There are leadership skills and there are leadership gifts. My belief is that true wisdom is a leadership gift. In other words, while wisdom can be learned and gained over the course of a lifetime as a skill, in its most glorious manifestation in a leader, wisdom is a compelling capability with the possibility of changing the world. It is a unique gift and one to be treasured.

The difficulty is in the detection of true, wondrous, and gifted wisdom. There is, unfortunately, wisdom which is an imposter founded on faulty motives and principles. When it is forged in bitter envy and selfish ambition it invariably leads to disorder and evil. We see this all too often. We have seen it from the beginning of time. Now at a time of national and global struggle during a pandemic, we see this earthly, unspiritual and even demonic form of wisdom more often than we care to.

There is a much loftier form of wisdom. Some would say that it is even heavenly. There are many descriptive, nominative terms for such wisdom: pure, peace-loving, considerate, merciful, impartial, and sincere. In today’s world of leadership culture and training, not all these descriptive terms would be readily accepted. Yet, if you can think of any leader who exhibits such characteristics, I can guarantee that they are someone that you will want to follow. For the reality is that all leaders have followers.

I call for wisdom that bears good fruit. There is enough envy and selfish ambition to go around, but we need a loftier, heavenly wisdom. My teacher on this is a very good friend who has guided me over the years. He is the Apostle James. He has written extensively about leadership and you can find many of his ideas in the Bible. These truths about the gift of true wisdom come from him (James 3:13-18).