"Part 6: Read Carl Jeffrey Wright’s In Search of Heroes Interview and Become Inspired" by Ralph Zuranski
Click Here to visit Jeff Wright's Heroes Page
check out the links below to the Guardian Line Comics and Urban Ministries
www.TheGuardianLine.com
www.urbanministries.com
Ralph Zuranski: What principles are you willing to sacrifice your life for?
Jeff Wright: That’s a great question. I am convinced that just understanding that there are principles that are worth sacrificing your life for is a place that many of us need to get to and just really soberly ask the questions about what I would call convictions, those things that you wouldn’t live without.
Jeff Wright: I have many convictions but most of them are summed up in the principles of God’s Word. I would sacrifice my life for the name of Jesus Christ. I’m not going to sacrifice my belief and my commitment to live a Christ-centered life for anything because I understand that to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Jeff Wright: Of course, many things sound like they should be more important than that: your family, your resources or corporate America, but I mean, many of those kinds of things that we somehow feel are important aren’t really worth a life.
Jeff Wright: I’ve already sacrificed my life, in a sense, when I left my position in corporate America and came into really what is the ministry responsibility of shepherding UMI.
Jeff Wright: I had been working in corporate America, and for many people this is a life’s dream, to be a vice president in a Fortune 50 company. Successful, having had Ivy League degrees and attended Georgetown and Harvard and Colombia and so forth, and the Wharton School to be successful in corporate America. But I sacrificed that. I sacrificed that life in order to be able to contribute those skills and the experiences that I had gained to do something that would be of greater benefit both to the African American community and to the world.
Jeff Wright: I essentially got to a point of saying, “Okay, is my life about making rich people richer or is it going to be about doing something that will count for the kingdom of God?” So I sacrificed that life in order to take on this life, which is a life I live for Christ.
Ralph Zuranski: Are your actions and goals consistent with your beliefs?
Jeff Wright: I certainly hope so. Obviously God will be the judge of that. I try my best to make certain that I’m living a life that would be God-honoring. I pray for my friends, for my wife and even for myself that, as Paul prayed in the book of Colossians, my walk would be worthy of the name of Jesus Christ.
Ralph Zuranski: Is it valuable to have highly charged emotions about achieving your goals?
Jeff Wright: I think so. I think that highly charged emotions, I would translate that into passion, into enthusiasm and that word derives from a Greek word which means to breathe out.
Jeff Wright: I think when you really understand what it is that God wants you to do, what it is that is your life’s passion, that you will operate with a sense of energy and flow. There’s a kind of psychological term for it, finding flow, from a gentleman who is not really a Christian but he spent a lot of time studying this.
Jeff Wright: When you get to that point where your enthusiasm and your passion for a purpose is so intent and so fixed, time sort of seems to disappear for you. It stops. You could do it for days. And that’s exactly where I am in what I’m doing.