Dear Friend,
We at Leader Formation International are delighted to share the lessons learned while traveling the globe proclaiming the message God has entrusted to us. We take the title for this series from the opening story, but each account challenges us as leaders to become the kind of real men and women God calls us to be as He forms and then uses us as the hands of Christ in the lives of our followers.
We hope you will find the lessons presented here to be insightful, refreshing, and encourages you follow Christ in leading others.
Bill Lawrence
Leader Formation International
Recently Lynna and I were at the Wilanow Palace in Warsaw, Poland, where we saw an amazing sight.
Just as we arrived we saw a bride and bridesmaid and thought, "O, great, we'll get to see a wedding at the palace today."
A little while later we saw a band getting off a bus, dressed in beautiful black and gold uniforms, and we thought, "Wow, a wedding and a concert at the palace. What a wonderful day."
Not long after this, while walking under a canopy of trees, we saw a tall, stately man wearing a long black and gold coat, pants with a gold stripe down the side, and carrying a baton in his hand--obviously the leader of the band.
The weather was perfect as we wandered around the palace grounds, by the ponds, past the meadows, and along the lake and eventually came into a neo-Renaissance garden with lovely flowers, green grass, and walkways. This was surrounded by benches where a few people were sitting. Next to this was the palace, first started in the 15oos by King Jan II who had defended Vienna against the Turks and kept Europe out of the Ottoman Empire.
We discovered that the band was gathering and getting set up to play. Just as we entered the garden area, the band leader came in with a woman wearing a beautiful off the shoulder full-length black gown and took her in front of the band. We concluded that the band was going to play for the wedding, and we decided to watch.
There were a couple of things that seemed unusual. For one thing there were no guests that I could see. And for another there was a woman there, very casually dressed, who was carrying what we in the United States would call a ghetto blaster or a boom box, a radio and CD player capable of being very loud.
There was a videographer in from of the band set up to shoot video and there was a photographer taking still shots as well. Then we noticed the and groom enter from the far side of the garden and walk parallel to the palace, so I thought the wedding was about to begin.
Then the woman with the boom box played a number and the band director led the band, all with horns to their mouths, the bass drummer swinging his stick, and woman in the black gown sang and twirled and curtsied--but no one made a sound. The horns never played, the drummer never hit the drum, and the singer never sang a I thought it was a rehearsal in which the band was listening to how the music should be played before actually performing. I did notice another strange thing, though, and that was that the groom, as he was the bride, had a white in his hand.
We were waiting for the wedding when finally it struck me going on. It was a lip-sync wedding. There was not going to be a wedding, the band was never going to play, the woman was never going to sing. They were pretending.
Next we saw another bride and groom, and another and another and another--twenty or thirty couples getting their pictures taken in front of the palace and in the garden.
You see, any bride in Warsaw can come to the Wilanow Palace and have a lip-sync wedding. She can be a princess on her wonderful day and before her prince loses
his charming--she can have her picture taken with the band and the singer in the beautiful gown and, voila, she can have her wedding at the palace.
A lip-sync wedding! What a clever idea, don't you think?
But what about lip-sync living?
Now that's another story.
You know what I mean. Lip-sync living is when we arrange our lives so we always look good, always look in control, always look as if we have it all together when, in fact, our lives may be failing apart. But we never let anyone know that. We can never admit we are unready for a crown. We can never admit we need a cross.
And, of course, lip-sync living must mean lip-sync love--when we say we love, but we never let anyone close to us or let anyone see us in our vulnerability or need.
And lip- sync love has to lead to lip-sync leadership--leadership that must always be right, always be in control. always be safe. and must never ever face the reality of the cross.
Peter was a lip-sync leader--a man ready for a crown, but who thought like Satan because he pursued his crown without the cross. Jesus had to correct this mistaken thinking.
