You are almost close!

In the same way, when you see all these things, recognize that he is near — at the door. Matthew 24:33.

The world is in utmost confusion, Christians are the focus everywhere. All religions, governments and political parties want to eliminate Christians from the face of the earth. Let's see some statistics that bring home this truth both internationally and nationally:

According to world watch list 11 persons are killed daily for their faith. If you follow the world news 215 million Christians faced persecution in 2018, and it was estimated that 245 million will suffer in 2019, according to Open Doors — a 14% increase, that represents 30 million more people abused for their faith. This means that "1 in 9 Christians experience high levels of persecution worldwide" (world watch list 2019)

Accordingly to Wikipedia, In August 2017, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) ranked India’s persecution severity at “Tier 2” along with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the past seven years, India has risen from No. 31 to No. 10 on Open Doors' World Watch List, ranking just behind Iran in persecution severity. As of 2019, USCIRF repeatedly placed India as Tier-2 in minority persecution. India estimated Christians, 65,061,000 and it is in the 10th place of Persecution severity.

Coming to our nation, India; Persecution Relief has recorded 330 incidents of hate crime against Christians in 2016, 440 incidents in 2017, 477 incidents in 2018 and till September 2019 they have recorded 349 incidents of Christian Persecution against Christians in India.

What does it all converge to, nothing but a sober reminder His coming is almost close. If you notice Jesus while training his disciples and sending the disciples to share the gospel and about the kingdom of God, He was almost preparing them for intense persecution and warned them not to give up, because of what they are going to face. Observe Jesus' saying,  "Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul;  rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.". Matthew 10:28 CSB. You and I may try fighting against persecution by every means, but honestly you cannot do away with persecution.

Let me remind you once again on some basic facts: watch out to hold on to your faith till the end for Jesus said, "But the one who endures to the end will be saved.". Matthew 10:22 CSB

Life is going to be extremely difficult Matthew 24:21; 10:22, John 16:33 & I die daily 1 Cor 15:31.

Love of many will grow cold, as a result, hypocrisy and superficiality will be rampant. Matthew 24:12 & 1 Timothy 4:1-3

Even the elect and spiritual giants will fall prey to deception Matthew 24:24

You will cease to exist in this earth one day, for sure. Hebrew 9:27.

Only if you are prepared will hear the sound of the trumpet and be gathered to meet him ( in rapture) Matthew 24:31.

You will be surprised either being taken up or left behind. Matthew 7:21-23 & Luke 17:35

The coming of the Lord is very very near. Matthew 24:33, James 5:8 & Revelation 3:11.

But do you have a hope in what you go through? Definitely yes! Because we will be soon reaching a place where neither tears nor any pain exists (Revelation 21:4). And most importantly we will reign with Him for ever and ever (Revelation 22:5).

May the Lord help us to stay watchful and stay blameless. You have a mission;  fulfilling the great commission.

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Truth vs Camaflouge

Every other encounter we have is hardly original. Duplicity is the word that describes this age, including relationships. Fakeness is rampant that we are lost in it. We all wish that people at some point just present themselves as they are during the encounter with each other. We are going to end this year soon. Year after year passes by, but are we seriously intentional to live the original image of God with divine nature and characteristics of God or just making our way with our list of agendas, programs and events that keeps our spirits high and satisfying, because we have nothing to lose.

Working with so many Church leaders and getting close to understand their ministry and their future of their ministry is a greatest privilege and a responsibility God has given to SHEFA ministries. As we develop Ministry blueprint and a roadmap for Churches and organization to follow, some have taken their (church) plan seriously and started working towards it meticulously and witnessing significant measurable results during the course of their journey. Some are not able to do much on it merely because there are already so many things on their list which leaves them overwhelmed. Some are, as I usually say, “Victim of emergencies”.

