David's lessons on leadership - Stay on Mission

In a series of posts, I am going to reflect upon what we can learn about leadership from David, King of Israel.  If this is the first post in the series you have read, please do a quick review of the January 2, 2009 blog titled  “David’s lessons on leadership – Intro”; that post outlines why I am looking into David’s life.

The previous blog dealt with a detail on how leaders should treat their team titled “Everyone Matters”.  This post shifts to a discussion of going astray and why we should “Stay on Mission”

Much has been written about David, including recognition that he did some unsavory things in his life.  Of all his many mistakes, taking Bathsheba as a wife probably comes in at the top of the list - not just for what he did, but also for how he did it.  The lesson for us in David’s affair with Bathsheba is related to where David was when all this occurred vs. where he was supposed to be.

David, now King of Israel, wakes up one evening and as he is walking around he sees Bathsheba bathing and is struck by her beauty.  He immediately asks about the young lady and is told she is the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah.  The names of these two guys are important because they are both counted as David’s Mighty Men; basically David’s Green Berets.

So now we have David, bored on a rooftop, strolling around surveying all he ‘owns’, eyeballing the daughter and wife of two of his greatest warriors. But wait, it gets worse.  David summons Bathsheba, they get together and she gets pregnant.  In an attempt to cover this up, David recalls Uriah from the front and tries to talk him into spending the night with his wife so that the child would appear to be from Uriah.  Uriah is such a loyal soldier he refuses – he wants no comfort while his men are in tents in the field.  David tries to get him drunk and send him home.  Still Uriah refuses, choosing instead to sleep on a mat on the floor.  Now David gets desperate and he sends Uriah back to battle and commands the general in charge, Joab, “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."  Uriah dies in battle.

If you are like me, at this point your head is in your hands and you are just shaking your head in amazement; David – how could you let this happen?  David, what were you thinking?

If we look deeper into the story of David and Bathsheba we find a very telling moment, it is at the start of the story, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.”

David stayed home following one of his greatest victories in the Ammonite-Syrian war. David gathered all Israel together, led them from the front over the river Jordan and did battle at Helam. The Syrians fled before Israel - seven hundred chariots were destroyed, forty thousand horsemen killed and all the kings allied with the Ammonites and Syrians fled.

Looking back over everything I have read about David, he is always out in the field leading the army, fighting the fight.  It is what he was built to do.  But this spring, this moment before the events with Bathsheba, the army goes out without its king. 

Instead of leading his army, David sent Joab and stayed at home. 

We all will make mistakes in our lives.  Because we are human we all will do things that are clearly not in the interests of the people we lead, the people we love and the people we respect.  I am pretty sure most of us will not screw it up to the level that David did with Bathsheba and Uriah, but we will do something wrong.  When we look back at our mistake(s) we will realize that all too often a sense of ease and security was the prelude to our errors.

There is an old saying that has many origins; the devil finds work for idle hands.  I was surprised to find out derivations of this phrase exists in most languages around the world.

L'oisiveté est la mère de tous les vice – French

Şeytan aylak ellere iş bulur – Turkish

Cabeça vazia é oficina do diabo – Portuguese

Laiskuus on kaikkien paheiden äiti – Finnish

La pereza es la madre de todos los vicios – Spanish

L'ozio è il padre dei vizi – Italian

Zahálka je matkou neřesti – Czech

The lesson for us in the story of David and Bathsheba is to Stay on Mission, stay working on what you are built to do, remain in front with your team, do not let a sense of ease and security overwhelm you.   When we know what we are built to do and we remain focused on our mission, the chances of screwing things up recedes.

Consider the following speech from the book “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield.  Gates of Fire is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.  It is the story of how 300 Spartans held off 20,000 Persians so the remainder of Greece could get ready for war.  During a brief pause in the fighting the Spartan king Leonidas tells the Persian king what a king should be doing,

“I will tell His Majesty what a king is.  A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field.  A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand watch upon the wall.  A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake.  That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last.  A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them.  He serves them, not they him.”

Stay on Mission