We can be lip-sync leaders, too, acting as if we know exactly what we" re doing, where we're going, how we're going to get there, working to maintain control because we can never let our followers know what's really going on inside of us. The problem is they sense it. They know we don't have a handle on what we're facing and the issues that are about to overwhelm us. They know we're faking good, but running scared. Like Peter we need to learn to overcome faking good by trusting greatly because the only One who can deliver us from lip-sync leadership is the only Leader who never led that way.
It’s been a few years since I took a one-hour train ride between two major cities in a Muslim country.
When I got on the train I was quite sobered by a conversation I had just finished with a local Christian leader who said he had to report to the police that afternoon. It seems they wanted the names of all the Christians he knew, but the leader would not reveal them. The more the police pressured to get the names, the more the leader resisted giving them. A very distressing situation. It really impacted me.
I was so distracted by thinking about that conversation that I barely ' noticed the two young women who got on the train at the first stop and sat directly opposite me. I did see that one was Western in her dress while the other was covered in the Muslim way. I was attempting to read a John Grisham novel (hardly the place to open my Bible and have my devotions), but I was mostly looking out the train window, thinking about the difference between being a Christian in the US and being a Christian in the Muslim world.
Then a movement out of the side of my eye attracted my attention and I turned to see what it was. Much to my surprise the burka-clad young woman had transformed her head covering into a stylish turban--it now looked like a black tiara atop her head. Then she stood up and unzipped her burka, revealing a blouse and rolled up Levis beneath her covering. Next she rolled down her Levis, sat down, and took out her compact and mirror. Setting the mirror on the shelf between us, she began to apply make-up to her face in deft circular strokes. About that time the Muslim man sitting next to me got up and moved elsewhere. He had to be angry. I wonder what he would have done if she had been his daughter or sister.
Next came the eye liner, then the mascara followed by lipstick. Finally she took off her tiara, shook out her long black hair, and with a few strokes of a brush framed her face just as she desired. Then the coup de grace: wrap around sunglasses. The covered woman had become a Hollywood goddess in one short train ride.
During this time I altered my attention between my book, the scenery, and the metamorphosis occurring opposite me. Occasionally the young woman would steal a glance at me, a kind of a defiant, I wonder what you're thinking look.
What was I thinking?
Here is Islam uncovered. Beneath the burkas and the robes, hidden in the Arabic speaking heart, is a longing among some for more than they have now. For these women, getting rid of the burka and adding make-up offered the promise of a new kind of life, the uncovered life of risk, glamour and excitement. Tragically they were just exchanging one idol for another. You know what they really need? Christ uncovered. Think about it. How can we show Islam Christ uncovered?
He was standing between the little red fire engine and the six-legged camel lying on the floor just in front of the Cheshire cat tower. Facing out the airport window and bobbing right-to-left in constant motion, He was oblivious to everything around him.
I first noticed him while I was waiting to board my Zurich to Bucharest flight. He caught my attention as he draped himself in his white prayer shawl with blue stripes across the bottom. Then he took out his phylactery, kissed it, and put it on his forehead.
"Strange looking character," the man from Dallas standing next to me said to his traveling companion. And the man was right. He was a strange looking character who didn't care at all that he was standing among the children's toys in an airport play area, praying. Somehow he had determined that the window where he stood faced Jerusalem. It was a cloudy day, and there were no signs that said Jerusalem this way, only A66, my terminal and gate number. Yet he was doing exactly what Solomon said Israelites away from home should do--pray toward Jerusalem. Even Jonah, deep in the darkness of the fish's belly, turned toward the temple in Jerusalem in his desperate prayer of repentance to God during his moment of repentance from rebellion.
What makes a man find a window facing Jerusalem in the Zurich airport, wrap himself in a prayer shawl, place his phylactery on his forehead, and bob from right-to-left while praying among the children's toys? What makes a man allow himself to be labeled, "a strange looking character?" Habit? According to his clock it was time to pray. Fear of God's judgment? According to his thinking the discipline of works would get him in good with God. A law that must be kept, no matter what? According to his understanding, not to pray would get him in bad with God. And what about you? Would you become a strange looking character in an international airport in order to pray? Of course not. This is the very thing Jesus warned us against when He told us not to pray so others could see us.
