Video Transcript: Who does God use?

Lesson 2 - Who does God use?

Welcome back. Good for us to be together to consider leadership. Last week, I did kind of a, a  bridge between this class on leadership and the intro class, to CLI. And again, I want to  encourage, encourage you, if you haven't had the chance to go back and view those 11  sessions that are there we are in that section on leadership. Now, just a reminder, if you've  forgotten that, here's how we've been looking at leadership, a leader interacts with a culture,  which has seen in a variety of things, though, the words that are written down the stories that people tell the physical layout, we're going to get into that later, and how to define culture  and all that good stuff, but interacts with that culture, the people there and the culture they  created, in order to develop a vision or a preferred future ideas about that. So the people and  the leader together develop that vision of a preferred future. And then they do the prayer, the planning, the strategic planning, and the impetus for actions that leader that provides the  impetus to make that preferred future a reality. And then this first section of the class, we're  focusing on leadership picking up from those sections in the intro class. And in that class, we  looked at personality, and we look at baggage and we look at all the things that make you the person that you are today and how that impacts your capacity, as well as your ability to lead.  Well today I want to talk a little bit more about how God decided to choose you as a leader. Or maybe it might be a surprise for you as a leader. That God is indeed wanting you to be  engaged in this process of leadership impacting other people and impacting organizations in  his name. So who was God choose as a leader. Now, one of the people I've learned a great  deal from is Leif Anderson. He is a was a pastor in Minnesota. And I one time when he when  he told about the opportunities that he had when he came to this church, right near  Minneapolis. And he decided that that the church had to take another step into the future that was going to be different from the past. And so that was going to require leadership. And so  he got together, the leaders, the official leaders in the church, the staff that was there, the  elders that rule that church, and had been working on this issue of leadership and vision and  statement of purpose, mission and vision and all that good stuff. And one of the things he  asked him is to come up with a definition or, or a listing of the characteristics of somebody  that would be a good leader. This is the list they came up with. A good leader is articulate, in  other words, able to take ideas and to communicate those in a clear and understandable way.  The good leader is passionate. The one that God uses is passionate that he feels like God has  called them to this and so he's willing to give himself or she is willing to give herself to this  idea passionately. They are moral. In other words, if you're going to follow a leader, God's  going to choose somebody obviously, who lives a moral life. And they are wise. In other  words, they're able to make decisions and they make good choices. And they're able to help  other people make good choices. They are relational. In other words, they they have a good  IQ, not intellectual IQ, but a, an IQ of people, they're able to relate to people. In fact, some of  the studies that have been done recently say that managers in business are looking for  people with people skills to hire more than they are with IQ intelligence quotient. And so  looking for people who are relational people who are visionaries, who have an idea of what  God wants to do and are able to take the people to buy into that vision to be able to give that  vision effectively. They're tolerant, in other words, tolerant of other opinions, in other words,  patient etc. They inspire loyalty. In other words, they're people that others can look to and  say, Yes, I want to follow that person. They're kind. And they are hard working. That's the  definition they came up with. While then they started putting those people as names on  board. And noting that God often chose exceptions to those folks. For instance, the articulate  person, what about Moses? Remember when God called him in the burning bush? And just try  to imagine being in that situation that you are a leader, you're a follower of God, you're,  you're somebody who wants to serve Him, and God speaks to you in a burning bush. And he  says, it's holy ground and remember he said to to Moses, take off your shoes. So the place  you're standing is holy ground. And then he says, I want you to go and be the great deliverer  and the great law giver that Moses was going to become. And remember Moses excuse? I  don't speak well. And God's seeming compromise in the situation was I'll send your brother  Aaron with you. He's he's an articulate person. So Moses couldn't speak well, he was not  articulate. And yet, we honor him. We revere him as a leader in that early gathering of people  coming out of Egypt, passionate, what about Moses, who said, No, don't send me Don't send 

me. In fact, there's an old book cover that says, Here am I Lord send Aaron. He didn't want to  go he wasn't passionate about this job that God had given him or Jonah, that when God gave  him a commission to be impact the lives of so many people in Nineveh, he ended up trying to  run the other way. Moral. What about David, he was a murderer. He was an adulterer. He was  

