Speed Breakers ??

I remember seeing a man knocked off the road and lying dead in a pool of blood on a late night last weekend. Couldn't take the picture out of mind for a while. Next day when I met a friend who stays near that place and told him about the accident, he responded saying that's an accident prone road because of the lack of any speed breakers on that road! That made me think a lot about travelling slow, not just in vehicles on the road, but also in this journey called LIFE, especially if you are involved in ministry. Here are a few thoughts that came to my heart, and am sharing it!




Types of Speed Breakers:


Most times these experiences are very instantaneous, we don't see them coming. Speed breakers in Christian life, especially for ministers could fall into one of the following areas of his/her life.

1. It could be a moral breakdown, including mishandling of finances or a character fault showing up or exposed!
2. it can be a tough time one's going through within the family. It could include non-supportive or abusive parents, non-supportive, non-understanding or unfaithful spouses or rebellious children. This, I believe is the toughest speed breaker to overcome! When it's a character fault, it can be dealt with easily than the one with problems within the family.
3. Then it could be mighty opposition from people around you, including believers or also at times problems due to giving in to the peer/lover pressure and the influence of the world around us.
4. It could also be a divinely orchestrated hurdle in your way, like the speaking donkey of Balam, or natural disasters or physical illness like what Job experienced. Remember that Satan cannot move a hair on your head without prior permission from the Supreme Court in heaven!

Whatever be the speed breakers in your life, the bible says, God can turn it around for your good and to build you up. Some of them are mere experiences given to teach you, others are meant to discipline you.


Purpose of Speed Breakers:

• To Slow you down: Sometimes we tend to become time oriented and aim at getting things done and accomplishing projects in a stipulated amount of time that we almost try to run ahead of God's plan or will for our lives. The danger in moving too fast is not just that you would miss the beauty and enjoyment of travelling with God but also that in travelling fast you endanger ignoring, overlooking or clashing against so many lives who were probably expected to be ministered to, by you, had you been a little slow and sensitive to understand that!
• To Refocus your vision: Often when we travel fast we get so caught up with the excitement and the momentum of the ministry and our personal lives that we loose sight of our ultimate destination. We loose sight of our vision, and what God had actually called us for. It is when we are travelling the fastest that we are prone to take the most wrong turns and end up in the wrong destinations!
• To Play by the rules: Speed breakers in our lives and ministry allows us enough time to think and get deeper into the word of God. It gives us enough room to let God's word confront us with the consistent mistakes in our life or ministry and educate us about the divine biblical principles to be applied in life and ministry. As long as our foundations are in line with the word of God, we will be able to stand strong even in the toughest of storms raging against our lives and ministries.
• To Humble you: Paul mentions about the thorn in his flesh. He says, God allowed it in his life to keep him humble! Wow, God could allow things of the enemy in our lives, if that's what takes to keep us humble. Remember, if there's any sin that God hates the most, it is pride, especially spiritual pride! God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Lets not be ones whom the creator of the world will want to resist, but the ones he will want to pour his grace into!
• To Expose your vulnerabilities: Some of these experiences are testing times in our lives trying to tell us what our strengths and weaknesses are. Moses when faced with the opposition in the wilderness realized that he still had a little of the old Egyptian short temper. Such tests coming our way are really healthy, it helps us to avoid a lot of similar experiences in the days ahead.

Biblical Response:
Hebrews 12:1 exhorts us to strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. It says Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joys awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. This is the perfect guideline to overcome hurdles and obstacles coming our way! There are some speed breakers that cannot be categorized as sin, that will still slow us down. Slowing down is essential and important, however that does not mean we loose the momentum and continue to move slow! Not at all! These are the last days, perhaps the last minutes or seconds! We cannot spend an entire lifetime overcoming speed breakers! We have to overcome everything, that slows us down, whether sinful or not! Else we will become stagnant. How do we do it? By keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, on his lifestyle, on his ministry style, on the way he handled relationships, the way he handled the storms in his life, the way he handled oppositions to his ministry! He is the author and also the finisher of our faith! Let us look at him and let us endure the speed breakers in our lives, disregarding the shame in it but never failing to press on to the upward and heavenly call we have in Christ Jesus!


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Tips For Counselling

Here's a practical post for people who are involved in counselling and ministering to people. Its contributed by a psychologist friend of mine by the name Vini Lillian from Hyderabad. I pray that the Holy Spirit who is the best counselor ever will impart into us his quality of being sensitive to people and their needs. Please feel free to leave comments and opinions.

A wholesome view of reaching out.

• Introduction -

Here are a few things that I have heard around the corner.

• Why is he making a big deal out of that? It is only a small issue.
• He smokes and drinks. He must be a bad person
• Counselors are for those people who do not know Christ.
• Christians do not need a counselor.
• I have counseled him. I told him never to do that. But he still does not listen.

May be its time we widen our horizons. Everyone goes through problems big or small. But sometimes they might need help from outside to deal with them. Let us have a look at what counseling is all about.

• What is counseling?

Let us have a quick peek into counseling. It definitely is NOT GIVING ADVICE. It is being able to listen, understand and help an individual to resolve his/her issues.
There are three levels of looking at some one's problems.

