Day 1

1 Samuel 20

Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to kill me?”

We want to concentrate on the issue of friendship in leadership. I emphasize the fact that friends will help you overcome any hostility; but I want to say right at the beginning that it is not friendship at any cost.

I would like you to understand that it is very easy for a leader to fail to have friends. In fact, that is why they normally say, that it is lonely at the top. What they mean is that leaders have nobody who they can share private the leadership concerns with. But I normally assume that is wrong type of leadership. If you practice servant leadership which Jesus taught, you will be relating with people who are juniors, and if you are relating well with them, you will never lack somebody to share your burden with. If you can’t share friendship also with your Juniors, they are also people outside the organization who can also be your friends.

My friend, you need to understand if you are choosing to be a leader, friendship, both of your Juniors and also of Mentors and Colleagues inside and outside your organization, or outside your company, is something that you must invest in  heavily. Unfortunately, friendship is not easy at all!

Let me give you three reasons why although it is important for a leader to have friendship, there are three problems with it.

Number one, it is voluntary. You cannot force anybody to be your friend. It is hard work to actually be friends. Of course, the most important way of gaining friends, is for you to be friendly yourself. Not forcing, not bribery, but simply talk to people at their level, be friendly to them. But because it is not automatic, it means that you can even be friendly but the people do not respond in friendship, and therefore that makes it very hard work. And you know, in the field of relationship, you that is trying to be friendly does not have as much power as the guy you are trying to befriend. This is because it is him who will choose whether to be friends with you or not. This makes the leader having friends, a very difficult thing, for it is not automatic.

Number two, friendship is not permanent. The fact that we were friends last year, does not mean that friendship cannot grow cold. Those same people that were friends last year, might not be your friends anymore! You are still in the organization, you are still their leader, but they do not want to meet you, they do not want to have tea with you. That makes it very difficult. The fact is, it is not permanent. After doing all that work, it means you have to work at it continuously. You do not say, Ah! now I have a friend I can rest.no! You have to maintain that friendship over time.

Thirdly, when you are a leader, there are two things likely to happen; you make decisions that will displease some people and yet you must decide because that is why you are a leader. You make the decision, and even people who were your friends earlier may actually leave you because they are not comfortable with the decision.

Day 2

1 Samuel 20

² “Never!” Jonathan replied. “You are not going to die! Look, my father does not do anything, great or small, without letting me know. Why would he hide this from me? It isn’t so!

 

One of the things you must avoid even in this effort to be friends with your subordinates, avoid wanting friendship at any cost as I said earlier. So even if your friends will be unhappy, make a decision that is good for the group, not just good to you, not good for your friends, but good to the total group. This way you will find it difficult to keep friends who do not agree with your decisions and that is one of the challenges you will have. How do you make decisions, and it is not possible to make decisions that everybody accepts.

Number two, related with that, when you are a boss, and maybe you are the one dishing out goodies, promotions, and things like that, people will pretend to want your friendship, in fact they will look very excited, but they are not really friends at all.

Sometimes back, I think after 2017, one of the Professors in Nairobi University, who was then a cabinet minister, wrote to the newspaper in a column he was writing. He wrote to the newspaper that the day he was removed from being a Cabinet Minister, a CS, his telephone, and he had several of them, all of them went quiet. He wondered why they stopped calling anymore? That is when he discovered, people were not really his friends. They were friends with his office, and as soon as he lost the office, they did not care about him. That is what makes friendship for leaders very difficult, because you do not know whether this person is trying to get something out of you, rather than really concerned about one another.

Therefore, it is very difficult to know how to balance and discover whether the friends are really true friends, and that they are not just respecting you for your title. Is it that they are concerned about you? It is something that you have to actually deal with and handle

Let us just take lessons on friendship from King David. First of all, what kind of friends did David have? David had friends from every direction. The group of people who came to be with him when he ran away from Saul, the Bible says, they were the scum of the earth. Everybody who was thought to be nothing came and joined fugitive David, and David did not refuse them. He accepted them, and they became part of his force. David welcomed everybody to be his friends.

