A Black Woman's Guide to Leading WellMuestra

# Day 2 A Path Less Traveled John 4:4 Now is the time for integrating wellness principles and practices into our leadership. It begins with learning to lead from the well. I ask you to stop and consider this question: What would your life look like if you indeed led from the well? Join me in gleaning from the transformative dialogue between this unnamed woman who met Jesus at a well and gleaning from her leadership after the biblical story ends. To really appreciate the context for the story we’ll be exploring throughout this devotional, we must start with Jesus coming to Samaria. Yes, our leadership today and the ability to lead well also begin with Jesus. Whether we lead in the marketplace, school, or church, our leadership starts with the Lord’s purpose for each of us. Our “why” for leading is critical. Knowing, owning, and expressing that for our leadership is vital to everything we do. Never check your faith at the door. It’s what sets us apart—and sets us up to be used by God as transformative leaders. Tradition in Jesus’s day held that instead of traveling through the region of Samaria, Jewish people opted to take a less direct route because of the long-held tensions between the two people groups and their shared history. Yet we see in the story that Jesus had “to go through Samaria on the way” to Galilee (John 4:4 NLT). His mission compelled Jesus to proclaim the gospel of his kingdom to the Samaritans, so Jesus defied cultural mores and norms to go through Samaria. There are times when it will be necessary for each of us to go through our own Samaria. It may mean following a path that is new and unpaved. Our God-given mission to lead will compel us to change. There will be distinct seasons in our lives when we sense the Lord leading us to make moves that strengthen our leadership in more wholistic ways. We hear this leading as we intentionally carve out time to seek the Lord about our leadership and life. There are other times in which, because of the pace at which we work or serve, we’ve become too busy to really hear God. Yet our souls feel the need for change. When we look at the context of Jesus’s going to Samaria, we also see conditions that led Jesus to move on. Likewise, these conditions arise around us. In the days to come, we’ll look at three of them.