Alongside

Many so called spiritual movements that started out forty to fifty years back with much passion and fervour, have ceased to be movements today, I am not going to name them, but you might definitely know some of them. Many are on the verge of becoming fossilised relics with nothing to show other than their past glory and their dilapidated buildings and properties for which the present members are shamelessly bickering and fighting lawsuits for the spoils.  Many have died painful slow death with the passing away of their original founders and leaders. Some of them are on life support, struggling to keep afloat with the changing times and few of them are hurtling towards the black hole of no return blissfully unaware of their condition or seeming to be not aware? But some of them like the sons of Issachar, "men who understood the times" have been careful to reinvent, revive and replenish their movements to come back with even greater passion and vision to remain on the cu...

Are you interested in making disciples? Are you desirous of being obedient to the great commission of our Lord? You might be going, nope! that is not for me, that is for the missionaries and the church to figure out. Well it doesn’t look so in the Bible when we read Mathew 18:18-20 , the last few words of the Lord here on this earth. If you even take a casual look at it, leave alone studying it in depth, it is pretty obvious that it is a clear mandate given to everyone who follows Him and who will follow him in the future, it is not optional, it is an invitation for every believer to  labour  with Him in making disciples. If you are considering this seriously let me begin by reminding that there are no short cuts or easy methods here. To start with there are two ground rules which are unchanging and  non- negotiable -  the first one is to be continuously controlled and empowered by the Holy Spirit as He is the one who helps us to be a bold witness and ...

In September 2013, NOKIA announced that they had been acquired by Microsoft in a deal valued at $7.17 billion.   At the time, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop ended his speech with the following words. “ We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost .” Such an ending is devastation considering Nokia used to own a large portion of the smartphone market share before the iPhone came out in 2007. In a   Linkedin   blog post by Ziyad Jawabra, he notes that while Nokia technically did nothing wrong, it was their refusal to change and learn new things that ultimately lead to their demise. Jawabra wrote: “ They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they lost the opportunity at hand to make it big. Not only did they miss the opportunity to earn big money, they lost their chance of survival.” “The advantage you have yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow. You don’t have to do anything wrong, as long as your competitors catch t...

The past three and half years has been an exhilarating roller-coaster ride for the eleven. Called from their routine, mundane and ordinary life to an exciting adventure of a life time which they had never imagined in their wildest dreams when they decided to obey and follow this extraordinary Man and His call. They had been with Jesus, following Him everywhere He went, listening to him speaking words of life, watching Him healing the blind, the lame and the demon possessed, raising the dead and calming the storm.  One thing was clear in their minds; He was the promised messiah, the eagerly awaited King of the Jews, a descendant of their great and beloved king David. They genuinely expected Jesus to restore the Kingdom and to establish His rule. But the last few weeks of those three and half years had been really confusing for them, their expectations were shattered, their dream of a kingdom lay in ruins, they were on the run, terrified and lost. Their master was caught, b...