This episode is supported in part by the Christian Standard Bible, a translation designed to be faithful to the original text and clear for everyday readers. We're grateful for their partnership in helping bring gospel-centered content to families like yours. To learn more about the CSB, visit csbible.com. Yeah. I'm so grateful to God that I have a wife.
who understands the gospel, and can point me to the providence of God, and remind me that because of what Christ did, I am the object of God's goodness. I'm not what's been done to me. I'm not the ways that I've been sinned against. I'm the object of God's goodness. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most.
I'm Dave Wilson. And I'm Ann Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life today. We've got Dave Harvey back with us today in his book, The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God's Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders. This is going to be a great conversation.
We get to talk about weakness today.
Something nobody wants to talk about, but God wants to meet us right there and take us on a journey, which is an epic journey.
So let's go. How did you navigate the sadness of losing your ministry in a sense at the church? Losing your daughter. Daughter. And there's a sadness, you know, the most sadness that Kim probably was walking through.
Yeah. I think 2 Corinthians was a huge help. And I think chapter 4 was a. You know, there were seminal moments in In chapter four. Because part of that that visual of God Storing treasure In jars of clay, is to realize that that in order for the surpassing power to shine, The jar has to be broken, and that God consistently steps into our lives and busts up the jar in some way.
that sometimes that can be a small thing, sometimes that can be a large thing, that it can hit us close to home, that it could be a financial thing, but there are ways that God weakens us, and each one is hand-picked and customized for who we are. and for the the road that he's called us to walk down.
So I think not allowing The sovereignty of God to be attacked. Not just the sovereignty of God, but the providence of God.
So, the sovereignty of God is God's rule and reign over all things. Providence of God imports His goodness. Into his sovereignty. And so when faith is defined in Hebrews chapter 11, it's anyone who would draw near to God must believe that he exists. And so we're good on that one.
You know, even in suffering, yeah, we believe he exists. And he's a rewarder for those who seek him. That's the one we jettison. Yeah. You know, because that goes, no, you're not rewarding me in this situation.
So I had to be able to come to terms with the reality that there are. There are things that God is doing, even in this most horrific circumstance. That represents his blessing and his kindness. I may not be able to see that for a while. I may not even be able to see that in this lifetime.
You know, these might be the momentary light afflictions that are going to represent an eternal weight of glory, not a temporal one. But they're there and they're happening. And part of what I draw from in that is the life of Joseph. Oh. I think about Joseph.
You know, I think about Joseph as being the entitled child, boasting about his dreams and getting the coat of many colors from his dad because his dad, you know, kind of loved him best. And the older brothers knew that. And apparently, Joseph conducted himself in a way that ticked them off so bad. It's not that they just wanted to, you know, beat him up. They wanted to kill him.
They wanted to kill him. And then they decide they can't kill him without having to tell their father. Or risk having their father find out.
So they say, you know what? Let's not kill him. Let's throw him in a hole and sell him into slavery. which they do and Joseph is sold into slavery to never return to the land in which he was born and raised again in his life. And then he goes to Potiphar's house, and you think, oh, okay, so this is how storylines go.
The story arc is it's a bad thing. And then, you know, everything's going well in Potiphar's house. But then Potiphar's wife is like a sexual predator and she's hitting on him. And all of a sudden, he's taking the high road. And you think, oh, he's going to come out great here.
No. Off to prison. Falsely accused, falsely imprisoned. In prison, you know, you think, oh, well, maybe this is what would happen. No, he's just used for his gifts.
And he's there for years. And he's there for years. And he's forgotten. You know, he's bringing people on the basis of his interpretations. And he's forgotten.
His brothers come to him.
So you fast forward to the end of the story in Genesis chapter 50, where Joseph goes to give the grand interpretation of how all of that should be understood. And this is years later. He says to his brothers, you meant it for evil. But God meant it for good.
So what I love about that is like he acknowledges the, like what you did, that was evil. It wasn't incidental. It wasn't accidental. It was evil. And you intended it.
to be evil.
So when you think about it, like That's some of the hardest things to face in a fallen world is that family members you know, would try to assassinate you or Kill you or kill you and that's exactly right. You meant it for evil. But God meant all these evil things, God meant it for good. And so What I take away from that, and the way it applies to what we're talking about here, is that I am not what's been done to me. You know, I am not how I've been sinned against.
