People must be led. When there is a leader, he is followed. The spiritual leader is the one who has made the most progress in knowing God and is serving Him. Such a person has authority with God which no one can take away from him. No one can remove him from leadership. No one can put him into leadership. His intimate knowledge of God, his close walk with Him, his sacrificial service for the Lord and His people, put him apart from the others, and those who want true spiritual leadership turn to him. This is my understanding of spiritual leadership.

Since people must be led, they will of necessity be led somewhere. If the leader is going nowhere, the people will follow him - to nowhere. If he is going where God wants him to go, people will follow him and by so doing, they will get to the place where God wants them to be.

It is therefore important that the leader sees very clearly where God wants him and the people to go. After he has seen, he must be desperate to get there, not alone but with the people. He must finally move from being desperate to desperate action.

The act of seeing is vision.

The weight to see that which is seen become reality is burden.

The right vision will lead to a burden which must be discharged by action.

In Vision, Burden and Action, we set forth what we believe is a message for the Body of Christ now. We believe that this message is for every believer, and not just for some members of the Body. It is for all current leaders and for all would-be leaders. It is for those who lead millions of people, and also for you who is perhaps still leading only one person - yourself.

These messages were first preached in the church over two weekends in 1984. Believers gathered from about ten localities and the Lord spoke and taught them and taught me. We send them out with prayer that the Lord would use them to bless you very abundantly. Amen.