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An ambassador to another country carries the responsibility and weight of properly representing his or her homeland. Everything communicated and done is received as a reflection of the policies, beliefs and wishes of the government. This is a heavy responsibility, and failure to accurately represent his or her country is a serious matter.

Now, as a delegated authority of Almighty God, think how serious our responsibility is. What we say, what we do and how we take care of those He has entrusted to us are a reflection on Him.

Godliness and proven character are supremely important for all leaders. Unless we maintain close fellowship with God through the Word, prayer and fasting, how will we properly represent the Authority? How will we know what instructions He is giving us? How will we know how to exercise authority over the people and the work God has appointed to us?

If Jesus needed to stay in such close contact with God that He could say He only did what His Father showed Him to do, how much more do we need the same? How can we assume that we can get by even for a moment without involving the Father, if Jesus could not? If He desperately needed the Father’s input, don’t we even more so need to hear from the Lord in all we do?

As leaders, we need to be people who can be watched and followed. In 1 Corinthians Paul says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” He didn’t say, “Follow me. I have knowledge.” No. He simply said, “Follow me—my life, the example you have seen in me as I have followed Christ.” As we follow Christ closely, others should then be able to follow us.

Excerpt from Chapter 9 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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Naaman, the famous leper in the Old Testament, was the most powerful human being in Syria next to the king. As commander of the army, when he walked through the streets his own people respected him and did whatever he commanded. But Naaman was full of leprosy.

He heard rumors about a mighty prophet in Israel and went there to get healed by Elisha. I am sure he expected an auspicious reception with a lot of gracious words being said to him. But now this strange prophet, who hardly had any riches and was living out in the middle of nowhere, sent out a servant boy to tell Naaman to go dip in the Jordan River seven times.

Naaman got mad and snapped, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy” (2 Kings 5:11, NIV). His anger grows, and he feels he has been treated disrespectfully. “What on earth is this two-bit prophet talking about? In my country we have rivers far better than the Jordan. Why can’t I go there and be cleansed! What nonsense is this?”

In his anger, Naaman starts to go back home. Why should he humble himself before this prophet who didn’t even have the courtesy to come out and properly greet him? The truth is, to be healed Naaman had to submit to the one God had appointed to help him. He almost chose pride over healing. Then his servants said to him, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?” (2 Kings 5:13, NIV), and they pleaded with him to submit to what he had been told. Finally Naaman obeyed the instructions of Elisha.

What happened? He was healed, and his flesh was restored to that of a young boy. His pride and his own reasoning, however, had nearly kept him from the miracle he had been hoping for.

Excerpt from Chapter 8 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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Paul, the Apostle—from a distance, he may come across as a self-made man who doesn’t bend before anyone or anything. But that’s really far from the truth. Paul was a broken, humble man who learned to live a life of submission before both God and man. And this was the key to God committing Himself to Paul.

Before he was the Apostle, he was Saul of Tarsus—a Pharisee, and as for legalistic righteousness, he was faultless. He was of the highest caste in society with both financial backing and a great education. Self-righteous, he was convinced that he was doing the right thing by killing Christians and opposing this Christ everyone was talking about.

But then on the road to Damascus, he met Jesus Christ Himself. There he was struck down with a bright light, and he heard those words, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? . . . It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

Saul immediately asked, “Who are You, Lord?” By calling Him Lord, Saul was saying in the literal sense of the word that he now belonged to the One he was addressing.

“I am Jesus,” was the response he heard.

Saul was dumbfounded. “Lord, what do You want me to do?” he stammered. His question was the beginning of a life of absolute surrender.

God instructed Saul to go to the city of Damascus. There, He said, “you will be told what you must do.” Think about this for a second. All Saul knows to do is to go to Damascus. God didn’t tell him where to go in the city or how long he would have to wait or even how he was to know the next step.

Then when Saul gets up, he opens his eyes and can’t see a thing. He is absolutely blind. Now the mighty, intelligent, rich and famous “Saul of Tarsus” has to be led by the hand like a child. In order for him to submit to his new Lord, he has to humble himself and take this road of brokenness. For three days, he waits sightless and helpless. God was using these first steps in submission to train Saul in godliness.

Next the Lord made contact with Ananias, a disciple living in Damascus. He gave him Saul’s address and told him to make a house call. The Lord adds, “He is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:15–16).

The Lord could have done everything for Saul Himself. He could have opened his eyes, baptized him and filled him with the Holy Spirit. Instead, God chose to work through His delegated authority. It was Ananias who was divinely appointed to bring Saul healing and to guide him at this point in his journey. God was saying to Saul, “Submit yourself under My delegated authority.” Saul, who was such an intelligent, capable individual, had to put his life in the hands of Ananias, a simple unknown man mentioned only once in the Bible. Even so, Saul submitted to what was required of him, because he had met his ultimate Authority on the road to Damascus.

Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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Over the past nearly 30 years, I have observed a phenomenon common among those with great potential. Take a young person who is smart and talented. In the beginning, he or she may be given only minor leadership opportunities while waiting for maturity and character to catch up to his or her abilities.

So this person says to himself or herself, I know what I’m doing! I’ve read and studied. I can see my way! This young person sees a leader make a wrong decision and starts to give advice. Because the supervisor graciously receives the suggestion, in the subordinate’s eyes his or her importance grows. Self-promotion sets in, and negative comments about superiors begin. Pride and insubordination worsen, and disrespect for leadership surfaces.