• Pity - Feeling sorry for some one
• Sympathy - Feeling sad for some one
• Empathy - Feeling what the other person feels

People expect the the third level. Placing yourself in their shoes and seeing their perspective. It is not easy. It comes with a lot of practice.

Counseling Principles : - Some of the basic principles of counseling are

• • Mutual Respect - The person who comes to you to share his/her problems is most likely to feel apprehensive. Any sign of disrespect will be picked up by them immediately and everything you try doing for them will backfire.
  • Confidentiality and Trust - Most times people share intimate detail. We lose their trust in us when we share it with others without their consent.
  • Empathy - To be able to understand what emotions the other person is going through is empathy. An example from the Bible is in Job 2:12 - 13. When Job’s friends saw him they did not just sympathize but were part of his suffering.
  • Acceptance - To be able to accept the person irrespective their backgrounds, their behavior or their habits.

• Counseling in Ministry - It’s Importance

As Christian leaders we not only need to understand the spiritual aspect of people but also their psychological issues.

Each person’s issue is HUGE for himself. What may seem like a molehill to us can be a mountain for the person going through a crisis. As Christian leaders we are to show compassion which helps us reach out. It is human nature to get judgemental about people but as Christ could accept even a prostitute we are also expected to accept each and everyone as they are.

To reach out at the spiritual level in a person you need to pass through the emotional realm. We can make a start by applying these basic principles of Counseling.

• Personal issues

Just because we have accepted Christ does not mean that we wont have issues to deal with. Everyday is a battle in itself. There are times when we get bogged down with problems. There are times we need to share it to someone. There are times we breakdown. That is why the Bible says in Galatians 6:2 “Carry each other’s burdens...” As leaders I feel we must make it a point to spend time sharing our burdens; not just spiritual one’s but also emotional issues that we struggle with day-to-day. It would help if we form small groups and spend time sharing about each other’s issues and help each other grow.

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"PRAYing" Harvesters

Any christian leader or minister will agree with me that prayer is of course the driving force behind an individual or a church that is alive and vibrant in ministry. However we will run into trouble the moment we discuss how much time, money and effort we are investing into prayer! Making statements that our actions and lifestyle doesn't support is hypocrisy! Let's admit it, we have lost the focus when it comes to the area of prayer.



Just want to bring to your attention that we have more worship concerts, evangelistic ventures and conferences than we have prayer meetings. That was not the case of the first century church. For them, prayer was an integral part of their everyday agenda. (Acts 2:42) If only we will come down to living and practicing everything that the first century church did, we would be shaking nations and turning cities upside down like they did!

Prayer and Prophecy
Do you remember how Daniel prayed? When he was going through the prophecies of Jeremiah, he understood that they would be released from the captivity at the end of the 70 years. It says, he fasted and prayed till he received a word from God! How would we respond if we were in a similar situation? Please remember that, Daniel was in a very high and comfortable position in Babylon. He was honored by almost every king and his kingdom. But Daniel's heart was set wholly on Jerusalem. How often, we get super comfortable with the positions and titles the world gives us and forget the true purpose for which we have been called? Since Daniel was in such a high position in the kingdom, he could have appealed to the king for the release of the Jews! He could have entered into the politics behind making things happen, Instead he chose to pray! The scripture is filled with examples of people who chose to pray over unfulfilled prophecies! The praying Nehemiah, The Prophetess Anna, The Apostles and the first century church! How often we miss out on the fulfillment of prophetic utterances because we decided to act upon it rather than to pray over it!!

Need Prayer Warriors
We have many people today who prophecy revival over our nation! The need of the hour is people who will claim this prophetic words and seek God till all heaven shows up! We are so often caught up with sending out missionaries and mission funds! Well, it is not wrong to do that! However, more important is that we will pray to the Lord of harvest to send forth laborers. Gone are the days when we used to think praying for souls is the duty of the pastors and the evangelists. It is the responsibility of every born again Christian who is in the spiritual battlefield to seek God for a revival fire over our lost world. Prayer is like the oil that keeps the lamp burning! Remember the story of the Ten Virgins? We can either be lazy and foolish, saying we have a prayer team in the church who are doing the job or we could be wise and prayerful and take upon ourselves the job of standing in the gap.

Authoritative Prayer
God expects us to pray with authority. When we pray, we not only move the hand of God, but also tear down the powers of the darkness. Remember that one of the element in Lord's prayer is the phrase "Deliver us from the evil one" (Matthew 6:13) In prayer we have the authority to bind and loose things in the heavenlies. (Matthew 16:19) How often people continue to live in depression, oppression and bondage of the enemy because there was lack of Authoritative Christian Prayers! If you are really interested in the area of spiritual warfare I would like to recommend to you a book Possessing the Gates of the Enemy by Cindy Jacobs.

The voice of God resounds through the ages "if MY people who are called by MY name humble themselves, and pray and seek MY face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" 2 Chronicles 7:14 I pray that we wil be the generation that will positively respond and take up the challenge to bring to fulfillment the promise in that verse. Click here to watch a video of a prayer movement in Africa. Let us do so and more, let us meet up for prayer in small groups, as churches, as cities and as nations to intercede and to exercise our authority!!