An email exchange yesterday brought to mind one of my favorite podcasts from The God Journey, about the critical things God seems to need to help shape our lives as vessels of his love and care.  These come from Tom Mohn, a dear friend of mine from Tulsa, OK.  I don’t think God has to orchestrate these things, they just seem to come out of this broken world and the passions of our own flesh.  But these are the life experiences that can help shape our hearts if we let Jesus bring his love to us in the midst of them.  

The first is the only good one of the bunch.  According to Tom we need a good, solid success that affirms to us that God is working in our lives and that we are learning to be fruitful in his kingdom.  Without that we seem to struggle to perform out of our own insecurities.  

The second is a massive dose of failure where we get caught up in something so totally wrong, or with the wrong attitude, or with an irresponsible arrogant judgment against someone that gets exposed.  There we’ll learn the power of his forgiveness and learn not to put any confidence in our own wisdom or flesh.  

The third is that we each need to be involved with a significant heresy—to believe something with all of our heart that turns out to be completely wrong.  When we find God’s love there we will never be tempted again to force any of our views down someone else’s throat.  We’ll be able to walk in truth without arrogance and treat others, especially those who disagree with us, with gentleness.  

Finally, according to Tom, we need an intimate betrayal, where someone so close to our heart turns on us in a way that causes hurt at a level we cannot put into words.  When God’s love touches us there we will come to know the fellowship of his sufferings, which will give us compassion for the broken and will never be tempted to betray anyone else for the rest of our lives.  

Obviously these are things we cannot fulfill on our own.  I’m not even suggesting you go out looking for a massive dose of failure, a powerful heresy to embrace, or even someone to betray you.  But if you’ve known failure, advocated some theological view you later found out to be wrong, or have been betrayed by someone you love deeply, realize that this is excellent ground for God to do some of his best work in you.  Those things don’t have to destroy you; they can draw you into a better space with God that will help you find real fruitfulness for the remainder of your journey.  

We seem to think God only uses the good things in our lives, when we made the right choice or laid down our lives at some critial juncture.  Tom takes a different perspective at the kind of things we need in our lives to help us come to a place of freedom and humility that let’s God’s life shine out of ours… 

If you want to hear the original podcast you can use the link here to the The Things God Uses.  It was only the fourth podcast we ever did and we were just finding our way, but the insights in this podcast have come up over and over again in my life and in my conversations with others.  Also Tom is coming out with a book about his journey that seems to make him the Forrest Gump of evangelicalism, crossing paths with Martin Luther King, Jr., Oral Robers, and Gene Edwards among others.  I’ve read it and it’s wonderful. I will let you know about it when it is published.  Until then you can check out his website here.  

You cannot turn on the news today and not be confronted with the images of Nelson Mandela as the world mourns his passing and celebrates the legacy of healing that he fostered in South Africa.  Since my first visit there, I’ve been deeply touched by his story.  Everyone I met in South Africa, both black and white, talked about Mandela with such awed appreciation for his leadership and his compassion in bringing South African out of the dark, dark days of apartheid.  At the airport I purchased his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom and devoured it on the nineteen-hour flight back home so I could better understand what he and that country had gone through.  It still remains one of the best books I’ve ever read. 

Risking his life to battle the oppression of apartheid he was captured, tried, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment.  How easily it would have been to fester in bitterness at the white settlers that had ravaged his country for themselves and repressed the indigenous people. Whites comprised only 10% of the population, but held all the power and wealth and had to resort to brutal policies to do so.

What would happen if blacks were to be empowered in South Africa? Would they seek vengeance and terrorize the whites as had happened in other areas of Africa?  Nelson Mandela had already considered these questions with his colleagues in prison and came to some surprising conclusions.   Having spent most of his adult life in prison at hard labor he emerged from that experience not seeking vengeance, but knowing that for South Africa to survive he had  “to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.”  He knew both were robbed of their humanity when human freedom was restricted. 

When he had every reason to lead a movement that would have violently taken power and wealth from the white community, he had a broader view of freedom.  “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”  He was instrumental in shaping post-apartheid South Africa through reconciliation between blacks and whites based on truth and forgiveness and became its first democratically elected president.  He truly is the father of contemporary South Africa.

I heard a newsman say last night in a story about Nelson Mandela’s death, that he was the last, true hero and that made me sad.  I hope that isn’t true, but I certainly don’t know of an international leader that does not use power to polarize people, rather than invite them to reconciliation and collaboration.  Perhaps our next Mandela is now sitting in a prison somewhere forging his views of humanity and leadership. 

I find myself overwhelmingly grateful today that Nelson Mandela lived among us, especially for my South African friends.  He was undoubtedly one of the most transcendent figures of our time and left us with a powerful example of how former enemies can find a way to live together in peace.  We do well to celebrate his life and his courage to do what few others would have done. Honestly, it will not be easy for me to watch world leaders over the next few days glom onto the Mandela legacy as if they share his values and passion.  None of them do.  They will bask in the glory of his accomplishments so they won’t actually have to follow his lead in risking power for a greater common good.     