Behind the scenes, the leadership team was actually thinking about promoting this person to greater responsibility. After they detected a rebellious attitude, however, they decide this person was not yet ready. Another is promoted, maybe not as smart or capable as the first person, but this individual is humble, broken and loyal. He or she is obedient and submissive.

Unfortunately, often the one with the most brains, instead of using the experience to learn humility, becomes even more arrogant. Until he or she chooses to submit and accept what God has designed, life will continue to unravel while this person thinks all the missed opportunities are someone else’s fault. In many cases such an individual may even be asked to leave or will leave on their own, going from one place to another, feeling the world is unjust.

How sad. God was planning a promotion. The leaders intended this. The Lord wanted to use this rising star in a greater degree, but this individual would not submit to God’s ways.

We all want God’s best for our lives. But how many times, without even knowing it was right around the corner, have we forfeited what was divinely planned for us? Is doing it our own way really worth it?

Excerpt from Chapter 5 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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Imagine you are in rush-hour traffic in Bombay, India—one of the world’s most crowded cities with more than 18 million people. Streets are jammed. It’s like a swarm of ants—buses, trucks, cars, auto rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians everywhere. I’ve heard it said, “Our traffic system in India is the most organized confusion in the world.” And this is what you’re looking at—this organized confusion.

In the center of this maze stands a skinny little man. Now you’re thinking, Does he want to get himself killed? What in the world is he doing in the middle of all this hubbub? But there is more to the picture. This is not just anybody—this man is dressed in a tan uniform, with the hat and badge of a traffic policeman, holding a sign that reads “STOP.”

Mind you, he’s no celebrity or public figure. He may have never been to college, but the moment he holds up his sign, you can hear the screeching of brakes. All the vehicles stop—Mercedes-Benzes, taxis, BMWs, trucks, you name it. It makes no difference whether the people in the vehicles are politicians, truck drivers, movie stars or taxi drivers, Sardarjis, Malayalees, Oriyas, Europeans or Americans. Everybody comes to a halt. When the man in the uniform waves them on, off they go once again.

Let’s say the following week this same individual comes to the same spot, but he’s wearing his pajama kurta while standing in the middle of this crazy Bombay intersection. Now what do you think is going to happen? “Oh!” you say. “This time he will get killed!”

What’s the difference? When he stands there as an officer, he’s not just representing himself. His uniform, badge, cap—they all indicate he works for a higher authority. He represents the laws of the land, the judges and the punishment that awaits those who disobey. If you choose not to follow his directions, you will have more than just him to deal with. As a policeman, he has the backing of his superiors’ power. He is not the authority himself. He simply represents it.

If we truly realized that the authorities—in our nation, at work, in the church and in our homes—are actually God’s delegates and not just the people we see or read about every day, we would have less difficulty obeying them. If we could picture them as that policeman in the Bombay intersection—with a uniform and badge indicating they represent the authority of the living God—it would change everything for us.

Excerpt from Chapter 5 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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Consider this: Christ started His public ministry at the age of 30. Why did He have to wait until then? On top of that, why was there another three-and-a-half years before the cross? Couldn’t He have started His ministry when He was 18?

When I was a boy, my mother took me to kindergarten. There were about 30 lads like me who sat in a circle with our guru (teacher), who taught the alphabet to us in our native language. Each year I passed on to the next grade and eventually on to high school and college.

A primary-school student learns subtraction and multiplication, but the college student deals with calculus. In the lower grades, a child draws pictures or writes papers on simple subjects. But at a university, the scholar reads a 2,000-page book and writes a 10-page paper. It’s a whole different world.

So why did Christ have to wait 33 years before He went to the cross? For Christ the man to choose absolute surrender to the point of death on the cross, He needed time to grow in obedience. The Bible actually says that Jesus learned obedience (see Hebrews 5:8).

When His parents made mistakes and Jesus suffered, instead of sinning against them, He grew in obedience. Like this, He learned obedience through the years until He came to the place at which He was ready to lay down His life.

So it is in our own lives. God does not start us out with calculus and a 10-page paper. We can trust that the opportunities He gives to us to learn obedience—whether to Him directly or to a delegated authority—are at our current level of growth.

As we submit in our hearts, step by step the Lord will bring us to a place where we hold nothing back from Him.

Excerpt from Chapter 4 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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“Come to Me” and “learn from Me,” Jesus told His disciples. But there is a condition: “Take My yoke upon you.”(1) You cannot learn of Him unless you take His yoke. What does His yoke represent? When I was growing up in my village, there were paddy fields everywhere. To plow these fields, farmers used a set of buffaloes with a yoke placed over their necks. The rear of the animals had several burn marks on them, like stripes. I remember as a youngster asking a man, “Why do all of these animals have burn marks?” He said, “It is the sign that they are broken and submissive.”

When Jesus said, “Take My yoke,” it means He had a yoke. He was broken and submissive. Now He invites us to come under that yoke of submission next to Him, choosing to give up what “I want,” even in good and right matters, for His will.

Once we are willing to do that, we begin to manifest the nature of Jesus. A.W. Tozer says it this way, “If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.”(2) In the measure by which we open our life to Christ and bend our necks to the yoke, dying daily to our self-centeredness, independence, pride and reasoning, and instead depend on God, in the same measure we will manifest His nature in our lives.

¹  Matthew 11:28–29.

²  A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, Inc., 1982), p. 64.

Excerpt from Chapter 4 of Touching Godliness (ISBN 9781595891211) © 2008 by KP Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia.

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