What can you see on the horizon?

How do you actually plan for the future when so much of it is unknown? You can't see far. The ground keeps shifting. The thing you were aiming at six months ago might not exist by next year. So how do leaders, teams, families, anyone really, look ahead with any confidence?

There's a leadership tool called the Three Horizons Model that's used by everyone from local councils to large organisations. The idea is simple. You hold three views at once. The challenges of the present. The aspirations for the future. And the bridge of innovations that gets you from one to the other.

It forces good questions:

• What can we actually see on our horizon?
• How far can we reasonably see ahead?
• What's the next thing we need to do?

The Bible has a story about two armies looking at the same horizon and seeing very different things.

David, Goliath, and the horizon problem

In 1 Samuel 17, the Philistines and Israel are camped on opposite mountains with a valley between them. A giant named Goliath strides out and challenges Israel to send someone to fight him.

One army looks at the horizon and sees defeat. The other looks at the same horizon and sees victory. By the end of the day, both have been proved wrong, because what neither of them had factored in was a teenage shepherd with a sling.

The horizon can change in a heartbeat.

David wasn't a strategist or a soldier. He was a kid who turned up to bring food to his brothers. But four things about him are worth borrowing if you're trying to lead anyone, including yourself, into uncertain ground.

1. Confident

David walks into Saul's tent and says, basically, don't let anyone lose heart. He'll go and fight Goliath himself.

"Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine." (1 Samuel 17:32)

Confidence isn't bravado. It's the steady belief that you can act, even when no one else is acting. People around David started repeating his words. The king sent for him. Confidence is contagious.

2. Competent

Saul, sensibly, points out that David is a kid and Goliath is a war veteran. David doesn't argue. He explains. He's been keeping his father's sheep, and when lions and bears came after the flock, he killed them. That was his training ground.

His confidence wasn't a feeling. It was built on something. Real competence almost always looks like that. Quiet experience, accumulated over years, applied at the moment it's needed.

3. Capable

Saul, still trying to help, dresses David in his own armour. Helmet, mail, sword. David tries to walk in it and can't.

"I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them." (1 Samuel 17:39)

So he takes them off. Picks up his staff. Chooses five smooth stones from the stream. Walks out with the sling he's already used a hundred times.

There's nothing worse in leadership than trying to imitate someone else's setup. Wear what fits you. Use what works. And worth noticing: David took five stones, not one. Maybe he wasn't worried about missing. Maybe he was already preparing for the next giant coming over the horizon.

4. Courageous

Two armies stood watching. Nobody else was moving. David walked into the valley alone, with a sling and a deep certainty that God was with him.

That last bit matters. His courage wasn't reckless. It was rooted. He knew who was with him, and that made the rest possible.

The four hold each other up

These don't work in isolation. Confidence without competence is dangerous. Competence without courage just sits on the bench. Capability without confidence keeps people quiet when they should be speaking up. We've all met leaders who have one or two of these but not the others, and we've all felt the cost.

Worth asking, honestly, which of the four is your strongest, and which is the gap you've been quietly avoiding.

Defining moments

There's another moment in scripture, much quieter, that sits alongside this one.

In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah finds his successor, Elisha, ploughing a field with twelve oxen. Elijah walks past and throws his cloak over Elisha's shoulders. That's it. No speech. Just a gesture.

Elisha's response is striking. He goes home, slaughters the oxen, burns the wooden ploughs as fuel to cook them, and feeds the meal to his neighbours. Then he leaves and follows Elijah.

He destroys his old livelihood on the way out. There's no going back. The career, the equipment, the safety net, all gone. He's all in.

Sometimes the future requires that of us. Not necessarily literal oxen, but the equivalent. The thing we'd quietly fall back on if the new venture didn't work.

Three questions worth sitting with

• What future is God showing you?
• Who is helping you see it more clearly?
• What do you need to let go of to actually walk into it?

So what's on your horizon right now, and what oxen are you still keeping in the barn, just in case?