But what does prayer mean to you? Would you interrupt what you have to do because it's your time to pray? Do you build your day around your prayer time--your inviolable prayer time? Or do you just fit in prayer as you can so it becomes a kind of dry river bed in your soul that gushes forth in a flood when life becomes so barren you must have the sweet refreshing taste of God's presence? And then go on your way until you need another prayer fix?
Think about it. If law means that much to a strange looking character in the Zurich airport, how much more must grace mean to us? Enough to pray even when it isn't convenient?
I last saw that man as I entered the jetway to board my flight. By then he had his prayer book out and was getting ready to sway in the Jewish prayer way, a strange looking character wrapped in his white prayer shawl with ] across the bottom, his phylactery on his forehead, facing Jerusalem, standing between the little red fire engine and the smiling six legged camel lying on the floor just in front of the Cheshire cat tower.
I saw him on Paulista Street in San Paulo—the man pulling a cart like a horse.
Paulista Street is Brazil's Wall Street, only it's not like Wall Street, narrow, sided by ancient buildings, filled with the waiting limousines of the privileged sitting under no parking signs. No, Paulista Street is a modern metropolitan canyon with six lanes of rapidly moving traffic walled on each side by wide pavements and gleaming towers built by the great banks of the world--Citibank, USB, HSB, Itau--all expressions of Brazil's emerging economy.
There he was--the man-horse pulling his cart piled high with heavy plastic bags of trash taller then he was, surrounded by cars, taxis, trucks, and buses--running for all he was worth to keep ahead of the impatient vehicles that were just inches behind him. Dressed in sandals, shorts, tee-shirt, and a cap, his leather brown legs flashing by me caught my attention and made me think, Why? Why would a man live like a horse? What drives him? A family to feed? His own stomach to fill? Love for those who love him? Could a man who lives like a horse know anything about love? What was he thinking about? What could he think about except traffic, survival, staying ahead of those roaring buses? I wonder if he took an assessment test that told him he was created to live like a horse.
What must he be feeling? How could he even have time to think or feel? Surely somewhere in his soul he had to feel shame, humiliation, even grief over the loss of the dignity God created for him. Here he was, created in the image of God, pulling a cart like a horse. Men aren't supposed to live like horses, driven by forces they can't control to a fate they can't avoid. What if he fell down? What difference would that make to those who would scrape him up and cart him off like a horse?
Do you think anyone ever told him God loves him and has a wonderful plan for his life? Does God have a wonderful plan for his life? How could he ever find out? What could I do? Run after him and call out, "Bom dia?" What would I say next? I can't speak Portuguese. And what would he say? "Get out of my way, you fool, before you get me killed!" Besides I could never catch him--he'd run me into the ground in a matter of moments. I can't run with the man-horses! What can I do? What can anyone do?
O, God, what can we do about the man who lives like a horse? About all the men all over the world who live like horses?
Fathers frustrate me, my own father included. But frustration with my own father is over, even though he caused deep pain in my heart.
When I say fathers frustrate me, I'm speaking about the fruit I see in leaders who are driven or diverted or devastated by their have seen this involvement in assessing leaders in America, Asia, and Eastern Europe for nearly twenty years. Universally, no matter what culture I encounter, fathers are frustrating. What I have seen is amazing.
Fathers who live in denial and won't let their sons and daughters face reality, so hurt or grief or shame takes root in the souls of their children and rises up to pull them down.
Fathers who hurt and abuse their children so fear and anger take their spirits prisoner and keep them from being all they could be.
Fathers who desert their children they grow up stunted in their hearts, not knowing how to be men and women because they had no model of loving strength and tender courage.
