Delegate So You Can Hear God’s Voice

Imagine you are Moses. It’s been two months since you raced across the Red Sea on dry ground. Your leadership responsibilities are more than any leader in history has ever faced. You’re marching through the desert with thousands of angry ex-slaves who can’t manage an even slightly parched throat. You’ve almost arrived at the mountain where God said he would meet with you a second time, the place where you will receive the Law and Ten Commandments.

But you have so many people demanding your attention that there is no way you can find the time to go up on that mountain to be alone with God.

What are you going to do?

The fascinating thing about spending time alone with God as a leader is that many times you come down the mountain pregnant with vision that demands to be birthed. There are new projects to pioneer, Pharoahs to defeat, and your responsibilities multiply. The very activity that lent you vision creates circumstances that keep you from the mountain of meeting with God.

I would conjecture that God knew that Moses would never go up on the mountain to pray if people continued to surround him “from morning until evening.”

And so Jethro paid him a visit and taught him about the power of delegation which leads to this glorious result: “That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you.”

Moses is smart enough to take his father-in-law’s advice and chooses able leaders.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jethro comes in Exodus 18 and then in Exodus 19 Moses arrived at the mountain where he will receive the Ten Commandments. He would not have had the time to listen to God’s voice if he didn’t give something away.

The need to delegate is probably not a profound thought for you. But have you have ever considered that God might have something more significant for you that you will never be able to access if you don’t learn to delegate because you won’t have the time to hear His voice?

I was preparing to write this and was spending some time listening to God and going over my own to-do list. I found one of my favorite areas: writing training curriculum. It’s one of my most high impact activities, and it’s crucial to the success of our team. And I felt a small voice whisper: “Give it away.” My first thought was resistance. But then I began to imagine a world in which I delegated writing training curriculum.

I realized that there is an “able” leader on our team who can do it just as well as me, and if I create a solid process, he can write it and I can just look over the trainings, freeing me up to spend more time listening to God as well as engage in other high-priority activities.

I invite you to consider asking God this question:

“Is there anything that I should give away?”

Let God speak to you and give you an area that you might not even have expected that you need to give to others.

Then check out this article by John Maxwell that talks about who you should delegate to. In his book, “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,” he goes deep into delegation in his 17th law about priorities. I encourage you to give it a read.

There may be a mountain that God is waiting to call you up to until you clear your schedule through delegation. What is the one thing that God is encouraging you to give away?