Growing Intimacy with God

By Ramon Rocha

A growing intimacy with God is essential for an excellent Christian leader. Our relationship with God, our spiritual maturity, or lack thereof, is reflected in our leadership—our actions and our decision-making. Our spirituality is evident in how we relate with staff and customers, and even in the kind and quality of books we publish.

How are you growing in your spiritual life? One critical component of a growing relationship with our Heavenly Father is a vibrant and regular personal devotion time, like Moses had with God. They met for intimate exchanges in the “tent of meeting” (Exodus 33). There “the LORD used to speak to Moses face-to-face, as a man speaks to his friend” (v. 11).

Do you have an equivalent “tent of meeting”?

When I worked as CEO of OMF Literature in Manila, one of my duties as a father was to drive each of my four children to school each morning. I had to be early enough to beat the notorious Manila morning rush hour traffic, arriving at my office around 7:30 to 7:45 a.m. I closed my door and enjoyed an uninterrupted 30 to 45 minutes of reading the Bible, meditating on his word and praying before most staff arrived.

If a regular quiet time is essential to a “rank and file” follower of Christ, how much more for someone who leads other Jesus followers in a Christian organization?

Get to know God and spend time with him. The more you worship him, love him, obey him, experience him, his attributes and character, the more you become like him. And your face will have a radiant glow like that of Moses’ coming out of the tent of meeting (Exodus 34:34-5).

Ramon Rocha is the director of publisher development at MAI. This post is an excerpt from his talk, “Seven Marks of an Excellent Leader in Christian Publishing,” given at MAI’s European Forum, England, April 8, 2015.