Leadership Motivated by Love

Have you found the purpose of your God given ministry yet? Have you been feeling like something of essence is missing from the way you reach out to people? Tune in to hear the story of a passionate Leader and an Entrepreneur who journeyed across various paths to fulfil God’s plans for her life. Here’s a conversation with Pastor Anuradha Das on today’s Leadership Talk.

Transcript:

Ps. Priji

Greetings in Jesus’ name! Welcome to leadership talk podcast. Today, we have Ps. Anuradha Das from Gurgaon, Delhi as our guest speaker. Let’s learn, understand and derive principles from the ministry God has given her.

On that note, Ps. Anuradha, could you please share your life story with us?

Ps. Anuradha

I’m from a Brahmin family, and, I got saved at a point in time, where I wanted to commit suicide, because, I had lost everything in business; in relationships. Also, I wanted to get married to somebody, but it broke up and, and everybody left me. So I felt betrayed by everybody. It could be that I bumped into the wrong people or my decisions were wrong, whatever it was, I was so tired of everything and wanted to die. But, on the 9th of January 2004, when I encountered Jesus, everything changed.

Ps. Priji

That’s amazing. We know that if it was not for that encounter in many of our lives, we would not be doing what we are doing right now. And we would be the same, like everybody else in the world. How did that encounter change your life from that point? How did that change the way you would make your decisions? How did that change the way you would interact with people around you?

Ps. Anuradha

I was very broken as a teenager. A lot of things have happened to me and I was totally frustrated with my myself, when I met Jesus. The problem was that I had a lot of pride. I had a lot of unforgiveness and I would hold grudges. As though I’d boil myself with the grudges that I have for someone who betrayed/cheated/harmed me.

I met Jesus in a small life group meeting, and I didn’t want to believe anybody. When they asked me, would you like to invite Jesus to your heart? I said, no, I don’t want do that. But, something changed within me, first time in my life and I thought, maybe I need to change. And now, I know that it was the Holy Spirit, who touched me that day. So, I asked the person who took me to the meeting, to give me a Bible because I didn’t want to hear anything from anybody, but wanted to know it for myself. So I took the Bible and I finished reading it in four months. And, as I was finishing the reading of the Bible, little by little I started having convictions. I realized that Jesus is not about religion and God is all about love. When I stopped at Daniel chapter four, where I read about Nebuchadnezzar, that’s where I realized my biggest problem was pride. And then, when I came to Luke, where Jesus says that, forgive your enemies – first time in my life, I read somewhere, somebody telling that, forgive your enemies. I thought to myself, I can’t even forgive my friends sometimes, and here is somebody telling me to forgive my enemies. I started practising it with my mother first, because, when my father passed away, when I was young, I held my mother responsible for it in my heart. Because, they had an argument and that’s the day my father met with an accident. So I felt that she killed him indirectly. So, for six years I had that grudge in my heart. As I read the scriptures, I felt like Jesus was standing in front of me and telling me, forgive your mom. So, I released her from my heart and immediately the next thing happened.
I paused and I thanked God for her, for giving me birth, to bring me to this world, which I never paused to think about earlier. I think that was a remarkable time of encounter that I had with the word of God. And as I was reading, I had a lot of visions and I’d cry a lot. Bible is amazing and, I think, if somebody can go through the word of God, it would be life changing.

Ps. Priji

So, it’s not just a feeling or it’s not just an experience that is temporary. Now that encounter with God becomes a lifestyle, as you read the word and you allow, God’s ways of doing things to transform you. Right?

Ps. Anuradha

Yes, I think the first thing that happened was, God changed me from within, and later, he changed my circumstances. When I went to the life group meeting, I had only hundred Rupees in my pocket. I had crashed in business by then, and I had nobody to ask money from. I had some jewellery, which I sold and had to survive on it. But, after accepting Jesus into my life and allowing him to transform me, within four months time, I had seventeen lakhs in my account. So, God got my attention by giving me a financial breakthrough, because he knew that I’m like the Peter, and, my boat has to be full of fish to completely believe. That’s the time he said, come and follow me.

Ps. Priji

That’s, that’s so powerful. I like what you said. God changed things inside of me before he changed the circumstances around me. And, that’s something that we have to usually wait for, allowing the Lord to work inside of us first. I’d love to know what do you do today? How do you serve God? what are the things that you’re passionate about and what are the things that you’re pursuing with your life?

Ps. Anuradha

To be honest, initially, when I came to Lord, I watched Benny Hinn and I just wanted everybody to fall when I pray. So that became my goal. Yes, I would have so much of anointing that, when I passed by people will manifest the demons and God powerfully started using me. People would get delivered from drugs, and I started to help people in their marriages, also, I would counsel people and in 20 minutes, their lives would change. But slowly, I realized being a Hindu, for us to leave all of the gods and come to one God and surrendering life was difficult. So, that is where in 2009, I started to change my way of reaching out to people. I realized that, they come to God, to get their miracle or healing, but I’m not able to set them free from all other things. So that is where I changed my way. I realized that I have to really understand them more and I have to win their hearts. And, I have to connect with them more because if we are asking them to leave everything, and just follow one way, they wouldn’t understand it. So I started to give them a surrounding to decide. 98 % of people that I work with are from Hindu background. Only 2% would be, Christians or Muslims.

