The Sunday Mail
THE salvation story is one of the most amazing stories one can ever tell.
It is a story that lightens and warms up hearts, a story that transforms lives and brings hope in hopeless situations.
Every testimony on how people come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and accept Him as Lord and personal saviour is unique and unforgettable.
It is for this reason that I write about an amazing personality who made an immense impact in my spiritual walk during the short period I interviewed him on the evening of September 25, 2015 at the Harare Pan African Leadership Initiative that was held under the African Enterprise ambit.
This was Kenyan academic Professor Eric Aseka who is also the Vice Chancellor of the International Leadership University and AE board member.
According to the institution’s website, “The International Leadership University Africa (ILU-Africa) develops leaders of integrity who can spearhead spiritual, social and material transformation in society. ILU takes leadership development to professional, business, Government and church leaders who need to improve their leadership effectiveness.”
Prof Aseka is also a member of the Executive Committee of the International Leadership Consortium, a coordinating agency of the schools of Campus Crusade for Christ International around the world. After the interview I saw that even today, the Lord continues to raise men like Saul or Paul of Tarsus, who fought and persecuted the Way, but the incident on the road to Damascus transformed his entire life until he declared: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
It also changed the course of the Christian faith. Prof Aseka has it all, has seen all, but he has time for the Lord, not just as a congregant, but a pastor as well. No wonder he told fellow academics on September 25 that, “Intellectualism outside of Jesus Christ is anti-intellectual. Jesus is the ultimate teacher, the ultimate philosopher, the ultimate critical thinker and God invites us to be critical thinkers so that we can identify and acknowledge our limitations and realise that we need Him”.
This was part of his testimony when he spoke to this writer, “I am also a minister of the Word of God, a pastor of the Church of Pentecost. I came to the Lord in 1994 while teaching at Kenyatta University, which is the second largest university with a student population of 77 000. I served there for 25 years, and then I was asked to move to ILU where I served as a deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. After three years, I was appointed Vice Chancellor,” he said.
“While still at Kenyatta University, I got engaged with African Enterprise because of the gifting and ministry that was in me, and I began doing ministry work immediately because the Spirit of the Lord came upon me. Nobody preached to me because I got convicted while I was smoking in my office as Chairman of the Department of History. God put three sharp verses in my spirit. So, I learnt to appreciate the voice of the Lord. And, when I look back and turned away from the lifestyle that I was leading, again two months later, God spoke to me about the Lord’s Prayer.
“He personally taught me the Lord’s Prayer, and I wrote down the revelation that He was giving me about the Lord’s Prayer on nine full scape (A4 size) pages. And, when I read it aloud to myself, I was baptised in the Holy Ghost. So there immediately, I began ministry.
“Given how people knew me as a radical (I was a Marxist scholar, sporting a goatie), and radical in class, the word spread so fast. And, various organisations were interested in me. When I began ministering, I was speaking to special interest groups at dinners, to professionals at luncheons, and I was speaking to the police, prisons, etc. In the late 1990s, I was called as a member of the board of African Enterprise. They are people who want to win the world for Christ.
“They are looking for people like me and others who appreciate what God is calling them for and making themselves available to serve. I came to Zimbabwe on short notice, and said I was ready to undertake the task given me. So, I have been here for the Harare Pan African Leadership Initiative and I am seeing what God is doing.
“We can really identify with the move of God and humble ourselves before Him as vessels, and bring the transformation that God wants to bring about. We believe Africa can be turned around. And, the spiritual support that Africa needs will not come from anywhere else.
“It will come from God using us and by yielding to Him so that as we position ourselves and engage society and institutions, the responsibilities that we have, we can turn around these institutions or countries from the low positions that they are, to become the leaders. I believe in Africa taking over. The 21st Century belongs to Africa. A miracle is where an opportunity is and I believe that we are getting there, for the glory of God,” he said.
Most people believe that people in leadership positions have no time for God, academics in particular, but Prof Aseka said, “I spend hours upon hours in serious prayer and reading the Word of God.”
He is also a notable author, and some of his books include “When Trust is Betrayed” (2012) and, “Conquering the Complaining Spirit” (2013).
‘When Trust is Betrayed’ is a book that “provides a ground-breaking integration of faith, philosophy and psychology in dealing with practical situations of betrayal . . . It has a biblical answer to those who are restless and cannot manage to calm down because of the betrayal by people they had trusted at one time.”
“Conquering the Complaining Spirit”, “examines the question of bitterness and the complaining spirit showing how this malaise undermines the capacity to produce goodness. It shows how a grumbler is never satisfied with what he or she has. If it is money, a grumbler never has enough. The book admonishes us to beware of the complaining spirit illustrating how complainers are virtually in a pit of self-pity. Self-pity is a pit that leads to bondage. Therefore, when one is bitter, complaining and murmuring, he or she virtually drags others into the pit.”
The remarks from his students regarding the picture used in this instalment (courtesy of Flickr, the popular photo-sharing and video hosting website, and web service) sums up Prof Aseka’s Christian persona and why he maintains that “intellectualism outside of Jesus Christ is anti-intellectual”.
“This is a pleasant surprise to see the man whom we know to be perceptive and full of a critical acumen to be in action on the floor. What could he have been writing?” wrote Waprudence 4y.
And, Waprudence 4y remarked: “For all of us drawn East, Central, West and Southern Africa, this man has baffled us with the stocks of knowledge in head and the command of discourse on the same. His perception and insights on transformational leadership are, without any exaggeration, amazing. Africa needs just four Asekas and there will be a revolution in the academy of leadership studies.”
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