That's not the statement over me. I am the object of God's goodness. That's what Joseph is saying. Yeah, you know, yeah, being sold as slavery, yeah, God meant it for good. You know, being the object of Potiphar's wife, yeah, God meant it for good.
Falsely imprisoned, yeah, God meant it for good. Yeah, being forgotten in prison yeah, God meant it for good. She'll be dying. Yeah, God meant it for good. And it's so interesting too because I'm thinking of myself as Kim as a mom.
It'd be so easy to retrace. That group of people who started questioning your parenting. With your oldest daughter, and how it affected your youngest daughter. And so it'd be so easy just to cast blame. These people are the ones.
that hurt my daughter. And some of us in society, in culture, in the church. Can't get out of that blame game where it's their fault. How do we get from it's their fault to God? You're with me?
You're intending it for good, Romans 8, 28, you work all things together for good. How do you get from that point if somebody's just stuck or wounded from the church or have just been betrayed so horribly, how do they get from there to what you experienced and what you're saying Joseph experienced? We have to look together at the cross. Because at the center of our faith, because you know, like at the center of our Of our challenge in those moments is that there is a great injustice. that plagues me.
and it will not allow me to move forward. And that this injustice must be addressed. I have been sinned against. And we're not disputing that. But if you're asking what helped me, it was to recognize that at the center of the Christian faith, at the faith I say that I hold, lies the greatest injustice.
in the history of the world. where he who knew no sin was treated As the worst of sinners. That the spotless Lamb of God, who'd never sinned one moment of one day of his life, received the wrath of God. As a substitute for me in all of my sins, and I deserved it. I deserved that crucifixion.
He took it on my behalf. And then he turned around and gave me, imputed to me, his righteousness.
So that when God looks at me, he no longer sees me in my sins and in my lying, my longings, my lusts, whatever it might be. He sees the perfect righteousness of Christ dripping off of me. That's what elicits his well done, good and faithful servants, why he can move towards us in all things. But the thing is, that greatest injustice in the history of the world happened by the intentional will of God, and happened For the greatest good for us.
So when Christ was slain, we meant it for evil. But God meant it for good.
And marriage exists in part to remind each other of that reality. That's what Kim and I try to do for each other, is to remind each other of the gospel, particularly when the memories of these things can become oppressive. And I am a melancholic type already. And so I'm never far from that door. Like the introduction of Claypot Conspiracy is just me sitting outside while I'm descending down into the pit and I'm describing the descent and I'm describing what I'm seeing and then I'm describing what it is that pulls me out of the pit.
That experience is not like, oh, I had that experience happen a couple of times. That's like a, you know, a monthly thing that I have to deal with. But I'm so grateful to God that I have a wife. who understands the Gospel, and can point me to the Providence of God, And remind me that because of what Christ did, I am the object of God's goodness. I'm not what's been done to me.
I'm not the ways that I've been sinned against. I'm the object of God's goodness. Is it like Kim's the eighth wonder? Yes. I'd move her up.
Yeah. Yeah, I'd move her up if I was going to put her up. You're definitely in the top three, huh? Yeah. Hey, walk us through the wonders.
I mean, you have in a sense, but just briefly articulate each one. Yes, I would love to do that.
So. Wonder number one is store treasure. in clay. You know, we talked on that is the treasure being the gospel. and the clay being our our bodies and and our souls.
So store treasure and clay. Wonder number two is make death produce life. And that's again 2 Corinthians 4. It's how God uses death to produce life. That's at the center of the crucifixion-resurrection matrix as well.
Number three is let repentance stoke resilience. Number four is learn love. When the church wounds you. You have a couple quotes in that chapter that I was like, wow, these are so good. Any discussion of church imperfections must start with a personal mirror.
Yes. And we talked about that. And also, pastoring is where an imperfect person leads imperfect people. in an imperfect church to reach an imperfect world. Yes.
That's such a good reminder. We're all flawed. We all have imperfections. And that's how we love. The church with all of the wounds.
Yeah, I mean part of the challenge, it's the beauty and the challenge that we experience is that we join good churches. We experience community for the first time, preaching, transformation, and you feel like you're almost touching heaven. And it elevates your expectations for what relationships should be, for what church should be, for what leaders should be. It's almost like an over-realized eschatology. We feel like we basically are bringing heaven to earth here.
