Page 34 - Empowering Missional Artists - Jim Mills.pdf

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14:4c) Character, the mark of leadership is as Stendhal declared: “One can acquire everything

in solitude except character.” And so it is with God: He forges character through the crucible of

a well planned strategy of adverse situations and problems for as “weather shapes mountains, so

problems make leaders.” (Ford 1991, 251) In the early 90s I wrote a song that expresses the

value of affliction for my life: “Before I was afflicted my soul went astray, my heart it was so

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stubborn, I always seemed to learn the hard way, won’t I ever learn.” (Psalm 199:67) God is the

master artist when it comes to forming our lives. He is not out to get us, rather He is out to

change us: Why? It is because He loves us.

Jacob’s wrestling match story offers a valuable parable about formation. (Genesis 32:24)

God humbles Himself to wrestle with us, as if He were a man. Fundamentally, we must learn,

like Jacob, to wrestle with God until God wins. That is to say, for us to win our wrestling match

with God, means we surrender, and He wins. Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless

me.” (Genesis 32:24-25) The blessing was in fact God’s triumph in his life. That blessing was

manifested in a change of his character and his name from ‘thief’ to ‘prince of God.’ Yes, Jacob

prevailed and then limped away from that wrestling match a ‘whole person’, a leader ready to

serve. A fellow missionary once stated, “God never uses a man wisely until He hurts him badly”

We, as church leaders, cannot precisely map out all the ways and means that God

intends to employ in the leadership formation of anyone in our care. We can only be committed

to an overall vision of their wholeness and we must pray behind their backs. I have learned that

whole people often walk with a limp. If, as leaders, we can be reasonably transparent, then we

will encourage those in our care through our life’s lessons, failures, adversities, and dealings.

God is endlessly creative and His-story in our lives is all uniquely different. Though His truth is

unchangeable and His ways unmovable; His means are immeasurably versatile for His sake and

ours.