Day 57: Mules at the Kentucky Derby

The angel of the Lord came, and he sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the Abiezrite. His son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “The Lord is with you, valiant warrior.” Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? And where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about? They said, ‘Hasn’t the Lord brought us out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.” The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the grasp of Midian. I am sending you!” He said to him, “Please, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Look, my family is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s family.” “But I will be with you,” the Lord said to him. “You will strike Midian down as if it were one man.” Judges 6:11–16

In 1998 I left a great position with an international, para-church ministry called Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs and took a job as the women’s director at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. I made this change largely because their lead pastor at the time—Dr. Charles McGowan—ensured I could pursue the seminary training I was yearning for while I was on staff at the church. I also took the church job because I was so impressed with how honorable and gracious Charles was during the interview process. He exuded the kind of safe, paternal kindness that should be found in any senior pastor, all the way down to his gracious way of speaking. And that wasn’t just true in the interview. In fact, over the next five years that he was my boss, I never heard an unkind word about someone fall out of his mouth that entire time.

However, at the very beginning of my tenure at the church, I felt like some of his words about me were painting too rosy of a picture. Various times during those first few months, Charles would rave about what a blessing I was from the pulpit. In multiple staff meetings, he’d say how enthused he was about what a great addition I’d made to the team. I finally got so embarrassed by his effusive praise that I scheduled a one-on-one meeting through his secretary to discuss the issue of favoritism. I remember wearing my nicest “church girl” dress to the meeting and being flustered as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, because by then, I already had so much admiration for Charles and didn’t want to come across as disrespectful or impertinent.

My voice quivered slightly as I nervously proclaimed something along the lines of, “Charles, thank you very much for your advocacy and warm reception, but you’ve been so positive about me I’m afraid people are going to get the idea that I have it all together. And I don’t.” I went on to confess much more than was probably appropriate (don’t you sometimes find yourself looking back on your youth and shaking your head at the foolishness you thought was wisdom then?) to prove that I wasn’t nearly as ideal as he’d professed publicly. He has me all wrong, and I’ll show him just how far he is off the mark! For whatever reason, I thought sharing my dirty laundry with the senior pastor who’d hired me to help shepherd his flock was a commendable thing to do. It’s a wonder he didn’t kick me out of his office with a pink slip containing directions to the nearest unemployment office!

Instead, that dear, wise, godly man patiently waited for me to finish prattling on and on. Then, he took my trembling young hands into his that were gnarled with age, and assured me in an oh-so-kind, fatherly tone, “I’m so glad you don’t have it all together, Lisa, because if you did God probably wouldn’t use you much here.”

Dr. McGowan epitomized grace to me. His leadership is one of the big reasons I can now focus on God’s transformational compassion more than my considerable weaknesses. And his guidance helped develop my belief that a perfect God really can use a perfect mess like me.

• What job has God called you to do that you feel completely inadequate for?
• Who has God placed in your life to show you that He is in the business of using your weakness for His glory?
• Who in your life feels weak in their ministry calling right now? How might you encourage them?