I submit that we celebrate his life best when we actually embrace the ideals he lived by:  The best change comes from honesty, forgiveness, and reconciliation rather than using whatever power we have to benefit ourselves at someone else’s expense.  No one is truly free until we all are free and it is all of our responsibility as people on this planet to fight for the freedom and opportunity for others that we most want for ourselves.  

I remember the first time I had even heard the notion.  It ran so counter to everything I had learned before.  “Jesus didn’t come to teach us about God; he came to show us how to live with his Father.”  It sounded true when I first heard it, but I had no idea how to process it.  As a young pastor at the time all I knew concepts and doctrines to help people understand God and from that they could deduce how to walk with him.  It all sounded good.  I had no idea how backward it really was.  

But it began to change the way I read the Gospels.  It made more sense that the writers gave so much room to his engagements with people.  I look back some thirty years later and realize that in this small statement a good friend had handed me a precious gift.  This life in Jesus is not about getting all the language right; it’s about simply recognizing how God wants to intersect with us.  

In two thousand years of Christian history we have molded the words of Jesus into a religion with all its doctrines, rituals, and rules.  We’ve told people that by following those pieces they could experience the life of God.  No wonder so many people are frustrated that their most ardent attempts don’t seem to let them in on the reality they crave for.  Jesus didn’t give us any of those things.  He walked with Father and invited us to join him there.  By doing so he made everything else tangential.  

I was reminded of this last week as I ran across this quote:  

“Christ did not establish any doctrine; he acted. He did not teach that there was redemption; he redeemed. Christ’s relationship to God, nature, and the human situation was conditioned by his activity. Søren Kierkegaard

Talk really is cheap.  No wonder Jesus preached so few sermons.  His life was his sermon, the way he touched people and let God’s work unfold in them.  He didn’t tell the woman at the well, Zaccheus, or Peter that they were loved; he loved them.  He didn’t parse out the theology of the atonement, he simply saved people from all the places where the world and religion had disfigured them.  

Imagine what the world would be like if we’d spent the last two thousand years not debating God’s character, the doctrines of salvation, eschatology, or the nature of the church, but instead learned to live alongside God as Jesus did—to enjoy his love and freely share it with others.  Unfortunately we can’t go back and unravel the mistakes of religion, but we can take a different course today.  We can turn down the words we use to tell others what they should think, and simply live it ourselves.  Instead of talking about love, we love.   Instead of talking about reconciliation, we reconcile.  Instead of talking about God, we lean into know him and let our lives unfold in him.  

Contentment.  She’s a great gift.  You can have a lot and not be content with it, always scheming for more and envious of those who have it.  And you can be content in the valley of the shadow of death, because you know you’re not alone even there and that better days and better times are still to come.  Even death is not final.

Contentment rises from the growing conviction that I am deeply loved and my whole life is in the hands of a loving Father.  Nothing is going on in my life today that escapes him and no matter how tragic circumstances might be, he can still work good in my life through it.  It means I don’t have to be afraid of the unknown and I don’t have to be in control to feel secure.  It embraces the reality that what is most important in life is the simple things in reach of us all—the hug of a loved one or a glimpse of beauty in the Creation.  It makes the best of what I already have and doesn’t waste time worried about what I don’t.   

Contentment lets me savor every joy, celebrate every friendship, enjoy each moment, and be grateful for the things that matter most.  It is an act of defiance for those advertising executives who want me frustrated with my existence so I’ll spend more money to try to find joy where joy cannot be found.  

Today in the States we celebrate Thanksgiving, a day to acknowledge God with gratefulness.  It used to be more meaningful to me when thanksgiving was a discipline I practiced.  Somehow I lossed that along the way.  Gratefulness surfaces in my heart now multiple times per day as a spontaneous awareness of God’s hand in the course of my day.  It’s not something I have to work at anymore.  It is just there now that I have lost my frustrations with life as I wanted it to be, and simply embraced it as it is.  I don’t expect life in a broken world to be fair. I no longer assume that living with integrity will get me ahead of those who lie and cheat, and that everyone who pretends to be my friend really is.  Call it cynical if you want, but losing my expectations and the naiveté that went with them didn’t leave me jaded, just willing to take life as it is and not demand all my desires be fulfilled in it.  As somone said, expectations are only resentments waiting to happen.     

No, all my days are not filled with joy and glitter.  Some are dark and painful, but I have come to discover that no matter how dark the day there is enough love, grace, and joy in it when you look beyond the darkness and realize something more important is going on than my temporal comfort or well-being.    

It now seems a bit silly to give a day to thanksgiving.  So I don’t think I’ll be more thankful today than I was yesterday, but I will enjoy a day and a home filled with people I love who get the day off to hang out with each other.  I hope your day has much joy in it as well and that you, too, are discovering the joy of contentment—the gift that keeps on giving!