These friends were the scum of the earth but then there is Jonathan who was a Prince, and a potential heir to the throne. And he accepted him in friendship also. Inferiority makes you fear talking up to people. you fear relating with people whom you think are senior to you. Inferiority Complex will make it difficult for you to be friends with anybody. But Superiority Complex is even worse. It makes you look down on people, and people sense that you are looking down on them, and so they do not accept your friendship. David was able to tackle both.

Day 3

1 Samuel 20

³ But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favour in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘‘Jonathan must not know this, or he will be grieved.’’ Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.” ³ But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favour in your eyes, and he has said to himself

There is a temptation of a leader is to have a ‘kitchen cabinet.’ what is a kitchen cabinet? Where there is an accepted leadership structure, supposed to help make decisions, but leaders create another subset we call kitchen cabinet which is people who are not necessarily having powers in the open structures but are actually the ones who make decisions. Thus, before the matters are brought to the cabinet, the president calls his personal friends, and what they tell him is what will carry the day.

Normally where you get that kitchen cabinet; you get the rest of the cabinet very demotivated and unlikely to do their very best. It breaks also teamwork. Or others live under fear of reports that are given by the kitchen cabinet about them.

Therefore, although we are talking about the importance of friendship in leadership, it must be not the one that will make you biased in decision making. You must manage it and remember you are leader of the whole organization. Those who like you, and those who do not like you, are all part and parcel of the group, and if you are going to carry out the vision of the group, it will require both those who like you and those who do not like you.

Kitchen cabinet may include what is called deep state. Deep state is people who have not been appointed to make decisions but they are the ones who make decisions in the background. Maybe this is because they were the Kingmakers, they are not Kings themselves. That is why they are called the deep state, and they can control events in a major way and yet they have no titles. Any leader who allows deep state to dictate is a weak leader, and David was not like that.

Learn to make fair decisions. There is nothing you will do to hurt anybody; but you will not decide in order to please them either. You are not going to do everything in order to win friendship.

Therefore; although friends are important, a leader must be mature enough not to allow his friends to be the one making decisions even when they do not have the power structurally.

That is item to watch out for. Number two, do not be so keen on making people friends that you are willing to compromise your or organizational values. I have a heard of people, teachers, who get one of the bad boys and make him a prefect and that way manage him. Now, if you make him a prefect and assuming that a prefect has a clear job description, and the boy has no capacity to handle that job, the whole group will be the loser. You will gain because you do not have opposition, but the whole group will lose. Similarly, any leader who would like to bribe enemies by doing certain things to befriend them is likely to get the whole group going nowhere.

Yes, you need to be a leader who is friendly but not desperate for friendship. Friendly means, you are available to anybody willing to be friends with you. You have nobody in the organization that you regard as an enemy. They can regard you as an enemy but you do not regard them as an enemy. The moment you regard some people in the organization as your enemies, not that they hate you but that you also hate them, you again start moving from helping the group to go to its vision but begin fights within the organization, and the hostility ensues. It will be a hostility generated by the leader himself. That is why it will be very important that we clearly understand that friendship is very important but avoid giving the kitchen cabinet or your personal friends, your family, to run the whole show yet they have no power structurally. They are not recognized as leaders.

No need to feel like you must befriend so and so in such a desperate manner that you get him onto your side by a promotion even when he does not deserve it.

Therefore, a leader must be friendly, for when you use friendship; you are likely to make it much easier for you to lead people and for them to cooperate with you than if they see you as a feared man.

Day 4

1 Samuel 20

, ‘‘Jonathan must not know this, or he will be grieved.’’ Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”

You know the people say it is lonely at the top, but it does not have to be lonely! The reason it is lonely is because you are unable to bring yourself to where people can be free with you.

