Reopen the wells!

“Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and that the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died. He gave them the names his father had given them.”.

This is a passage where it talks about Isaac digging the wells and reopening it once again which was closed up by the Philistines. Isaac had a right to these wells by reason of the old covenant between his father Abraham and the king. Hence when his claim was resisted, he abandoned the well. Every time he dug and opened the closed well, they strove and claimed it. And finally, the Bible says, “he dug another, and they did not quarrel over it. He named it Rehoboth.”. (Genesis 26:22).

In this new year I challenge you to look into the closed wells of your life. What are the gifts left unoperated? What are the services that you did effectively for the Lord have you abandoned because of people's resistance? God has graciously extended a year in your life and it is worth taking a stock of all that is left abandoned. You may have so many reasons as to why you have abandoned, and that’s ok. Can you reconsider reopening the wells that give fresh waters? Look unto the Lord for his help and mercy in this new year.

In order to dig and unearth the closed wells the first step would be to dig out all the trash and the dirt that closed your potentials and your ability to connect to God. Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 says, “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”. Paul reiterated this because the little deceptions, little insincerities and little subtleness can spoil the purpose for which you have been called and further block the wells of your life. Find out how with new fresh commitment in your personal life and in your ministry, you can accelerate to have power and influence to transform many lives.

This is a year of opportunity, may we all seriously find ways to enrich our relationship with God and find ways to open up the areas where we were once effective for God in carrying out the great commission (the sole purpose of every individual). Be refueled by God’s sovereign power once again and be a well that is capable of giving fresh water always.

Consider the massive number of people who have little or no access to the gospel. Are you comfortable with such darkness? What will you and your church do about it?

Population: 7.67 Billion

Population unreached: 3.19 Billion

% Population in unreached: 41.6%

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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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Why your vision fails?

“Vision” as I always state is a big word packed with so much of meaning that it needs to be internalized, articulated, documented (Habakkuk 2:2) and intentionally walk the journey. God gave me the vision to take up this ministry “SHEFA” and walk alongside the Churches to help them develop the ministry blueprint and pave the roadmap. In this journey, I could learn so many important lessons that further enhanced my perspective to help Churches (body of Christ) in an entirely different manner.

One of my key observation in the ministry is to find many people who are running around overtaking many others, but they are without a message or a purpose like Ahimaz. They always want to run as at other times (2 Sam 18:22), failing to understand that those who are waiting at the doorpost are waiting with a desire, a purpose and an expectation. Though Ahimaz was a good man, he could not impress David because he had no message. If you notice in this story, Cushi was not a usual runner but could impress the king because he had a message. Lets ponder over few questions listed below:

What is your message?

Why are you running?

Of what purpose is your speed?

Why are you overtaking others?

Noah Simpe in his book “Purpose & Pursuits” puts it this way, ‘It is said about achievers, that they are people based on the purpose & vision set goals and succeed in doing them. You are designed and programmed by God to be an achiever. You are born to fulfil a purpose; a purpose is the program of God almighty. We are mercenaries on earth, invading this planet to take over its kingdoms for our God.’.

Theologian Howard Hendricks said, “If it’s a mist in the pulpit, it’s a fog in the pew.”. Please consider this, if your vision is unclear to you, it will never be clear to the people in your Church/organization. Vision needs to be reiterated consistently. You need to find ways to step up the vision casting into the rhythm of your Church/organization. Vision should evoke emotions. Remind yourself of the vision every day and ask this question, why you are doing what you are doing and what is at stake?

During my sessions with Pastor/leaders especially while I keenly listen to them with an intention to develop a ministry blueprint and a roadmap, I find the testimonies of Pastors/leaders so inspiring and God ordained. But when I observe the current state of their ministry and their work there is dichotomy. It's far from the vision they received. In some cases the ministry has become stagnant and in other cases their Mission is successfully institutionalized and running the show without creating much impact.

King David in Psalms 139:16 states, “Your eyes saw me when I was formless, all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.”. Avoid planning activities in random. Note, Noah was given a blueprint for building the ark, Joseph translated the vision to a blueprint to save the people from famine, Moses had a blueprint for building a tabernacle, David had a blueprint for getting the temple erected, the list is endless in the Bible. Keep your vision moving and you move along with it.

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Vision-Purpose Unfolded

How crucial is having a vision for you? It is the holy grail that's reiterated in Christendom today. Without a doubt it is the most crucial thing in life because Bible states that "Where there is no vision people perish....." Proverbs 29:18 (KJV). In other words without a ‘vision’ we cannot unfold the purpose of God in our life. Martin Luther explains vision this way, “You cannot move from where you are until you see beyond where you are.”. You must have a dream otherwise whatever is not your vision can never be your portion in life. You will lose the purpose for what you have been created, if your heart cannot conceive.

