A Light In A Dark World

Sometime back I was speaking at one of the opening sessions of the senate in one state, and the senator who hosted us took us out for lunch afterwards, Crin was with me at that time, we went and had lunch together. And he wrote me a beautiful letter after that, and I sent it to my entire board for them to read it. And in that he pours his heart out, how frustrating it gets, how lonely it gets, how discouraging it gets, but they are there in a place because they need to be a light in a dark world.

I remember one member of parliament in Ottawa, I've tried to address their member, their breakfast, taking us out afterwards and talking to Margi and me. He says, "You'll know how many times I wanted to walk away from this position: it's very hard, very hard and very lonely". He said, "But I'm only here because I'm called in my nation to serve God here, and I will continue to remain here". One of our previous presidents, when I was alone with him before I went to speak at the prayer breakfast, he just said to me in that room how dreadfully lonely life had become for him. Dreadfully lonely, but he elacerated from every direction, attacked from every direction, and if your conscience is calling you in a certain direction, right or wrong, you make the blunder, or you do the right thing. The fact of the matter is, somebody will always want to take you to task.

Leadership is critical, but I want to point out something for you that is indispensable in leadership. In India there is a very well-known film actor, his name is Shahrukh Khan, they call him Srk. He's one of these good looking guys, and every actress' dream is to be costarring with Shahrukh Khan. He's the big name there, they are the Bollywood icons. I remember one young actress I met, and she was very happy to tell me that she was about to be starring in a movie opposite Shahrukh Khan: it didn't matter one wit to me but it meant the world to her. Shahrukh Khan's fame has started to plummet and he's behaving in an unseemly way in the public eye, and only an Indian journalist could have written an article like this. Listen to what he says, "Shahrukh Khan and the case of the imploding star".

And the journalist is called Avirook Sen, and he says this, "Out there in the cosmos stars that shine much brighter than the sun dies spectacular deaths that are caused by the heavy hearts. Their core possesses such a great mass, that gravity fuses gases into increasingly weightier elements. Sulfur, magnesium, silicon... And finally iron. Iron of the core of a star means death for a star, because the energy consumed infusing the elements into iron is greater than the energy released during the fusion process. With no energy radiating outwards the gravity of iron at its center results in the rest of the star collapsing upon itself at tremendous velocity".

As one website puts it in astronomy, "The star starts consuming itself from the inside out". And the journalist says this, "Are these the kinds of cosmic forces that are causing the implosion of Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan"? Ego, iron at the center, the heavy sense of who you really think you are. I've often talked to my team, and I say this to them again as I say it to myself, if in any one moment any one of us thinks we're the cat's whiskers, and thinks we've got all the intellect going and all the education going, and we're some pretty big deal, that's iron at the core beginning to bring about your implosion. Humility is the Hallmark, it is the Hallmark of a great leader, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant. Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, therefore, God also has exalted him and given to him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.

I have been in this work for 40 years, and sometimes when I have stepped behind the pulpit with the greatest sense of certainty that the message is well organized and well outlined, I've made the biggest blunders in those messages. At other times where I've walked in there terrified that I don't have this thing together at all, you walk out and you say to yourself God was there. Michael told me when he came back from speaking in Lison, he felt totally confused while he was delivering his message, he got his beginning in the end and the end in the beginning. And you know, all over the world that I've traveled, people have mentioned the message to me, how anointed and how rich and how powerful it was, and the response that he actually got from it.

I'll never forget when I was in McGill University recently: it's a liberal university in Montreal, Canada. I had just literally come from the U.N. Speaking that morning, flying out that afternoon, doing an open forum that night, doing a faculty lunch on the next day, and my final message on why Jesus, to this packed audience at McGill, I walked in there totally exhausted: totally exhausted just from flying and the intensity of just one U.N. engagement, trying to do this.

I want you to know that at half way through that message (after 40 years I can say things like this) in the middle of that message I sensed God saying to me at that moment, "I'm with you. I'm on you. I'm anointing this, you are preaching my tRuth. Keep doing it. Keep preaching" — there was a sense in which your body was responding to the intensity of God's presence. I wish I could tell you you always sense that. But I can tell you this, out of the four talks there, when I was at my weakest, God gave the richest anointing. There is no reason for self or ego in the calling in this work or any other work, and if politicians are so exalted in themselves, beware of them, they are dangerous to themselves, to their family, and to the nation. It is only the humble that God has promised to exalt.

The wisdom that comes from above is the wisdom that God wants us to have.

- Ravi Zacharias (The Skeptic's View V)