In 2010, I had an encounter with God’s love. He asked me, are you perfect in love? And from 2010 till today, I’m just trying to practice love and my main message became love. I started to teach people that if you are not able to love, then you have failed in all of the other gifts. So since then, I’m trying to perfect myself in love, because this is what Jesus always asked me. Are you perfect in love? Because, he said that through your love, people will know that you are my disciple.

Ps. Priji

So everything else that you do is an overflow of that one instruction you received from the Lord, I.e. of being perfect in love.

Ps. Anuradha

Yes, later, I started to develop ideas on how to reach people? So I have a company known as ‘My precious life’ where we talk to people with depression and suicidal tendencies. So all over world, God took me to have conferences where I tell people, if you can just pause and listen to that one individual, who’s thinking of committing suicide. The person will change their mind. That’s all the world needs today. They need your love.

Ps. Priji

I think that when love becomes the motivation for leadership, it begins to look a lot like what Jesus did, because Jesus did not come to start an organization or to start a new movement. He came to love, and we all want to be leaders like Jesus. But, what we miss out on is that ingredient of love, where our focus sometimes becomes productivity. For example, how much, how many people are coming, how fast they respond, how much is the income in the company?
Or how quick do I get my results? But love requires for us to be patient and long suffering. And sometimes that process can be very hard. So I want to know from your perspective, how do you keep your heart patient and how do you keep yourself rooted in the initial message that the Lord gave you, when things get tough.

Ps. Anuradha

Let me tell you that the more you decide to love, it’s going to be tougher and tougher. God would send people into your life who really need love, but they don’t know how to receive love. So they are so bitter. These are people who are torn by the society and the circumstances and it’s so difficult for them to even believe that somebody can love them and they may react when you genuinely love them. People are trained to be hypocrite, especially the corporate world that I work with, they’re not supposed to show their emotions. They’re trained in life to have a plastic face. They fall into depression because they can’t open up. So, when I sit with people for counselling, I would tell them that you can actually talk to me what you cannot tell anybody else. I think as a leader, it takes a while before people start to trust you. When we give them Jesus, we give them love. And we tell them that we don’t need anything in return, but because of their fixed mindset and training, it becomes hard for them to accept it.

At the end of every day, when I sit silently with God, I ask him, did I do well today? Did I do everything that you asked me to do? Or did I miss out something? So that helps me to keep my perspective straight and correct, otherwise it can become overwhelming.

Ps. Priji

Absolutely! Having that end goal in mind is very helpful. And so I want to know, when you’re coaching somebody and when you are mentoring somebody, what is the end goal that you would envision for them? What are the things that you would dream for them? Or what are the kind of things that you would want them to become? Because sometimes, I’ll tell you what happens with a lot of Christians especially is that, we only end up with getting somebody to pray a particular prayer or to just get them to attend a particular service. And then we think everything is sorted in their life. We don’t journey with them to actually reach where God wants them to reach. So I want to know, when you’re coaching somebody, what is the end goal that you have in mind?

Ps. Anuradha

So as a Pastor if I see, my goal was only to help them to understand Jesus. Then as you said, three scriptures, 10 scriptures, do your morning prayer, do your evening prayer and then reach out to others. That was the only thing I used to tell them. But then I realized that, something is missing. So that’s where in 2014, I decided it’s not enough to give them some spiritual goal and not relate with them in their daily life. They don’t see things the way I see as a Pastor. So I started to get involved with their lives. For example, if somebody’s overweight, I would tell them to go to the gym. If somebody’s having lack of sleep, I would tell them how to meditate and go to sleep, if somebody’s having business issues, I would help them sort out that. And if somebody’s having office issues, how to deal with boss, I will tell them the biblical ways. I think while doing that, I found myself as a life coach after some time, because I’m taking care of the entire thing.

So that’s where I realized, people need to know the purpose of their lives. Every person on this earth is born with a purpose. So as a life coach, I help them to find who they really are. Their giftings, their callings and not everybody needs to join a full-time ministry. Maybe the person is, called to be a vice president in a company. And that’s how the light will spread. If a person has four children, and the person rejects the four children and gets involved in full time ministry, that’s out of balance life. So as Bible says, you take care of children. Those children maybe the Peter and Paul, they can just rise up and change the word.
Sometimes it does get overwhelming. Like, for 10 years I had to raise my children and I couldn’t pray the way I used to pray for like 10, 11 hours on my knees. Initially I’d think, all I’m doing is changing diapers, all I’m doing is taking care of them when they’re sick. I found myself so overwhelmed. And that’s when I asked God, can you please help me? How do I balance? That’s where he taught me, that I can talk to him 24/7. God said, I can get involved while you’re taking care of the baby. I’m always there for you. So that’s where, I switched to having an ongoing conversation with God, rather than waiting for my quiet time.