a lousy father. And yet God held him up as someone who was after his own heart. Wise,  Solomon, now we know about Solomon, that the Bible says that he's the wisest man who ever was or who would ever be. And yet when you start reading about his life, and you find that he  was pretty stupid, he was wise at the beginning. But gradually, he began to amass more and  more wives and concubines and more who brought other religions into the experience of the  people of Israel. And he was one of the major factors to lead Israel astray, and sow the seeds  that will lead to their destruction later. And so the wise man became stupid, relational, what  about Paul, he caused fights where every was, in fact, you know, Barnabus, this is one of the  one of the great heroes in the book of Acts, or he's the son of encouragement is what the  name means. And he's somebody who brought brought Saul, after he had experienced that  conversion on the road to Damascus brought him to the disciples because they didn't. They  didn't want to acknowledge this guy who had been imprisoning Christians. And so as  Barnabas who was that encourager of Saul, it was Barnabas who went and got Saul when he  saw what was happening in Antioch that he said, We've got to have more help here. And  remember, Saul and went and found him. It was Barnabas, who accompanied him on the first  missionary journey. And then when the time came, that they were ready to go back to the  churches they've established. Paul and Barnabus had this great disagreement. It's a powerful  statement, we'll look at that later in another session on conflict down the road. But it was an  idea of a great strenuous kind of emphatic argument. And Paul ended up taking Silas and  abandoning Barnabas and Mark, relational, not a lot of words, I think I would Paul but boy, you know the Corinthians had problems with him. He would cause fights where ever he went and  yet he was a great leader, a visionary, a Peter. Peter was not the person that you'd say, Wow,  what a great vision he has for reaching out to the Gentiles in fact God had to give him the  vision three times, and then speak to him through the Holy Spirit saying go with these guys.  And this is this is why I want you to do it wasn't it wasn't his great vision. In fact, he did this  with some reluctance. We're down the list. Now the tolerant. Does God choose tolerant  leaders? Martin Luther, of course, was a great tolerant and leader was one of the persons who sparked the Reformation back in the 1500s. And, and yet, we know that he was an anti  Semite, and rabidly so. And yet, God used him to refresh and renew the church, a loyalty,  Abraham Lincoln is one of the great leaders in the history of the United States. And yet, when  he formed his cabinet, he was elected of course the country split into North and South,  Confederate and Union. And he chose his cabinet, those chief advisors, and there's a great  book that's written that says that a Team of Rivals, he chose all the people who were his  political rivals to be in his cabinet advising him. So they didn't have any loyalty that he didn't  inspire loyalty. on their part. Kind, Hitler was a great leader, an effective leader, changed the  course of history for the world. And yet wasn't kind. Hardworking John F. Kennedy, one of the  presidents in the United States has gone down as just being remembered wonderfully. And  yet, he was pretty lazy. In fact, there were record times where he would just go take a nap.  And yeah, so. So there's the list. And there are exceptions to the list, that people that you'd  say, That's not who I'd choose for this. And if I were God, I certainly wouldn't choose that  person. And yet, boy here we are, down the road in history and we say yeah God used and  chose surprising people. Now years ago, I had the opportunity to study revival periods in the  United States. The church history of the United States is different than other countries, we've  had this kind of up and down swing of religion that when the country was founded, of course,  the pilgrims who came here had the goal of setting up what they call the city set on the hills,  other people can look and see the light that shines from a group of people who had God as  their head. And so that's how the country started and there was a religious upswing, but then  already in the 1700s is a huge downswing in religion. And God changed that by bringing  revival with the first Great Awakening. And that was a swing up and down swing, and then up  with the Second Great Awakening and like that, well, I'm privileged to write a book which is  available through Amazon, called Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things. And the content of 