The fruit of these fathers frustrates me because I know their sons and daughters could be so much more if only they had known good fathering.
So am I blaming fathers for the struggles of leaders in our world today? Aren't leaders responsible for their own issues? Of course they are, but they have to learn what their struggles are and how to fulfill their first responsibility--forgiveness leading to growing fruitfulness.
Leaders can only forgive if they face what needs to be forgiven. Yet most leaders I work with haven't ever faced their fathers' fruit in their lives. Thus they live with their hands shackled by fear or anger or loneliness, driven to find the love they never knew through an empty success.
Are all fathers bad? Of course not. But all fathers are flawed. That's the fruit of sin in our lives. I have tried to be the best father I could be, yet I know I have failed my sons in ways I never intended. I also know they will discover this as they grow older, so I have told them to talk with me once they figure out what I have done to shackle them.
You know the biggest problem with fathers? They are missing in action. Many are present, but absent; but most are just absent. Present or absent, they are missing in the action of entering into intimate relationships with their children through which they teach them how to become men and women.
In the area of leader formation there is no greater need than the need for effective fathering. In the past twenty years I have never met a leader who was not shackled in some way by a frustrating father. Some had good fathers, so the impact was less, but many had frustrating fathers, even evil fathers, who bore their fruit in shackles wrapped around their children's hearts.
Hotel Zatoka, Senec, Slovakia
Dusk, Sunday afternoon, January, 22, 2006
The sun is down and the winter twilight has fallen on the frozen lake outside our hotel. All the frolickers are off the ice now except for one lone ice skater. There was a snow squall early this morning, and the newly fallen glaze is blowing in the biting cold wind, creating snow waves on the now gray ice.
Nothing pictures the spiritual situation of Slovakia more perfectly than this frozen lake and the lone ice skater. The spirits of Slovakia are as frozen as that lake. Slovakia, an unknown and forgotten country, on the world scene, is a nation of five million sandwiched between Austria on the west, Hungary on the south, and Poland on the north. Once a member of the Russian empire and united with the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia, it has been on its own since 1993 and is now nominally a Roman Catholic country. But Roman Catholicism is only a label the nation wears and not a religion it practices. Slovakia is as frozen as the lake outside our hotel room window. And that lone ice skater represents those who have come to reach the nation with the Gospel. Theirs is a lonely and daunting task.
That Sunday night the temperature plunged to near record lows in central and eastern Europe as a Siberian front muscled its way across the continent, bringing the coldest weather in three decades. Monday morning dawned with a red-ball sun rising over the frozen lake. It was a red-ball of hope. Gone is the usual dull gray European winter sky. In its place was a cloudless brilliant expanse of deep blue sky. The wind is strong and sharp, causing exposed faces to ache with pain from the cold. The sun's warmth could barely be felt--but it could be felt. That wan warmth was a promise of the refreshing season of summer when the pain of cold is replaced by the delight of new life and renewed beauty.
This too is a picture of Slovakia's spiritual realities. That lone ice skater moving across the frozen spirit of the country is making a difference. There is some response, some interest, some who say yes to Jesus. It seems the response is greatest where the ice skaters are the most. I wonder why.
We think of Europe as sophisticated and we take delight in being there, in enjoying its culture, its food, its history, its beauty. But what about its spirituality? Think about this. All of Europe is a frozen lake spiritually speaking. Slovakia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain Portugal, Scandinavia--there is virtually no interest in the Gospel anywhere in Europe. And places like Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal have never in history been reached for Jesus. Beneath the surface of Europe beats hearts never touched with the Gospel, hearts that have no sense of need for God. For virtually all Europeans Christianity is a been-there, done -that kind of thing as they see themselves living in a post-Christian era. Yet millions of Europeans have never truly heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In many ways much of Europe is more pre-Christian than post-Christian.
You know what we need to reach Europe? More ice skaters. More men and women who will seek to break through the spiritual coldness of the Old World with the warmth of new life. Ice skating anyone?
