One of my personal heroes of the Bible has very little written about him but a lot said about him because of his actions. Read Numbers 13:26-33 and Joshua 14:6-14.

Caleb was one of the spies sent into the land of Canaan before Israel’s planned invasion. When the spies returned, they told Moses that “the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendents of Anak there” (Numbers 13:28). “Then Caleb … said ‘We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it’” (Numbers 13:30). I love that Caleb did not disagree with the facts given by the other spies, there were cities and giants in the land. Caleb didn’t minimize the obstacles, but neither did he minimize the resources available to overcome the obstacles.

Ultimately to be considered competent and effective a leader needs to get the job done. Joshua’s assignment from God was to conquer the land and divide it equitably among the tribes. Read Joshua 11:1-19:51.

In his seven-year military campaign to take the land, Joshua conquered 31 kings. His strategy was to first conquer the cities in the center of Canaan, thus driving a wedge between the northern and southern cities. Once Joshua had conquered the center cities he turned to the southern cities and then finally to the northern cities. This kind of extended military campaign took extraordinary planning to keep the military flanks and the home front protected, the supply lines open, the troop movements coordinated and the communication clear and concise.

Several leadership books talk about establishing momentum. Jim Collins’ book Good to Great helps us picture business momentum as a very heavy flywheel that is very difficult to move at all for the first few turns but as one success stacks on top of another the weight of the flywheel begins to assist the forward motion and the movement of the flywheel is almost self sustaining. In fact in the physical world, it now takes work to stop a flywheel that is in motion. Read Joshua 10:16-43.

As God gives Joshua one military success after another, the Israelite army begins to experience a momentum they could not have described just months before. In the notes in The Maxwell Leadership Bible, John Maxwell calls this The Law of the Big MO. Maxwell states:

When a leader makes a mistake that has lasting implications, the new test will be of their character concerning how they maintain their integrity in a bad situation. Read Joshua 9:16-21 and 10:1-15.

All the people of Israel heard about the treaty with the Gibeonites and within three days of the treaty being made the entire population knew their leaders had been duped. “The whole assembly grumbled against the leaders, but all the leaders answered, ‘We have given them our oath by the Lord, the God of Israel, and we cannot touch them now.’”

James 4:13-17 states “Now listen, you who say, ‘today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it sins.”

James is not against planning. He is not putting down trends, charts, graphs or planning meetings. He is not making an argument against commitments. James is simply warning us that our freedom to make plans is not a license to live free from God. Using plans to live free from God is arrogance. Every Christian leader should allow the phrase “if it is the Lord’s will” to infect their thinking and become a standard part of their vocabulary.