June 24: The Year of Three Kings: Ambition Without Calling

“Zechariah son of Jeroboam succeeded him as king and reigned in Samaria six months.” — 2 Kings 15:8 (NIV)

In a single year, the northern kingdom of Israel had three kings. Zechariah reigned six months before Shallum conspired against him and killed him in public. Shallum reigned one month before Menahem conspired against him and killed him. Menahem, who secured his reign by a campaign of brutality so extreme that scripture records the detail of pregnant women being ripped open in the towns that refused to open their gates to him, paid a thousand talents of silver to the Assyrian king to buy the stability that his violent takeover could not organically produce. It is one of the darkest and most chaotic passages in all of Kings.

What is most striking about this cascade of thrones is not the violence, appalling as it is, but the motivation behind it. Each man who seized the throne wanted the position without the preparation, the title without the formation, the seat without the season that would have made the seat sustainable. And each throne taken in that spirit became a liability the moment it was obtained. Shallum’s one month of power is among the shortest reigns in Israel’s history. He had enough ambition to kill for the throne and not enough substance to hold it for thirty days.

The contrast with leaders who received their thrones through God’s appointment could not be sharper. Hezekiah, who was appointed by birth and prepared by God, reigned twenty-nine years and left a legacy worth reading about in three separate books of scripture. Josiah, appointed at eight and prepared through a decade of seeking God, reigned thirty-one years and produced the most significant religious reformation in Judah’s history. The length and the fruitfulness of a reign are not primarily functions of the leader’s talent. They are functions of whether the throne was given or taken, and whether the leader was prepared or merely eager.

Ambition is not inherently wrong. The desire to lead, to influence, to build something significant is not a sin. What makes it dangerous is when it becomes disconnected from calling, from the patient process of formation, from the willingness to serve before leading and to be shaped before being deployed. Ambition without calling produces Shallum: one month of power and a body in the street. Calling without ambition produces Jotham: four quiet verses of steady faithfulness that God calls growing powerful.

In every sphere of governance, the leaders who do the most lasting damage are rarely the openly incompetent. They are the prematurely positioned: people with genuine gifts who arrived at the throne before the throne arrived in them, who had the capacity to take the seat but had not yet developed the character to hold it. The position revealed what the formation had not yet completed.

Today, examine your relationship with the leadership positions you do not yet hold. Is the desire to arrive in them rooted in what you want to do for God, or what you want God to do for you? Are you willing to serve faithfully in your current sphere while God prepares you for the next one? The throne that God gives is always more stable than the one you seize.

Prayer

Father, purify my ambition. Where it is ahead of your appointment, slow me down. Where it has become disconnected from calling and character, realign it. I want only what you give me, taken in your timing, after your preparation. I will serve faithfully in what I have until you open what I do not yet have. In Jesus’ name, amen.