Sometime back I flew from Dallas to Sao Paulo and then on to Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil. Almost as soon as I got on the plane to Porto I fell asleep, waking up just as we were landing.
I got up with everyone else and walked into the airport looking for my friend, Mark, whom I was there to visit, but there was no Mark.
Very unusual for him. After waiting for over an hour I realized I might have gotten off the plane too soon and might be in the wrong city, so I went back into the airport and asked if I actually was in Porto Alegre. Apparently the person I asked didn't understand English, but nodded yes anyway. So, thinking I was indeed in Porto Alegre I had to figure out what to do. I had no phone number (dumb me), so I decided to go into the city, find a five star hotel, and use their business center to send an e- mail. That's when Adriana came on the scene.
The only English speakers were at the money exchange window, and two of the men there were very helpful, telling me the name of a five star hotel where I could go. Just as I was leaving to get a taxi, Adriana spoke up. I hadn't even noticed her until she said she could take me since she was getting off work and going that way. Since she spoke English--she had lived in London and then New York until recently--I asked the Lord not to let me waste this opportunity. So I started to tell her about Jesus. She listened, asked questions, and, when we arrived at the hotel, turned off her car engine, listened some more, and prayed to receive Christ. Wonderful!
Encouraged, I entered the hotel, went on the Internet, exchanged messages with Diane, Mark's wife, and got their phone number. But Diane couldn't locate the hotel where I was, so I went downstairs, got the street name, and called to confirm my location. But the answer to the call made no sense to me. All I heard was some music and strange words I couldn't understand, so I gave the phone to the desk clerk for help. It was then that I mentioned I was making a local call to Porto Alegre. "Porto Alegre," he said, "This is Florinapolis--Porto Alegre is four hundred kilometers away!"
I met Adriana by mistake, a Divine "mistake," the kind God planned from eternity past. You see, I had gotten off the plane one city too soon because I was sleeping when they announced our arrival. When I saw everyone else getting off the flight I assumed I was at Porto Alegre, but I wasn't. I had only gotten to Florinapolis.
So do you think we should pray for more Divine "mistakes" in our lives? If you do, be careful the next time you fly. You just might meet an Adriana because of a God planned "mistake." And, yes, I did get to Porto Allegre for a delightful dinner and evening with Mark and a great time the next day with Diane and their two youngest children.
At first I didn't even notice what was happening as Lynna and I walked through Prague's Old Town on that bitter cold Saturday afternoon.
We had just finished a tour of Prague's historic sites and were freezing, so we decided to go-some place warm and get a cup of hot chocolate. As we walked through the square, headed for an inviting little coffee shop, I saw him through the passing crowds. He was seated on the ground with his back against a church wall when the policeman approached him and spoke sharply.
Instantly he was on his feet, and that was the moment I got a good look at him. He was scruffy, scraggly, unkempt, unshaven, wearing a worn winter jacket, but no hat. Yet he had a face that could have been handsome, framed by long curly brown hair.
The policeman was a big, burly guy (Czechs can be big, and it looks as if they had a national campaign to find the biggest of the big for the police force) made to look even bigger by his quilted winter jacket and a hat with a black-and-white checkered headband that didn't quite sit right on his head. His words first prodded, then propelled that bum out of the square in Old Town.
He was just a bum and he didn't belong among the tourists who thronged Prague's main square, even on that cold Saturday. He was just like thousands of others I have seen all over the world and barely noticed. But something happened in my heart when I caught that short glimpse of his face. I felt pain, hurt, I was wounded for that man. He wasn't really a bum; he was a man, a man formed by God for eternal purposes and eternal glory. What happened? Is there a broken hearted mother and father somewhere longing for their son, asking, "Where did my little boy go?" Or was it a mother or father who broke his heart and turned him into what he is today? Maybe it was drugs or mental illness that mutated that man into a bum.