that book is largely part of a group of lectures that I did for Christian Leaders Institute, that's  in part of the history part of a Christian leaders Institute, Church History. But when you look at some of those people, You'd say that's surprising that God would choose somebody like that,  for instance, this is Jonathan Edwards, is considered one of the greatest minds in colonial  America. And somehow, God set off through him, the first Great Awakening. Now spirituality  was at a huge ebb in the United States. And, and then all of a sudden, through Jonathan  Edwards preaching, he was in a church in Connecticut, people began to come to conversion.  And they would fall crying out asking God to forgive them of their sins during the worship  service, they would shake they would. He was well educated was Jonathan Edwards. But what  we know of him from history is that he was a pretty boring speaker. In other words, he would  sit with no gestures, he read all of his sermons. And so he would be looking down reading very carefully, well worded sermons. And that's how he preached. And yet, because of a powerful  working of the Holy Spirit, people responded in an entirely different way. And as a leader, in  this movement, of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards was not effective for very long, in  fact, he got booted out of his own church. And so he wasn't somebody who was a leader for  very long, but he was in a spot for a while, and you'd say, well, okay, he is brilliant man, we'd  probably choose him as a leader. If we were going to say, Well, God's gonna use somebody.  But then we see that his track record wasn't very long standing, nor was it very effective in  the long term. And when you get to the Second Great Awakening that's even more confusing  is a picture of Charles Finney. Charles Finney was a backwoods lawyer. He had no theological  training whatsoever. And yet as as God began to bring about a revival of interest in religion  and a revival of love for him, a guy who became the center of it was Charles Finney. You  wouldn't have chosen him. I'm not trained in theology, as law training was self trained in the  backwoods of what was then the frontier, in the in America before there were States there.  And this is in the early 1800s. Now one of my favorites from then is Dwight Moody. Now  Dwight Moody, preached to millions, millions of people, hundreds of 1000s, at least came to  faith because of Moody's preaching in the United States, and in Great Britain in England. But  Moody had a sixth grade education, that's all he had was a sixth grade education. He could  not speak well. In fact, some articles and papers that were written kind of reviews of his  revivals criticize him that he didn't know how to say Jerusalem, came out of just a massive  mash of words. Somebody who came to faith as an adult, his Sunday school teacher, a man  named Kimball, led him to faith. And when he applied for membership to the church, they  rejected his application saying he didn't know enough yet. Now this is a guy God chose to do  this incredible work through and we can go on down the list. Jeremiah Lamphere is one of my  heroes. Not again, again, not a man trained theologically, but somebody that God used. It's a  magnificent period of revival in the United States. Lamphere was a businessman. He was  hired by a Dutch Reformed Church in New York City, to try to fill the pews that were empty. So his his responsibility was to devise ways to open up the doors of the church so that people  from the community can come to faith and come to church and be discipled there. And after  trying working at this for a while, he realized he had no idea what to do. And so all he did was  put up some billboards, hand out some flyers saying, you know on such and such an  afternoon, I'm going to be in the Consistory room at the Dutch church and Dutch Reformed  Church. And I'm just going to pray. And a few people joined him there joined him late. And  that sparked something. Within a matter of weeks, that fire spread across the United States.  So one reporter said, as he went from place to place in New York City couldn't find anywhere  that didn't have a noon prayer meeting, hundreds, 1000s of people in another reporter  traveled across the country, what was then the country, the later states weren't added yet.  But he said everywhere I went, there were these prayer revivals going on. Now, Lamphere is  not the guy you would have chosen. He had no experience, he had no plan. It wasn't that he  had this great vision of prayer revivals all over. He was just surprising person and yet, God  chose him and even Billy Graham went to college, but not a seminary. began preaching kind  of by default, he's a farm boy. And yet, wow, look how God can use a farm boy from North  Carolina. Now, I just quickly recite those people, because I'm thinking of you. Thinking of me  after my study revival that a good friend say to me, you know, what did you learn? And you  try to sum it up in one session, one sentence? And they said, Well, you know, what I learned is

