You Cannot Lead Until You Learn to Follow

The reason most men cannot lead their families is not because they lack authority. It is because they have never submitted to anything.

That sounds backward at first, because we tend to think of leadership and submission as opposites, as if one cancels out the other. But the whole model of servant leadership, which is the idea that real authority flows downward from a place of responsibility rather than upward from a place of demand, turns that assumption completely around.

Here is the full chain before we get into the parts that trip people up.

A man submits himself to God, which means he aligns his will with something greater than his own appetite and ego. That alignment gives him a moral framework to lead from, not a set of rules to enforce, but an actual foundation. His wife observes that foundation, sees that he is not just making decisions based on whatever benefits him in the moment, and that is what produces the kind of trust that makes her willing to follow. Without that first step, the whole thing collapses because there is no foundation to build on. That is the whole chain.

Now let us zoom into the part that most men skip.

The conversation about submission in marriage almost always starts in the wrong place. It starts with the woman. Men read passages about wives submitting to their husbands and they treat that as the beginning of the instruction, but it is not the beginning. It is the middle. The instruction that comes before it is about mutual submission, and before that is the whole architecture of what a husband is actually being asked to carry.

Authority and responsibility are not two separate things that you can take or leave independently. They are the same thing. When you accept the authority to lead, you are accepting the full weight of what happens because of that leadership. Every decision. Every consequence. Every time you are wrong. Most men want the deference that comes with being the head of a household without accepting that the word "head" means you are the one accountable when things go sideways. And women are not fooled by men who want one without the other.

A woman's trust in her husband's leadership is not a switch she can just flip because she decides to. It is a response. It builds over time as she watches him make decisions that demonstrate he is thinking about her welfare and not just his own preferences, that he is capable of being wrong and admitting it, that he has a reference point higher than himself that he actually submits to. Without that track record, what she is being asked to extend is not trust. It is a kind of blind compliance, and nothing about that is what the model calls for.

This is where Matthew 26:39 matters, and not as a verse to quote at someone, but as a picture of the mechanism.

The night before the crucifixion, Jesus prayed to his Father and said "not as I will, but as you will." Sit with what is actually happening in that moment. This is not a man who lacked options. This is not someone who had no power in the situation. He had every reason to call it off. And the act of submission he makes is not passive resignation. It is the most deliberate, costly, active choice in the narrative. He aligns his will with his Father's will in the face of suffering he does not want.

That is the model. Not submission as helplessness. Submission as the deliberate alignment of your will with something you have decided is greater than your own comfort.

If that is what submission looks like at the highest level, then a man who has never submitted to anything, not to God, not to accountability, not to a standard outside himself, is being asked to lead from nothing. There is no formation. There is no shaping. He has not been under anything, so he has never learned what it actually means to follow well, and you cannot teach what you have not learned.

This is why the command to husbands in servant leadership is not "take authority." It is "lay down your life." The Greek word used for the husband's role in Ephesians 5 is a word that describes the kind of love that costs something. The standard being held up is not a manager. It is a servant who has submitted himself so completely that laying down his preferences for the good of someone else is just how he operates. That is only possible in a man who has already submitted himself to a will greater than his own, because otherwise every decision circles back to what he wants.

The practical implication of this is straightforward.

If you are a man who wants your wife to trust your leadership, the question to start with is not "how do I get her to follow me." The question is "what am I submitted to." If the honest answer is nothing, that is where the work starts. Not in a conversation with your wife about roles. In a private reckoning about whether you have ever actually surrendered your will to God, whether there is any evidence in your daily life that something other than your own appetites is shaping your decisions.

Because she already knows the answer. She has been watching.

A woman does not withhold trust because she is broken or faithless or afraid of the idea of following. She withholds trust because trust is a response to evidence, and the evidence has to come first. The man who wants to be followed has to become the kind of man who follows. That sequence is not optional. It is the design.

Jesus led the most consequential act of servant leadership in history not by asserting his authority but by surrendering his will. The most powerful leader who ever walked the earth led by submitting first.

That is the model. And if it was the model for him, it is the model for you.

---

References

1. Matthew 26:39 (NIV) -- "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
2. Luke 22:42 (NIV) -- "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (parallel account)
3. Be The Man, Chapter 19: Servant Leadership -- Josh Holyfield, 2022
4. Iron Forge Brotherhood Course, Module 09: Leadership, Lesson 02: Servant Leadership

---

Join the free community:
Men: Iron Forge Brotherhood
Women: Powerhouse Fitness