I know what many say. He had his chances, he made his choices, and he still has his chances to make his choices. True. I know those answers. Yet it pained me to see a man made for God’s glory shamefully shuffling out of Prague’s Old Town, prodded by a policeman's words, looking like a third grader on his way to the " principle's office. That brought grief to my heart.
You know what caused this man to be a bum, don’t you? Sin--his sin and somebody else's sin. It's Adam being driven from the Garden all over again. Don't you hate sin and all the evil it brings? But we really don't hate sin or we wouldn't sin the way we do. We may not be bums, but we're not in the Garden anymore either.
But why aren't we bums? Why is it that the bum is driven further into the cold while Lynna and I go warm ourselves with a great cup of hot chocolate and then return to our comfortable hotel room? There's only one reason. Grace. Because God acted in grace to intervene in our lives. It's not because of what we've done but because of what He's done. That's grace. What would you be apart from grace?
The only thing Ary could do in English was grin--he learned English; Hebrew, and Greek in four years and also became the top Bible salesman for the Southwestern Company during that time.
Upon graduation he joined OC International and traveled the US raising support and announcing he was looking for a mother-in-law. As a result he met and married the beautiful--and much younger--Carolyn Jones, returned to Brazil, and planted Morumbi Baptist Church in Sao Panlo, one of the first churches directed toward business and professional leaders in the country. Over the years the church grew to nearly 3,000.
About eight years ago Ary learned that he needed a heart transplant and spent nine months in Miami, first waiting and then receiving his new heart. A couple of years ago Kay and Carolyn decided it was time for them to leave Morumbi and move on. They had a team in place that could carry on the ministry, and the church continues to prosper, but the issue they faced was where to go and what to do. Did they opt for a golf- cart and the grandkids? No way! I spent a couple of days with them in Londrina, where they had moved with a team to build spiritual leaders for southern Brazil. And what is Ary doing? Planting the brand new Cartui Baptist Church and discipling leaders as he has for the past thirty-five years.
The great wall today is not made up of stones stacked by anonymous serfs across miles and miles of mountain ridges at the futile whim of a xenophobic emperor.
The great wall today is not visible from outer space.
The great wall today is human, made up of men and women and boys and girls with almond shaped eyes and black hair, Asian in appearance and essence.
The great wall today is visible only from inner space.
What nameless serfs make up the great wall today?
Taxi drivers with belly laughs who can’t read maps and who expect me to tell them how to get where I have never been and who don't understand my frustrated English.
What modern serfs make up the wall today?
Faceless women selling newspapers on the street with no hope of a sale; futile men offering wall-sized world maps on the side of the road, apparently because someone told them automobile drivers need maps. Their painful naivete calls for us to weep. And migrant workers living in hovels while they build beautiful villas for the wealthy.
On the backside of the great wall today, on the old Silk Road, there are other modern day serfs--Uzbeks, Kerjiks, Terjiks, Weeghers, Kazakhs, not Chinese at all, but Muslims turned toward Mecca and away from Beijing.
Who are the emperors of the great wall today?
First, the hopeful ones, young professionals who gather at Starbucks drinking lattes, cappuccinos, and Americanos, discussing their days and planning their futures.
Then the achieving ones. mid-career managers who stay at the Grand Kempenski or the Portman Ritz Carlton. meeting at the bar, drinking chardormay and delighting in their career progress.
And finally the successful ones, established leaders living in brand new penthouses or century old mansions, driving BMWs and reveling in luxury greater than any ancient emperor ever knew.
Business behind the great wall today is done as it always has been, according to the law of the land; not the rule of law, but the rule of relationships, guanxi they call it. Contracts are signed and sealed with handshakes and become relationally binding--as long as the handshake includes a promissory note for a thousand or two or even a million or more.
Today's emperors are just as insecure as yesterday's, marked by inferiority and aggressiveness, by fear and assertiveness, by deception and cleverness, by control and secretiveness. And they are just as mystified by us as we are by them.