Ps. Priji

I want to know, how did you manage to communicate everything that God has been teaching you, in an effective manner. I know how you’ve done creative movies and, and how you have tried to effectively reach out to people from other faith and relate to them. This is sometimes hard for leaders because, we want everybody to talk our language and understand what we are saying. Sometimes, as mothers who are trying to give their children some value system and discipline, but, when the children don’t get it, it’s very hard. Because, it can really affect the parents too. The same thing happens for Pastors when they’re trying to communicate something to their church members. So I want to know what are some of the things that you did to creatively communicate what God had put into your heart, how God inspired and blessed you.

Ps. Anuradha

First thing I have decided is that, I will not teach or preach anything that I don’t practice myself. So, most of the time I would lead by example. Suppose if I have to forgive somebody, remember, people are observing us all the time. I would take the decision to forgive when there is something that is not easy to be forgiven. I tell them that it’s a decision. You won’t feel like forgiving, but it’s a decision you have to consciously make.
Secondly, I’m a very audio-visual person. Whenever I don’t understand what God is speaking, he would speak to me through vision. So that’s where I came to the conclusion that movies will be a nice way to talk to people. Hence, we started to make short films.
I think that sometimes, if we can tell them practically, or show them examples of our own lives, it’s easy. I’ll give you an example of my daughter, she’s always seen me giving, because God broke my desire for money by giving, God broke my greed for things by giving, and God broke my materialism by giving. So I give a lot whenever he would ask me to give, so one day my daughter had to visit her best friend, and she took out her best dress. She said, I’m gonna give this to my friend because she’s my best friend. And I was so surprised because I didn’t ask her to do it.
So my children always gave, my son would take out like 20/30 Rupees tithe, whatever money that they get, because they see me giving. So I believe all my students, they saw me doing and practicing things, and they try to follow the same.

Ps. Priji

I think that’s what Jesus did. He prayed, and, when he prayed his disciples came and said teach us also how to pray. When we have a lifestyle, when we have a way of doing what we really believe, then it becomes very easy to communicate it, to teach it to other people and to raise disciples that function in the same way. on a concluding note Ps. Anu, I’d like to ask what are some of the safeguards or boundaries that as leaders, we need to place around us to make sure that we protect what God wants us to do, whatever God has entrusted into our hands, the little abilities or talents that God has blessed us with, so that we don’t misuse it, or we don’t lose them.

Ps. Anuradha

I think not letting ourselves burned out is one thing. We keep doing ministry, we keep doing good and we don’t take a break to rejuvenate, then, we can get exhausted doing good. We should stop ourselves from being burned out. That means, we have to take daily breaks, we have to take monthly sabbaticals, maybe one or two days.
Another important thing for a successful leader is pride. When we see that lives are changing because of us, pride comes in very easily. And, that is something I have faced.

Also, the daily routine of spending time with God before going to bed really helps me, where I ask him, did I do well today? Did I do everything you asked me to do? Did I say that thing right? Or did I talk too much. So I have a reflection of my day, every day with the Lord. Also, whenever I feel very sad, down or overwhelmed, I tell him, honestly, this is how I feel. I don’t feel like forgiving today. I don’t feel like loving today. Would you please pour out your grace? And that really helps me.

Ps. Priji

That’s powerful ! I know many of our listeners are inspired by your story and your way of life. I’m sure that some of them may not even know Jesus as their personal savior or as a personal friend. Some of them may be going through a challenge or a crisis in their leadership, where they’re doubting themselves and questioning the call of God over their lives. Could you speak out a word of encouragement from the heart of God?

Ps. Anuradha

Yes, I know, a hundreds of times I felt like I’m at the wrong place at the wrong time. But if you are called by God, he’s going to take care of it. He has not made a mistake. He knows what he’s doing before the foundation of the earth. He’s never surprised and he has a total grip over your life. Yes, sometimes we make mistakes, but his grace is sufficient.

Ps. Priji

Thank you so much for taking your time to pour into our people. What are some of the ways that they can get in touch with you? Where do you usually write or share whatever the Lord is putting on your heart online or offline. What are the best ways they can reach out to you?

Ps. Anuradha

I’m a message away person. I can always text back if they contact me on my WhatsApp. Otherwise, I’m on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/psanuradha/), Facebook and I have a lot of websites. They can connect with that too.

Ps. Priji

I’m sure that the Lord has spoken to you through this leadership talk. Please take a minute to share this with your friends or other people in your churches or in your circle of influence, who can be inspired by the story of Pastor Anuradha.