The first job I did 1970s when I left university, I was working at the 18th floor of the building and it was one of the buildings in Nairobi. When our CEO entered the lift we left it in fear. That time the word CEO was not used, they were called executive or managing director. When the executive director entered the lift, nobody else enters! He goes up to the 19th floor alone.

My friend, you need to understand that being friendly with all means that you do not treat people as your juniors. You treat them as your teammates. One is playing as a forward, the other one as a fullback, but all of us are in the same team. So, the leader must see everybody in the organization as part and parcel of the team and a needed member of the team. This is because the organization cannot go where it needs to go if the messenger is not in it if the mama chai is not in it. All of us matter. The moment the very junior start thinking, Haiya! You mean this guy knows my name? Or you mean he can even call me by my first name? You mean he can stop what he is doing to just have a few minutes with me? He will start seeing you as a friend and the claim that it is lonely at the top would not apply to you.

Later I used to work for an oil company, and I started a Christian fellowship. It must be 1980s, and I was a junior person then, then I grew up the career ladder to the top leadership. So, someone with whom we used to attend to lunch hour fellowship, thought once at the top leadership, if you are at that level, you can’t attend the Christian fellowship with everybody else. How would the juniors relate with you? And I said no! when I am in the fellowship, I am not a manager, I am just a Brother in the Lord! The messenger is just a sister in the Lord. We are there as fellow Christians, children of God. So, I will not stop attending the fellowship because I have been promoted, and when I am there, I will not carry along my title. I will be there as their friend. When you do that, it actually becomes very easy to befriend!

You know for some Headmasters; the moment he becomes the Headmaster, tea must be brought in his office, for he cannot spend any time in the staffroom where everybody is taking tea. How then do you hope they will ever become your friends? You need to say no! No! To tea in the office unless having a visitor. I will go and take tea with the people in the staffroom; and within no time, they will be free with you. You know in the staff room; it is not structured relationship. It is not a business meeting. You will hear people say something about themselves. They will also hear the way you talk. That way you create a friendship with them.

I hope you understand that friendship with them would make it easier for you to carry out your leadership role and to have fewer enemies. It needs to be a program you have set to achieve. You are committed to creating friendship and you are being friendly.

Day 5

1 Samuel 20

⁴ Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.

Thirdly, be available for everyone, not a small group from your church, and yet that organization does not belong to your church. Not just people from your tribe, not just people who are women, not just people who are men. Everybody must feel that the leader is actually somebody who is available to them, accessible to them, and friendly with them.

Let’s just look at 1st Samuel chapter 20, verse 3 says,

But David took an oath and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favour in your eyes, and he has said to himself, `Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.’’ Yet as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”

The people you make your friends must be your confidants also. Who is a confidant? These people who feel you are so friendly with them, they can tell you inside information which is not required of them. They are not asked to report but they feel they want to share with you, for they feel they are confidants.

You have heard somebody say a problem shared is a problem halved? Or half solved? You need to have these friends of yours feel like if they tell you something, you will not go reporting to others. That you can keep confidentiality. There is no way people will take you as a friend when they tell you something confidential, then now in a public meeting you say like Onyango was telling me!.. That is the end of your relationship with Onyango! because he was telling you confidentially, and then, you have gone sharing it openly with people. A leader who wants friends, must be willing to keep confidentiality, or if he wants to share, just take a call, and say brother Onyango, this story you told me, I think it is a very relevant story to my message , is it okay I share it with others?

It is very important to understand that most people you regard as friends, it is because they keep confidentiality. They do not talk loudly about things that are between the two of you.

That is why these two friends Jonathan and David can share deeply with one another. Why? Jonathan knows that there is no way David can go reporting to the King you know your son is the one who told me no! They are speaking confidentially.

David is going through a lot of stress when dealing with the King wanting to kill him. But in Jonathan, he finds somebody with whom he can share. And a leader requires those people who can keep confidentiality. As you share with them, they will not go telling everybody Haiya, the leader is saying, the leader is said because they are friends. When you share any information with them, they will not share with anyone else without your permission.