that I'm too educated and too old, for God to use to bring about revival, but on reflecting on  that I realized, that's simply not true. God can use anyone. But he seems to specialize doesn't he in picking people so that he'll get the glory. And we won't. And so even if we are highly  educated, or even if we are incredibly gifted, regardless of our age, we've got to be people  who are humble enough to realize that when God starts using us, we give Him the glory. It's  not about us. It's about him. Look at the people Jesus chose to be His disciples, my goodness,  of all the highly educated theologians, in that day, he chose Peter, James and John fisherman,  chose the tax collector reviled in his area, he chose some people who were political activists,  in fact, they were assassins to be part of his group. You would think them. God's going to use  them. And yet, that's how the church got started. And so in this session, I simply want to  destroy what has become a great myth about leaders and leadership. And the great myth is,  you have to be someone special to be used by God and leadership, leadership, you know, I'm  talking about this process I defined this process of the leader interacting with culture, in order to define a preferable future and then giving impetus to plans and prayer that will make that  future a reality. That's all true. But in reality, leadership boils down to this, there's a leader,  there are followers, and there's a situation. And God can call anyone to be someone who's  part of that process, wherever you are. God has called you to be there. In fact, in the book of  Acts When Paul is preaching, and he's trying to convince people in Acts 17, that the Greeks  think God is the great unknown god, but he's the God that's over all the gods that they have  represented in that marketplace. He says, you know, God's appointed the times and places  for people to live, so that we might come to seek him and, and be found by him that God's  put you in a situation. God has placed you in a situation. God has called you to be a leader,  most likely, that's why you are looking at something on a website for Christian Leaders  Institute, God has called you. And some of you may be reluctant. I remember the time when I  felt the call into ministry. And I remember saying to God, I can't do that. I mean, I was in high  school at the time, and I looked ahead, and I thought, okay, in my tradition that required  seven more years of school, I thought, I don't like school all that much. And I thought, oh,  man, I can't afford this. I came from a blue collar, lower middle class family, and I just, there's  no way I'm going to afford that. And so I tried to make deals with God, right? Try to make  deals saying, oh, you know, if I if you provide this, if you provide this, then I'll go ahead. And  when I began to know in my heart that this was a calling from God, so God has called you,  you may enter it reluctantly. You're in good company, Moses certainly entered leadership  reluctantly, Gideon is one of my favorite people in the book of Judges. You remember when he is threshing out wheat, he's called by God. Threshing out while he's threshing out wheat in a  wine press, the Midianites are pressing the people of Israel, every harvest time they come and they steal the harvest. And so Gideon is trying to keep the Midianites from seeing the dust  rising up. So he's going to wine press. And the angel of the Lord appears and says hail, mighty warrior. Well, he was anything but a mighty, mighty warrior. But God knew he was going to  make him into a mighty warrior. And so he entered this path of leadership, reluctantly. And yet God used him to create a great deliverance. One of my people in history that I admire is King  George, VI, here's a picture of him, King George VI, the king king, just as World War II was  breaking out. Now, nobody believed that he was the person that should lead. In fact, his  brother who was king, King Edward, he was the one who was known to be the natural leader,  the one that everybody would follow the one that everybody liked. And yet, Edward abdicated the throne so that he could marry a commoner something that was not allowed back then.  And as a result, King George became king. And he had a stuttering problem. And yet, there's  a marvelous movie that came out a few years back now about the King's speech, and the  speech in he gave to encourage the people of England at a time of great difficult situation.  And so he became a leader, with followers in a situation. So other interesting people who are  reluctant leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. very reluctant to join the crusade for equal rights  against racism in the United States. So my only point to you today is that you're in good  company. Even Martin Luther himself didn't see himself as a great reformer. He just wanted to challenge the Church of England. So wherever you are, what is your situation? We're going to  talk about culture and in future sessions of this, but what's your situation that kind of caused  you to be a leader where you are? And so whatever your situation or your willingness, your 

responsibility is to say, Okay, God, I give you myself, here I am, here's who I am. Here's what I have. I offer it to you, I offer to historically in my tradition, John Calvin, is a great, great  thinker, theologian, and the seal of the college that I went to, in Latin says, I offer you my  heart Lord, promptly and sincerely. That's God's call to you as a leader. Next time we'll be  looking at how you can grow as a leader.