“A vision provides the focus for the ministry and will enable the leader to keep his followers to move in one direction towards the ultimate goal. It is the skill of an effective leader to articulate the vision in such a way that everyone understands it and wants to participate in it. A vision statement provides direction and a target for the church/organization or even individuals.  It is a tool to help the organization fulfill what God has called it to do.”.

A clear Vision provides 3 things.

1.    Why we are here: Our purpose

2.    Where are we going: A picture of the future

3.    What guides us along the way: What we value!

Stay with me as I unfold how to culminate to a vision or a dream. Finding a vision to move forward towards a specific mission is not conditioned to dreams alone. Let me categorize few major heads to find direction to unfold the purpose in your life:

1.    A specific vision/dream from God or God speaking to man for achieving a specific mission:                 

Pharaoh had a dream (Genesis 41:1-7) for Egypt which was wrapped in mystery. Joseph had an opportunity to unfold it to a specific, meticulous strategy and workplan.

Moses: God spoke to Moses in Mt Sinai to build the tabernacle (Exodus 24:18; 25:8)

Jeremiah: God specifically called Jeremiah to warn Judah and return to Lord God. (Jeremiah 1:8;10)

2.    A strong desire or aspiration to fulfill something for God:

David had a strong desire to build a place, an abode for God (1 Chronicles 17:1-2). What is your burning desire and how it falls under the Biblical framework.

3.    Sensitizing about the Problem and getting the person to act. (Can be from God or from an anointed man of God):

God reminded Moses of the serious problem Israelite were facing, the slavery in Egypt. Moses was asked to be the conduit and bring the people out from bondage (Exodus 3:7; 10)

Esther was challenged by Mordecai to redeem the Jew who were soon prepared to be annihilated (Esther 3:13; 4:8,14)

4.    Getting to know about the problem and act on it:

Nehemiah: He heard about the broken walls of Jerusalem and was burdened and acted on it (Nehemiah 1: 1-4). The problem that is overwhelming you is the missionary call to act upon it.

5.    Obedience to the edicts of God:

Edicts of God are as follows -

Great commission is to preach the gospel and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20) 

Great Commandment of God is to love God and to love the neighbors (Mark 12:30-31), and 

Great Compassion is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the strangers, help the sick, visit those in prison etc. (Matthew 25:36-40). 

Here, no one is exempted. Everyone who is His disciple is mandated to be involved in the mission of God.

It's worth to ponder which of the above categories you fall under as a Church, organization or individual. May God help you in fulfilling His purpose in your life through visions and dreams.

(To influence people on vision, strategies, developing a Ministry blueprint for Church and organization through seminars is my ministry. I would be glad to help you out in the same for your ministry.)

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"Ichabod- the glory has departed"

Every name has a meaning and it is obvious people live up to their names. People are careful while choosing names, they ensure it makes much sense and it is noteworthy. What does your name mean? Does your name reflect you?

Let me draw your attention to the incident where Israel loses the battle during Eli's period and at the same time his daughter-in-law gives birth to a boy whom she names Ichabod- which meant the glory has departed. A sad name the child had to live with all his life, right? In this case it displays two meaning one the child's father, Eli's son was extremely wicked and secondly the heights of Israel's lawlessness at that time due to which the protection of God was removed.

Today some people have their names to which its meaning is so inspiring and noteworthy but live like Ichabod in a state where the glory has departed already. They may be great worship leader, or a powerful speaker yet live with the departed glory. It is spoken about such people who are "walking encyclopedia but living failures". 

Same is the case of many glorious Churches once, but now lost all glory and just survive for their existence. In the book of Haggai, it talks about the magnificent temple of Solomon and it goes like this, ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now?. .’ Haggai 2:3 CSB. But praise God He is not giving up on us or on the Church He promises to restore the glory. 

We know Moses and Stephen (Acts 6:15), become a person like Jesus, a person with a shining face. The glory of the Lord was with them. In the case of Moses, as Warren Wiersbe says, 'It was the godly influence of the woman who raised him, his mother, Jochebed? Her name means “Jehovah is glory.” Whenever Moses heard his mother’s name, he was reminded that “Jehovah is glory.” The glory of men and nations lasts as long as the flowers and grass in the backyard, but the glory of God lasts forever. That’s the glory we want to choose. As leaders, we are responsible to restore God's glory in the lives of people who have lost it.

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