Someone who is an ardent visitor in a particular Church made this statement which made me melancholic, “I don’t want to be entertained at Church, I want to encounter God”. Let’s not forget there are many who visit the church with brokenness, pain and with a deep desire longing to be comforted by God’s word, but return home disappointed. Do we even realize it? I am reminded of the passage where some Greeks who were going to worship at the feast, visited Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”.(John 12:22) There is a deep longing in people to encounter God but the question is, are we able to present Christ correctly? Be watchful, not to douse people’s longing with activities that are irrelevant to the vision and goals of the Church.

How serious are we? How organic is our worship? The most heart rending statement I heard by a lay person commenting on a Church leader / Pastor in one of the major programs is this, "The Pastor’s and the Church leadership don’t care about structured sustainable program that is aligned with the vision and mission of Church because they have nothing to lose". There are many Churches instead of modelling the vibrant early Church are making things so comfortable and leaving the people unprepared. Josh Buice puts it point blank, “Dear Pastors, tomorrow people will gather before the pulpit to hear the glories of His word expounded. You can’t afford to speculate nor can you afford to entertain. Lastly, your calling demands that you avoid veiling truth in mystery when God has unveiled it in his word.". Preach and minister sincerely and with a burden.

Can we seriously retrospect as we come to the end of this year and see if we still hold on to the dual image, camaflouging our way through? Or we replicate the true image of Christ. Fight against dualism, superficiality, form of godliness (2 Timothy 3:5) and be original

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Vision - A blindsided reality!

It gives me a surge of motivation when I get an opportunity to write on my favourite topic “Vision”. I have written many articles on this topic. I trust it was a blessing to those who read the same. I have done a number of seminars related to vision, eg. ‘Understanding the vision’, ‘culminating to finding the vision’, why vision fails? how to keep your vision moving? how to develop a strategy and a roadmap from the vision? and how do I monitor my progress? The people group in my seminars included Pastors, Bible college students, young people and Church members.

Penning my thoughts down about my long association working with Churches (close to 60 denominations and more) in India, I found the Churches that really made significant impact among its congregation and in the community are the ones who were successful in finding what their vision is and able to articulate the same and follow the roadmap ardently. And most importantly these are the people who were able to quantify their progress and able to articulate the success not in terms of the many programs that the church is doing but in terms of measurable impact the Churches have created as the result of the programs and activities. I do come across disagreement, mainly out of convenience, that we don’t need to put this meticulously and follow a management style. What such group fail to understand is that the Bible is full of Strategies (Approaches & Methodologies) and more importantly Bible talks about planning, calculating, finding right counsel and so many other necessary factors that the Bible endorses completely.

We are so close to the coming of the Lord and you will all agree that much has to be done. Mere church activity without creating vibrant discipleship has less lasting impact. It is high time that we concentrate on the lost souls that we witness in our society, schools, colleges, work places, business areas even in Churches. It’s time to stop overfeeding our Church members, but train systematically on the core of discipleship that is found in 2 Timothy 2:2-3 “What you have heard from me, in the presence of many witnesses commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus”. How effective are we in sharing the gospel? One of the problems today is that we are not successful in presenting Jesus in a correct shape. How many of our members know how to share the gospel and what to share?

It is time to take a giant leap towards evangelistic work. Let me again use one of my favourite quote which goes this way,  “If you practice the great commission and share about Christ you are an irritant, and if you practice great commandment and talk about the love of Christ,  you are interesting, but if you do both great commission and great commandment together, you are irresistible.”. Enough of programs, activities and celebrations. If you follow the book of Amos, you would notice God using some strong words in the book of Amos 5:21-24 “I hate all your show and pretense- the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies…..”. Time to revolutionise things for God. 

Just want to leave you with a fact. In India we are still 2.30% though Christianity's presence is seen for 2000 years. Hinduism has reached London only 200 years ago and has achieved significant impact that their current population is 5%. This goes with the world Christian population too. The number of Churches has grown, denominations have increased, fund collection had increased too, but we still are not exactly where we ought to be. Are our statistics indicating something? Ponder over it!

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