and others. We must learn to pay attention to the four faces of the anointing—the eagle, the lion, the ox, and the man. How healthy we are in each of them determines our success in leadership and, more importantly, our pleasing God.
Should our stewardship expose a weak area, remember “God gives grace to the humble,” but He “opposes the proud” (James 4:6 ESV). As we humble ourselves and acknowledge our inability to fix things, He will meet us with grace, with His empowerment. We can trust Him to change us and clothe us anew in the four-faced anointing He gives His leaders. It’s the best supernatural suit a non-superhero can have.
