On who’s side are you leaning on..?

The kernel thought for this entry is from the book”Be a people person – By John C.Maxwell”.I’ve added a few modifications and some emphasis, the colored lines are those picked verbatim from the book.

Is there a challenge set before you to face ?
Is trouble holding you hostage ?
Is there a huge army waiting to wage a war against you ?
Are you endeavoring with all your might for a breakthrough ?

You are God’s anointed and you operate in the strength and power of God.You have seen God’s hands work miraculous wonders through you and in you, and when you remind yourself of your past victories, you begin to believe more stronger that you’ll see success this time as well.

A great confidence booster is a personal victory list of past successes and achievements. This is a biblical concept which we can learn from two Bible characters who practiced this: Samson and David.

Both of them were very successful in the things that they were doing.Samson defeated the Philistines in all his encounters and David proved himself to be a brave shepherd.

But note what their success did to them.

In Judges 16:20 we read: “And she[Delilah] said, ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’And he awoke from his sleep and said,’I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.’But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.’

Now let’s read about David in 1 Samuel 17:37: “And David said,’The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.’ And Saul said to David, ‘Go, and may the Lord be with you.”

The strong similarities between these two men were that

• They were both chosen, ordained and anointed by God.
• They both were leaders of Israel at a time when Israel was battling against the Philistines.

But it was something about what their successes did to them that made Samson a loser and David a victorious king.

Samson wanted to please himself, he used the resources given by God to fulfill his lust and his own desires.

When a new challenge was set before him , he was so alienated from God that he was on the lap of Delilah. He lived life in the flesh, depending on his own strength, and the evidence of his past successes when he was going into battle.He felt no need to rely upon God and therefore chose the road to ultimate defeat.

His desire was not to please God with what was given to him rather to use it for his own benefit.

Unlike Samson, David desired to please God.When the challenge to defeat Goliath was set before him, he proclaimed his victory list by giving God the glory.He knew that, left to his own resources, he was already defeated.So he called upon the Lord and went to battle with divine help.The rest is history.

For David, this episode with Goliath was the beginning of his leadership.It was the incident that brought him to a position where God could greatly use him.

We need to be victorious in everything we do and every battle we face.That’s God’s desire too. God gives us a few victories to see what we are doing with it.If we are using every promotion, every new blessing and every level up for His honor. He will give us a victory that will put us in a position where He can use us mightily and honor us greatly.

But if we’re going to use your successes on yourself, we’ll have to live a long mediocre life satisfying our ego by talking about our past.

Its time we ask ourselves,

What have we done with our past successes ?

Have our successes made us so self seeking that we are now resting on Delilah’s lap ?

Do we remember that we see success only by His strength, and no one is self-made ?

How do we chose to face the challenge set before us today ?

Have we realized our inadequacy ?

Let us move forward, face the challenge, fight the battle for His glory by relying on His strength. Then we’ll always be on the winning side.

God can make the rich young ruler follow Him too…

The rich young ruler could not renounce his worldly possessions in order to follow Christ Jesus.Jesus remarks, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God?”

But then Jesus proceeds to make a divine proclamation, “What is impossible with men is possible with God!”

God’s Word never fails; the impossible are coming to pass today.

My friend forwarded me a link to Outlook India magazine, an article written by the editor of Outlook Business, Anand Mahadevan.

An amazing testimony indeed. I believe this is the kind of worshipers that God is looking for, people fervently seeking a relationship with God and not a religious identity. I don’t want to copy paste the article here, because the effect of reading it in the midst of other national and international news is truly mind blowing and I don’t want you to miss it.

I, The Convert : My conversion was not a change of religion but a change of heart – Anand Mahadevan

61 Summers after Independance

I wanted to write an entry on the 61st Indian Independance Day, but me not being a die-hard patriot I just could’nt think about what to write, All I did was to pray for the country God put me in.