David is burdened, stressed, and needs somebody praying with him, somebody is understanding him, and someone who can give him encouragement. My friend if you want to be a good leader, that idea of confidentiality is key. Many people lose friends simply because they are unable to keep confidence. You tell him a story, and within minutes, he will be taking a telephone call to tell somebody else, and once he tells somebody else, that somebody will tell somebody else, and within no time it is back to you but actually already distorted. You wonder this matter I only told Onyango, there is nobody else I have told so it is very clear who leaked the information. Do you expect us to continue friendship? You will be a leader who keep complaining about that it is lonely at the top, but it is because you do not keep confidentiality.

You also of course want to test the people who are friendly with you before you share confidential information. Check whether they are spies for the enemy. So do not become naïve and share your story with just anybody. There are levels of friendship.

I have written a book on friendship and say there are levels of friendships. There is somebody who is just an acquaintance. An acquaintance means one you share weather information with. However, there are people who are deeper. So let there be a progression.

My other book, Finding A Life Partner also talks says, do not propose to a girl if she is an acquaintance, let it progress to where you are really seeing that you are friends. Be general friends before you start saying, can you be my future wife. There needs to be a progression.

Similarly a leader must have friends at different levels. Be friends with everybody but give them a process that allows them to become closer and closer and closer over time. Do not start sharing information with people you have not tested, whose confidentiality you have not tested, for it will bounce back to you negatively.

verse 7 says,

If he says, `Very well,’’ then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me. As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the LORD. If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?”

You know, what he is doing here is to test confidentiality just like I have been saying. To test the depth of friendship between him and Jonathan he says kill me if I am guilty. Let me tell you clearly, friendship is not automatic, but fatherhood is. Jonathan is the son of Saul and that can be proved by a DNA test. But you can see clearly, they are not friends, the King and his son are not friends. But David and Jonathan are friends, but he is testing this friendship.

What are we learning here, that if you really want people to be friends, you must invest time in that friendship. In other words, you must move from your office. Many leaders are stuck in their office. It is people who come to see them, not them visiting them. You must say after every two hours or half an hour, I will not be in my office. You just go greeting people, being friendly, finding out what they are going through, what challenges they are having. That way, you are growing the friendship because friendship is not automatic.

David is sending Jonathan to test what the King is up to, and he is telling him, if you really are not my friend, kill me now! Kill me yourself, do not go to make the King kill me or expose me to be killed, kill me yourself.

I want to say that if you really want friendship, it will be very, very important that of necessity you invest time in it. I want to ask you a question, how many minutes are you putting into friendship with the people you want to become friends with.

Day 6

1 Samuel 20

⁹ “Never!” Jonathan said. “If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you?”

So, Jonathan reassures David that the friendship is for real. Friendship demands transparency between friends. What David was after is to see the heart of Jonathan, and the same way you need to give time with the people who are your friends in the organization as you lead, so that they have time to be transparent with you, to be open with you, and you are actually open with them in return.

However, when I talk about a leader being open, there is certain confidential information only the board should know, there are other confidential information only management will know. The CEO will know everything. But it is not a sign of friendship when you share information somebody should not know with him. You should say no, no, no, that one I am not allowed to say but outside that, there are many issues you can share with a person who is a friend.

verse 16 says,

So, Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the LORD call David’s enemies to account.” And Jonathan made David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.

That is what friendship is all about. Friendship is where you love someone as you love yourself. A leader would need people like that, who can die for him, who can live for him. You need to understand that when that happens, you and your friends are on one side, the enemy of your friend becomes your enemy, and your enemy becomes his enemy. And that means, your friends will be your protection because anybody against you is assumed he is also against them. That is what David-Jonathan story is teaching us.

verse 22,

But if I say to the boy, `Look, the arrows are beyond you,’’ then you must go, because the LORD has sent you away.

Here they are looking for a code language. If Jonathan discovers that the father is seriously wanting to kill him, how will he communicate? If he is seen with David, he will also be in trouble. How will he communicate? So they agreed where he will hide, and the code language he will use for David to understand whether there is danger or not.

