I've been a Christian my entire life. I was brought up in a Christian home and was taught Christian values by a set of parents who lead by example. My parents are far from perfect but they trained us in the way we should go and they did their best to instill in us the value of God's word and the power of His grace. Growing up I had the utmost respect and godly fear for my parents. I have had my moments of rebellion in my teens and twenties but I believe that it is the power of the prayers of my parents covering me, that always brought me back to the place of humility that I needed to be but even more than that it was always the consideration that I was mothered by a woman so humble and with such a heart of gold, my conscience would not allow me to stray too far from the values filtered down from watching this woman be. My dad always makes fun of the fact that my mother is uneducated but there is something that my mother has in her that no lesson in no classroom could teach yet probably the one thing that every human being has to have to have any form of decency and peace within.
I have lately been asking myself the question, what does it mean to be Christian because these are the values that I desperately want to, need to pass down to my children. I want my children to be leaders and not followers. I want them to have that humility that leaders like Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa & Nelson Mandela had and looking around today, in politics, in religion, on TV, where are those leaders? Where is that confidence in a leader that says I know who I am and will die for what I believe in. I will not be shaken by the demands of the crowd or be swayed by the ways of the world. I will make sacrifices to help my fellow man...
Like Mandela, Ghandi, Jesus & Mother Theresa, my mother displays the true heart of a real leader. The heart that leads by example. The heart that acts more and speaks less. The heart that doesn't need to do something radical to prove a point but in simply being who they are, lives are touched and people are drawn to them.
Where are these leaders? Politicians are acting in their own best interest. All talk and no action. Christian pastors and priests living lives so far from the life that Christ lived that it is blasphemous to say the least? Christian leaders who preach from the pulpit that it is ok to take a drink and who talk about investing time in people being a waste of time ... did Jesus take a drink, was Jesus ever offended by the actions of man? Even in the face of death, He acted in a way that displayed the amazing grace of God. That same grace that covers all my sins and yours.
It breaks my heart and I often wonder what God is thinking... how His heart must not be breaking every single day and yet God will never say that His investment in any man is a waste of time.
One of the things that makes a Christian different from other "religion" is the fact that we believe that we have been saved by grace. It is the amazing grace of God and in the death of His son Jesus that we have been saved and as a leader, especially a Christian leader it is one's duty to have the same grace that Jesus had even in the face of death.
The other thing that I believe makes being a Christian so unique is the fact, that like Jesus we are to live sacrificial lives and how many Christians today are willing to sacrifice anything for the next person? I believe that as Christians we are all called to live sacrificial lives as Jesus did but instead of putting this into practice we are living lives that says it is all about me and what I can gain...
It is with a heavy heart, this evening that I will sacrifice some of my time before I lay my head to rest to intercede on behalf of these so-called leaders and ask for the amazing grace of God to cover them but also for them to be brought to their knees and be reminded what it means to be a real leader. I will also pray that God raise up more leaders like Jesus, Mother Theresa, Ghandi & Mandela because it is desperately needed more so today than any other time in History.
