Alongside

Do you see a familiar connection between those words above?  Another star has taken that route, we are shocked to hear the untimely death of Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput. He has joined the ever growing list of stars who have chosen the easy way out of life. Couple of years back it was the death of Chester Bennington of the Likin Park fame which  shocked many of the music lovers who had followed him for close to over a decade. But his is just one among the many sudden and untimely deaths of movie stars and musicians at their prime who had either taken their own lives or died in suspicious circumstances. From Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain to Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Prince and now Chester Bennington the list is long. They seemed to have it all, millions of fans following, right at the zenith of fame, multi-millionaires, celebrities in their own right, the who’s who of the Music and film world. But what went wrong for them?   For their fan...

I am not good, I am a failure, or we would have heard from someone,  you are a curse for this family,  you will never succeed in life, you mess up everything that you touch, can you do any thing properly, looser!!  Or it might be, no my sins are not forgiven, i still have guilt feelings, God has not completely forgiven me, does God really love me? I have this weakness and I am addicted to it, I cannot get out of that weakness.  I have inferiority feeling's,  I don't have  confidence, I cannot stand and speak before others, I am not smart like others, why am I not like my other successful friends? why is God not  blessing me? Will I loose my salvation? I am worried and anxious about my future.  Stop a moment, try and listen, we might hear it. These are the lie tapes running in our mind all the time, we hear it, we wrestle with it and for many of us we tend to believe these blatant lies even though we are washed by the blood of Jesus and...

Can we have Joy irrespective of what we are going through in life? Is it possible to experience peace that surpasses all understanding even when everything around us seems to be going topsy-turvy? Does what the Bible promises really come true in my life, then why am I not experiencing it? These might be questions that we struggle with as we try to walk by faith.  Habakkuk the prophet had similar questions, questions more profound and complicated than these, like why are the wicked people prospering and the good ones suffering? Is God not in control of situations? But as he asks those questions, God answers him powerfully in ways only He can and at the end of that discourse  Habakkuk concludes in chapter 3:17-19 " Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no food; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice i...

I won’t be surprised if you are wondering what on earth Jallikattu has got to do with “student leadership and movements”. Well, the recent Jallikattu agitation in Tamil Nadu has a lot to do with it. ( Jallikattu is a traditional bull taming sport culturally intertwined with the ethos of Tamil Nadu, it is deeply and fiercely connected to agrarian culture of the people, their age old tradition of celebrating harvest festival ) This drew thousands of people from all across the state comprising of all age group but the primary group and the most dominant group that led the movement were college students . They were at the forefront of it, leading it, spreading the word, mobilizing the crowds, being the spokesperson, chanting slogans; literally making something that started out as a tiny spark into a wild fire of a massive people movement which brought the entire government machinery to its knees so that they had to take it to the highest authority and get the bill passed. A spontaneou...

Making disciples of Jesus among college students is exciting, to see young lives being transformed, to see them grow and mature, to watch them walking with Jesus and start fishing for men, there is nothing more exhilarating than that. But the sad part is that it is short lived, we get them for a short period of three to four years and they graduate and move on, sometimes staying connected but often clueless on how to plug back in. Then we start all over again with new students, the whole process of evangelism and discipleship and repeat that cycle, often wondering are we making an impact, is it really worth it? It was few years ago I met this man in an unexpected way and as he introduced himself to me he said that he was looking for a staff who had discipled him as a student. That particular staff had left the movement and moved on to another city and had gone on to become a pastor by then. But I was keen to hear more about his story so I probed further. He said that he was ...

Recently one young man with whom I am on a spiritual Journey asked me, “ bro, tell me how can I live a holy life, how can I stay pure ?” This is probably the most pertinent question that has been troubling young men who long to live a life pleasing to the lord. In the longest Psalm that King David wrote; Psalm 119 verse 9 , he raises this same profound question and then he goes on to answer it by making it look so simple, “ by keeping it according to your word ”. One starts wondering, what! Is that so easy? I have been trying my best, but somehow missing the mark, I can’t figure out where exactly I am going wrong. How on earth can I keep all of God’s words and be pure? Every young believer, whom I have come across, genuinely desires to live a life that is holy and pure, the intentions are all there and it is good but most of them fail miserably, it is a struggle for many- falling, failing and scrambling to stand up somehow and moving forward. Well that might be the summ...

Over the years of ministry I have seen many organisation  and movements with compelling vision and talented leaders, some of them have gone forward and accomplished tremendous results, some others are where it was at the beginning – right at the starting blocks, some others have initially boomed but then started stagnating after few years. I have always wondered what makes few leaders, organisations  and movements successful at accomplishing their vision. What makes them tick? If one takes time to analyse  deeply, most of the time we will end up with one word- their vision . Is it crystal clear? How fresh it is? Are they passionate about it? Do they own it? Are they doing the right things about it? Are they envisioning others? Are others catching that vision? Answer to these questions will mostly reveal the secret to their success. Take a look at any successful spiritual movement in the history of Christianity, it was birthed out of a compelling God-given visi...