Leaders, There’s Always Someone Watching You

I lead you in the way of wisdom and

I guide you along straight paths.

- Proverbs 4:11 (NVI)

On one of my international trips, our flight couldn’t make it to its destination and landed in Houston, Texas, due to a mechanical issue. So I started looking for another flight to get to my destination. I ran from airline counter to airline counter like crazy, trying to find another option.

Fast forward a few years. I was preaching at a church in São Paulo, Brazil, and a brother asked me whether I was the one at the Houston airport on that specific date. I said yes! He told me he had been watching me the whole time from a distance, since he was in another area separated by a glass wall and couldn’t get to me to talk.

As a preacher in Cuba shared in a sermon, a neighbor approached him one day and asked, “Where do you and your family go every Sunday?” The pastor answered, “We go to church, but why do you ask?” He replied, “I see you leaving your house from my window every Sunday.” That day, the message title was: “There’s Always Someone in the Window Watching You.”

Leaders need to stay alert, because they have the responsibility to lead and to set the example. Consider Paul’s counsel to Titus: “In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness” (Titus 2:7). Also see Paul’s instruction to Timothy: “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful” (2 Timothy 2:24)

Leaders, we need to be careful, because someone is always watching us. That is not a reason to become anxious or afraid of being under scrutiny. On the contrary, it is a call to live and lead with integrity. As we rise to that challenge, we can do so with confidence, because God readily supplies everything we need to live lives of integrity.