Your Leader Sets Your Standard

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We need spiritual leaders and their spiritual covering over our lives.  We need pastors and teachers who inspire us to love God’s word, seek God’s kingdom and righteousness.  We need spiritual leaders who will inspire to hope and have confidence in God’s goodness when we face hardships and difficulties in this world.  We need spiritual leaders whose examples are worthy to emulate in loving God and serving people.  We need spiritual leaders in whose presence you find new level of joy and faith in following the footpath of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you have such leaders in your life? Let me share with you one example.

The other day, one of the senior pastors in the city visited my wife and mother (mother-in-law, but we don’t use the language of in-laws in our family).  My father-in-law was a wonderful man whose heart was for God’s kingdom.  During his life time, he helped many pastors and evangelists with financial assistance so that they could continue to work in God’s kingdom.  In God’s time, few years ago his journey on earth ended.  He came to this city for treatment and within ten days departed from here.  For reasons we cannot discuss here, we could not take his body back to Manipur for the burial; we buried him here with the promise that we will not leave him alone.  In the place he is buried, we shall establish a church that will last till Jesus returns was our promise.

My wife is his eldest daughter but married a Nepalese man outside the sanctity of her tribe!  Now, it is a universal knowledge that every tribe in the world thinks it is the only best tribe in the world!  It takes a great deal of humanity to believe that all men are created equal. 

Thus, this man of God visits the house of a widow who lost her loving husband just a couple of years ago and a daughter who married a Nepalese man; for him, something to despise in itself!  Being the man of God he was; he started to comfort these two women, one a widow and another married to a despicable people in his worldview.  To the widow mother he said something like this; “your husband wasn’t a good looking man, physically he was black and short” (as if physical look is what makes a person and to tell the truth, I haven’t seen as good a looking man as my father in law was in the whole of that tribe!) “and morally he was very proud and violent man” (in reality, he was the kindest man that I had ever known and the whole village that he administered as the chieftain can still testify about his kindred spirit).  His ways of comforting a grieving widow was to say “good ridden, you are a free woman now” and then he turned to my wife.  He said, “if you love your people, divorce your husband and come and live with your people”!  My wife sat there without responding him; the things is, whenever my wife is shocked, she becomes tongue-tied; does not know what to say and he thought he had her convinced to divorce her husband. 

You can imagine the mood in a family where we value each other so dearly, so deeply that brothers, sisters, brother in laws and sister in laws, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousin brothers and sisters of many tribes and people feel so deeply connected as a family under the headship of a man who may be absent physically but is very much alive and present by his spirit and legacy. 

We understand the mind of this man of God and don’t hold any grudge against him for insulting us but we grieve for the people.  If you are a spiritual leader, you need to know whether you have the heart of God for the people or whether you are simply driven by the desire to make a living in this world.  Any spiritual leaders who is in the ministry to make a living in this world will not be able to feed the people spiritually; he will always be talking about the things of the world such as food, clothes, name, fame, reputation, power, prestige and so forth.  Most ministers in this part of the world talk about “sponsorships”!!!  But a spiritual leader will inspire you to seek the things from above and make your life on earth much more temporary so that even if you face hardship, you know it is temporary.  One such great spiritual guide says to his believers, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:1-2).  He knew that when the believers set their minds on earthly things, they will be discouraged and disappointed sooner or later but if they set their minds on the things from above, they will never be discouraged.  After all, our lives here on earth are for a short period of time, it is just the rehearsal for eternity.  Therefore, my brothers and sisters, follow leaders that will inspire you to live for eternity instead of this world.

Whatever I feared has come upon me!

Modern science regarding human psychology has helped us to understand the power of imagination.  A person’s sanity or insanity depends on the kind of thinking one is engaged in.  At times we are helpless to think other than what our chemicals in the brain dictate and we call that “mental illness” which is still a taboo to talk about.  So many people could have lived happily if this sickness was accepted as any other physical ailment and treated accordingly.  However, there are other times when we allow our perfect brain to take a wrong course of action in creating a thinking pattern that destroys what could otherwise have been a happy life.  A mind set on good things will see good things come its way and a mind set on bad things will also see them come the same way.  A positive and a faith filled mind almost always enjoys better quality of life than a mind filled with negativity, fear and all kind of anxious thoughts.  Job’s experience provides one such example.