Similarly, if your friend is with people, you need a language only few people will understand. You can speak with your friends without necessarily everybody getting the information. That is a sign of friendship. And in every generation, young people actually create their own language. That is why sheng is the language young people speak and the parents are not supposed to understand in Kenya. It is a code language and there is nothing wrong with that. You and your friend need a language that you understand with each other on. That is why a husband, and a wife can talk to each other, and you are still there, and they are talking a language you know but you do not know what they are saying. That is a sign of friendship, where you have grown with each other in familiarity until you have created your own code language.

 

verse 23 says,

And about the matter you and I discussed, remember, the LORD is witness between you and me forever.”

In a good friendship, it is not two people together, it is three, and it is Jonathan and David, and God.What that then means is that the friends are aware that if they are promising something, God is a witness. That is why they will not promise something in a hurry. And that is why you shouldn’t be having friends, deep friends who are not born again. How will you pray together? How will you tell him that God is party to in strong friendship? If they are not saved, there will be a problem! and we are not even talking about a boy being friend with a non-Christian girl. We are just talking about general relations. You need to be careful who it is that you are friends with. But, for true friendship God needs to be involved in your friendship so that you do not have deep friendships that do not please God.

Verse 30,

Saul’s anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Do not I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your Kingdom will be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he must die!” “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David.

Now, we are talking about a friend, Jonathan taking a risk for David. In fact, he is almost killed by his father. You also should be able to take a risk on the people who are your real friends. So, let me ask you, do you have such people?

I told you to love them. You need to be somebody who invests in friendship, even as you lead them. But when you love them, it will make your work very easy. Somebody called William Wilberforce, who was credited with abolition of slave trade, had such hostility in parliament that he needed friends. The idea of condemning slave owners was not something parliament was willing to agree with. But he had a group that met him weekly for prayer. They would pray with him, advice him, and it made him last following slave trade issues until finally the slave trade was abolished when he was still alive.

My friend, you need such group of people. Do not just be a leader without backup, you need people who pray with you, who understand you, and can take risks for you. That will be something very important. You need to ask yourself, is that something at which you are good?

Day 7

1 Samuel 20

³⁴ Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the feast he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David.

Your friend’s pain is your pain. The fact that the life of David was at risk caused Jonathan to fast as he had no appetite; he could not eat. Do you have friends like that? Who are so committed to your safety, to your health, that when you have a problem, they have a problem? Or put it the other way round, do you have friends where if you hear they are in trouble, you stop what you are doing in order to be with them. Friendship, I say it again, requires investment! When you have people like that and you are a leader, you are certainly assured of people who will watch your back.

verse 41 is saying,

After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together, but David wept the most.

 

You know David now knew for sure that he had a friend in Jonathan. Friendship requires emotional oneness. You cry together. Do you have people like that? Whom you can open up and allow yourself to break up. You are a leader, you are not expected to break up in public, but you have a group of people, and should certainly include your spouse, who you are willing to break down in front of them. Doctors tell us that tears are therapeutic. When you are able to cry, it heals you. You need friends who can be with you emotionally and share your emotions.

Finally, I just want to look at verse 42 again,

Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the LORD, saying, `The LORD is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever. Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town.

Your family should be friends to your friend. that is what you need to understand. If you have serious friends, you should introduce them to your family, because the friend of a friend is also a friend. In this friendship of Jonathan and David, David is interested in Jonathan’s children. When finally, Jonathan dies in battle, David becomes King, and years later, he is looking for the children of Jonathan to look after them, to comfort them because of the friendship. Please understand the family of your friend should also be your friend.

May the Lord help us to really start those kinds of friendships. we are not going to start friendship only when you become a leader. It is now, currently. are you investing in friendships? or are you doing things that cause people to run away from you? May the Lord help us to truly have good friends.

 

 

 

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Finding a Life Partner
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