How will we get through the great wall of today?
By taking up hammer and chisel, drill and saw and forcing a break through? By wheeling and dealing and finagling our way through? This will not work. Today's great wall is a living wall, and living flesh will fill any opening we force or finagle before we finish our effort.
Maybe we can try an end run to get around the great wall before they figure out what we're doing. We can't. The wall never ends. We can run and run and run, but we only run in circles around the unending wall.
Perhaps we can tunnel under it. How can we? The great wall today is as deep Asian soul.
Then let's climb over it. No! No! No! The great wall today is as high as the eastern sun.
So what can we do?
One thing.
What?
Wait.
Wait? For what?
An invitation. An invitation to come through the great wall of today and enter the lives of those who make it up.
If we step back and wait and watch, we'll make an amazing discovery. Today's great wall is full of windows and doors that can never he seen by those who try to force their way through. It holds opportune openings for all who wait and watch- and learn to see. What kind of windows and doors will we see if we wait? The windows and doors of hurt and need; the windows and doors of fear, guilt, and shame; the windows and doors of the human heart.
What do we do while we're waiting? We do deeds of love and compassion, acts from our hearts to their hearts, acts that find Narnia-like openings in the great wall of today.
And as this happens, gradually, slowly, imperceptibly, the great wall of today will once again be turned to stone, .living stones of the living church, stretching across a ceaseless horizon of human souls.
But there are other great walls before which we stand: a rebellious child, a rejecting mate, an angry parent, even our own prodigal nation. They, too, like the great wall today, respond only to love. Love alone opens the windows and unlocks the doors of all great walls in any day.
I meet them wherever I go in closed countries around the world. They are just entering the prime of life. In age, in their late thirties; in education, superior; in experience, successful; in giftedness, uncommon; in dedication, unparalleled. They are willing to risk all for Christ--freedom, family, finances, their future.
They are frequently visited by the police. Some are warned, some are harassed, some have their lives threatened, and some have said, "Kill me-I won't stop proclaiming Christ." Some occupy positions of great significance in their societies, having graduated from prominent universities. At least a few have studied in the West and gone back home out of a passion to serve Christ. They could " have been free, but they chose to return home because of love for their Lord and their land.
Some have been successful entrepreneurs, some corporate leaders. I have met single and married women with advanced degrees who held significant positions in multi-national corporations with glamorous roles, opportunities for international travel, power, and wealth, who freely gave this up to serve the lowest of the low. And they do this in the name of Christ.
All the wives of the leaders I have met are as committed as their husbands. They are the ones who would be left behind to protect and provide for their children if their husbands were jailed. Yet they take the same risks as their husbands, teaching and ministering in the name of Christ.
Why? Why do they risk freedom, family, finances and future for Christ?
As best I can tell these men and women have three reasons for taking such great risks.
First, because of their conviction that Jesus really is Lord. Some are third and fourth generation believers. They saw their parents and grandparents suffer for Christ, so they know what they are doing when they take the same stand.
Others knew nothing of Christianity in their youth. They came to Christ out of the futility and emptiness of their previous way of life. He was the least likely Light at the end of their long search for reality. Either way these leaders are convinced He is both Lord and Light, the only Light in the darkness around them.
The second reason why they take such risks is because of the call of Christ on their lives. They simply cannot deny His call. No matter how hard they resist, in the end they must respond to Him, whatever they face. It is the combination of conviction and call that leads them to their third reason for following Jesus so radically.
The third reason is commitment. They are committed---dedicated, determined--to follow Him. They know they follow the Man who carried the cross on His back and they know they must join Him and carry the cross on their backs.
So they are convinced, called, and committed, and that's why they risk everything--freedom, family, finances, future--to serve unseen, unknown, and unvalued by most of the society around them. This is what gives them the courage and confidence to trust Jesus totally.
The answer to the question why raises a second question. Why not? Why wouldn't we respond the same way?