The stature of Job in the Bible is no less than that of Noah or Abraham; he was a giant of a patriarch with credentials like “blameless and upright, greatest man among all the people of the East” (1:1-3).  When we read about him, we enjoy the 20/20 hindsight but he had no such luxury.  As we read him, we have to look at him with his raw feelings and emotions. 

When calamities overtook his entire existence, wiping away his entire family and fortunes; in utter despair Job confesses “what I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me” (3:25). In his relentless pursuit of remaining blameless and upright, Job had this uneasy fear about the possibility of God’s wrath coming upon his family due to some possible reckless behaviors of his children.  Every time his children would a have party, Job would rise up early in the morning and offer burnt sacrifices for each of his children thinking “perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts”(1:5).

Most likely, it was this uneasy dread that opened the door for the Devil to come through his defenses and put him through such a test.  The man however lived up to his credential in the face of unimaginable calamities; his faith in God’s goodness could not be shaken.  But the fact of the matter is that he had feared for such a day; he had in his imagination allowed the possibility of such a day and attempted to prevent it on his own by appeasing God through sacrifices.  There is no way a man can appease God’s wrath on his own, not even a righteous Job could do it.

However, in Christ, God has done away with his wrath that was sure to come upon us.  Today, after thousands of year from Job and under the foot of the Cross, we stand covered by his sacrifice and thus, we can always imagine good instead of bad.  Paul said, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things” (Phil. 4:8).  He goes on to say that “God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us” (Eph. 3:20). 

Therefore, let us think on what our minds think on and if the things that our minds are dwelling upon are not in line with what God’s word has revealed; we better arrest those thoughts and bring them to the obedience of Christ.  Let us pull down the strongholds that are contrary to the promises of God (2 Cor. 10:4-5) and allow our minds to become the minds of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).  Let us imagine about the things that “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him – but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1Cor. 2”9-10).

Sad situation of Korean Prayer Mountains

Once upon a time, many prayer centres like this in beautiful Korean countryside would be filled with noises of people either praying or singing hymns and pouring their hearts to the Lord.  With long history of persecution and suffering, Korean Christians took to the mountains and ravines to cry out to God and thus, the concept of "Prayer Mountain" came into existence.  When freedom came to Korea, when the churches began to flourish; these mountainside prayer centres also came to life.  Even in the remotest part of the country, people could be seen spending days, weeks and even months seeking God in prayer and fasting in these isolated places.  Many successful pastors and their ministries were birthed in some of these places.

Sadly, things have changed so much in so short a period of time.  Starting from the 1990s, the Church that was once no different from the church we see in the book of Acts suddenly began to enjoy the material prosperity brought forth by the industrial revolution of Korea birthed under the dictatorial leadership of strongman, President Park Chung Hee.  

Today, many of such beautiful prayer centres and once hallowed mountainsides have become so deserted.  In one place, we asked the keeper as how often their senior pastor comes to pray there; we were surprised to know that the pastor hasn't visited the place in years.  Though few people visit these places, some of the beautiful chapels are still standing but much of the real-estate has run down with no maintenance.  My wife and I often visit these places and feel the loss of Korean spirituality so deeply.  The picture you see is our last visit to such holy place before we head to India.  As we walk into these abandoned but beautiful places, we could imagine how a few decades ago, people would be crowding there for prayer; hymns would be blasting through the speakers and even people would be shouting out loud their prayers either from the inside the chapels or from the mountain tops. 

If the Korean church leadership does not wake up and begin to seek God, a very sad future awaits for the Korean church and that too very soon.  The hierarchal power structure of the society has heavily influenced the church leadership; the elders and senior pastors who control the church do not appear to be willing to lose their powerful positions by obeying God's will for the church.  They want to continue to enjoy the perks and the powers that come along with it.  Hearing God's voice is a dreadful thing for them because he might call them to relinquish their powers and positions.  Losing power and position in Korean society is a very disgraceful thing and church leadership knows no better alternative.

I wish and pray that once again, Korean Christians will be hungry for God even if their pastors and elders failed to create that hunger in them.  I wish and pray that once again these prayer mountains will be filled with people who would come there to spend the extended time with the Lord.  I wish and pray that the true Korean church we heard about in the 70s and 80s will once again be brought back and give the glory to God that duly belongs to him.

Nothing is impossible with God

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