I’ve been reading a book called “Games Indians play by V.Raghunathan”. I am alomost at the end of it, There’s a little something in the book, that I thought would be appropriate to put up here because it conveys all my thoughts about the great Indian country entirely. I’d like thank Mr.V Raghunathandoesn’t for contributing his intellectual and real insights through his book.

So here it is, which was supposed to be here on 15th August..Better late than never!!

If we can launch rockets but get nowhere
Fire missiles, but not our passions to excel,
Build aircraft but cannot fly our dreams;
If we can build oil rigs, cyclotrons and atomic plants,
But not our character,

Make heavy machinery and earth moving equipment,
Yet not move heaven and earth to improve our fate;
If we can grow enough grain, but not care enough to store them,
Allow half our population to go hungry, with malnutrition and ill health still our national visage;

If our population is well over a billion, and
Still doubling over thirty five years, what we innocently call our leadership
Turns family planning into a bad phrase;

If 400 million and more are still strangers to basic essentials in life
An equal number effectively illiterate and
A girl child still an object of rejection;
If our water table is beginning to get lower than oil,
Our rivulets and canals get desiccated,
Our seas, river, brooks saturated with refuse and effluents;

If open sewage in our midst froths pink, blue and green,
With such blatant chemical pollution a rule rather than exception and
Our reaction to these sights as best phlegmatic;

If half of our country still performs its morning ablutions under the open skies and
We are blissful being the world’s largest open-air lavatory, with basic hygiene and human dignity nobody’s concern;

If elephants and rhinos, leopards and tiger are fast disappearing,
Our mountains turning naked and barren with denudation,
Forests disappearing rapidly under the onslaught of deforestation;

If cows, donkeys, horses, even camels can roam the busiest of streets,
With us incapable of arriving at a collective solution to the problem and
In the name of compassion, subject the poor animals to the worst indignities;

If our national monuments are in a state of abject neglect,
Even a Taj Mahal stands upon a pile of a town’s refuse and indifference with Tourism a mere caricature of its potential;

If our public transport is perennially choking,
Our hospital lobbies resemble railway platforms and
Our cities, towns and villages a vast compost heap;

If our railway stations and drainage pipes are dwellings to zillions,
Sidewalks, if there, unavailable to pedestrian, and
Our traffic signals obeyed in infraction than compliance;

If our children are interviewed and waitlisted for nursery admission,
A class XII child with 90 percent cannot make it to the nearest college and
IITs, et al. brimming with 2, 00,000 applications and more for a handful of seats;

If we have to bribe a babu to pay our land taxes, and
We can get a ‘RTO license to kill’’ without
a driving test with
Corruption in a government department a rule not exception
If our bureaucracy is not a service but a power centre;
And a system so corrupt that
85 per cent leakage in intended fundings nationally acceptable, with
Local administrations in cities, towns and villages a mere parody;

If a weak rupee is our best ticket to exports,
Quality, scale and punctuality at best secondary concerns, and
Basic R&D still beyond the horizon;
If it takes three to mow a lawn, and we still
Erect buildings loading bricks on the heads of your women,
With Our pace of change and productivity long the slowest and lowest in the world;

If petitions are piled sky-high in every court
of the land, with
Justice nearly impossible to find in one’s lifetime (if then), and
Our dehumanized jails overflowing even as crime rates continue to soar;
IF shanghai alone surpasses Indian’s total exports three times over, and
India’s total port capacity by about the same margin, and India’s total foreign direct investment over ten times;

If, as a people, we have lost our sensitivity to the misery and mediocrity around us, and
The only value system we can pass on to the next generation is that of
Cynicism, opportunism and corruption;

If our standards of satisfaction and excellence lie lower
than the soles of our feet and
We are not filled with a sense of shame
At the gap between our rightful place in the world and the present one;

Surely it’s time to introspect collectively?

I guess this is why I prayed for my country on Independance day instead of singing praise for my nation.