The parental responsibility to provide correct guidance in leading their children is so important that God emphasizes it in Deuteronomy 6 immediately after Moses recounts the giving of the Ten Commandments and the formal ratification of what we know as the Old Covenant.
Child-training in the way of God is correct parental leadership. This passage establishes that God holds it to be a major responsibility not to be passed off to anyone else. To do this, the parents must practice the way of God to the best of their abilities in every aspect of life. In this way, the children are not only verbally taught God's way, but also witness it in action right in their own home. This is not happening in this nation, providing powerful evidence to all who believe God as to why it is crumbling from within. Godly leadership is produced within families practicing godly ways.
Most people are unaware that the word “leadership” does not appear even one time in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. “Leader” appears only three times, and all forms of “lead” appear only 81 times. There is a good reason for this: The focus of God's persuasion to live His way of life is on following it. The terms “follow,” “followed,” “follows,” “followers,” and “following” combined appear 258 times—three times more than all forms of “lead” combined. We are frequently urged to follow Christ, the way of God, or the examples of the righteous. We are also urged to imitate the apostle Paul and Christ (I Corinthians 11:1), another form of following.
What is most important about leadership is that leaders are in reality followers. They follow either some person who has set a pattern that brought him success or some way of doing things to achieve success in an endeavor, whether in business, athletics, scholastics, or a way of life that brings growth—and perhaps brings God glory.
This is God's concern. Christianity is a way of life that God greatly desires us to follow. In Acts 16:17, it is called “the way of salvation”; in Acts 18:25, “the way of the Lord”; in Acts 19:9, it is simply called “the Way.” Jesus was the greatest leader who ever lived, never sinning even one time, yet He declares in John 7:16, “My doctrine is not mine, but His who sent Me.” Jesus led. He was in fact the very pinnacle of leadership because He followed the way of God perfectly.
