Do you have a blueprint for success? Within your team, business, family, or non-profit institution, do you have building plans to positively influence your target audience? Tucked away in the Bible’s Thirty Sayings of the Wise is God’s secret blueprint for any organization or movement to successfully lead its culture. It is Solomon’s fourth and final pillar for a God-honoring and loving family: the House of Leadership. Solomon counseled: “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures” (Proverbs 24:3-4).
In the House of Leadership, God pours the footer of humility when we first dig down. Solomon taught: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom” (Proverbs 11:2). Whereas, pride is a hard heart that makes itself higher than others; humility is a soft heart that makes itself lower than others. Therefore, humility is bending the knees of our hearts first toward God and then toward people.
The foundation is wisdom. After we humble our hearts to God, He lays our foundation. Solomon communicated: “By wisdom a house is built” (Proverbs 24:3a). House, bayith in Hebrew, refers to any organization or movement. Wisdom helps us apply our vertical relationship with God to our horizontal circumstances. Solomon described the pre-incarnate Christ as the wisdom of God (see Proverbs 8:22-31). Left to ourselves, our foundation is foolishness, a progressive hardening of our hearts from wet cement to cured concrete in direct opposition to God. We deceive ourselves into believing that our foolishness represents a solid foundation when in reality it is quite brittle. When we exchange foolishness for wisdom as the foundation of our lives, God begins to transform the rubble of our foolish failures into triumph in Christ.
After digging our footer and laying our foundation, God builds our framework of understanding. Solomon continued: “And through understanding it is established” (Proverbs 24:3b). Understanding is insight that occurs through the Holy Spirit (see Proverbs 9:10). Established means “to build up.” In order to build upon our foundation of wisdom, we must be equipped with the framework to see inside others. Understanding sees inside a person’s heart where we would like to build a bridge, navigating us through interpersonal conflict, often laden with misunderstandings, to divine insight into others.
The furnishings are knowledge. Solomon concluded: “Through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures” (Proverbs 24:4). Knowledge is the connection of the innermost part of two or more persons through the Spirit of God, which is intimacy, an experiential bond with others. In essence, knowledge is a bridge we can cross to connect with the heart of another. Therefore, The House of Leadership is primarily about developing wise relationships.
The rooms refer to the inside of a house that is imagery for any collection of relationships assembled to achieve a common goal-whether the association is in marriage, family, ministry, or the marketplace. Those relationships comprise rare and beautiful treasures in our hearts, the only riches on earth that will last for eternity. Consequently, we must pursue relationship over remuneration in every association. If we don’t, we build walls rather than bridges.
The House of Leadership is God’s blueprint for success. This was His design when He created the earth: “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the deeps were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew” (Proverbs 3:19-20). God’s House of Leadership restores our marketplace and ministry lives where He transforms us from pride to humility, from foolishness to wisdom, from confusion to understanding, and from disconnection to knowledge. This was the Apostle Paul’s prayer: “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Colossians 1:9). However, our entrance to the House of Leadership is impossible outside a fully surrendered relationship with God in Christ because: “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD” (Proverbs 21:30).