And then when something goes sideways, We have no paradigm to understand that because all we've had is this heaven-like experience. And we feel defrauded by that. And so part of what we're trying to do in helping people to grow in Christ is helping them to right-size their expectations of the church with the reality of the imperfection, not simply of the leaders and not simply of the community, but just the church itself. You know, the church has a history of being a pretty messy history, and yet God chose his people and he loved his people. despite the fact that we were like that.
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You expect the imperfection and the injustice. from non-church people. Like, they don't know better. That's their sin nature. But when it happens from people that you think, oh, they know Jesus, there's an expectation you go, no, wait a minute, this hurts so much.
That's right. That's right. And I also think it's a lot like marriage. When you get married, you're like, this is amazing. Yes.
Like, look at him. He's meeting all of my needs. And it lasts about two hours. No, it can last longer than that. And that happens at the church, too.
This is incredible. I feel like I'm touching heaven. This is a piece of heaven. But then you hear, like, oh, wait, what happened? Like, somebody sinned and fell, and you see the flaws of the body, too.
Yes. And it doesn't mean the church is necessarily broken or marriage, the institution of marriage is broken. We're just all broken. That's right. And so, part of what we're saying here is that.
Resilience doesn't come by ignoring that. Resilience doesn't come from rewriting the past or sanitizing the past from the reach of our sin. Resilience comes when we honestly acknowledge. Not only the failings of the church, but we examine our role in those failings as well. We paint ourselves into the picture.
And even as we're doing that, we're resisting both cynicism on one side and idealism on the other side. And we're trying to live in the reality of being people that are broken, desperately need the gospel each and every day, but are also being renewed day by day. I think what you were saying, Dave, is that The trap of ministry Is thinking that your greatest challenges, the betrayals, the opposition is going to come from the world. And that may be true in times of persecution. And depending upon what country you live in, it is true.
But in the West, particularly in the United States, the church for leaders is most often the cross. Upon which we must consent to be impaled. Best friends. And that's right. Yeah, that's right.
And most of the greatest heartaches, like when I think about me, most of the greatest heartaches over the last 40 years of ministry has not come at the hands of unbelievers. And so just being able to wrap your brain around that, because all along we were kind of aiming our game at the world, didn't expect the church to become the source of that kind of anxiety and pain. And so you have to kind of rethink that without downgrading the church. Right.
Well, number five is: remember, God uses enemies to enlarge your soul. What does that mean? God has a plan for everything. And in all the things that God does, he's always working. towards transformation in us.
To be attacked and not respond, to be lied about and not respond in kind, to be misunderstood and not feel like you have to defend yourself. to live in those spaces. Yeah. affects and impacts the soul. It it deepens and broadens and enlarges the soul.
But you also say it uncovers our idols. It does. What do you mean by that? You know, our idols are things that we treasure apart from Christ. And we all have these things like in orbit in our life, and they touch down at certain points, and we'll invest a lot of confidence and trust in them.
Oftentimes when we're under criticism or when we're being attacked, We begin to see things in our heart that we wouldn't see if we were outside of attack. For instance, we can see, we were talking earlier, about how important it is to us to be right, to be perceived as right. And there's somebody out there who has the audacity to believe that I'm not right, and that's driving me crazy.
Well, we, you know, we idolize our leadership or we idolize our rightness or our things correctly. Yeah, and exposes pride. Certainly does in me. I love number six. Wonder number six: build strong teams through weak.
Leaders, I highlighted this quote all over the world. Team cultures are developed so that strengths are celebrated over weaknesses. Gifts are elevated over character, and statistical success is equated with ministry faithfulness. Leaders cultivate appetites for fast and famous fruit. Been there, done that.
Yes, me too. Yeah. Me too. I mean, you read that and you go, oh, that is so wrong. That's not the God.
That is not the heart of Jesus. Yeah. And we do it. And it's. A plot it is.
It is. It's applauded. We're particularly vulnerable in the West, particularly vulnerable in America. It maps onto the narrative that is genetically appealing to Americans. We're successful.
We're raising money. Here are the statistics. These are the numbers. We're growing. We're doing what God wants us to do.
And it's not like that can't be a part of success in God. It's just that the overwhelming majority of churches throughout history have been like under 90 people. It's not like that's surprising God. It's not like he's up there saying, oh, I thought this was going to work better. I thought I'd be able to grow churches larger than that.
No, churches throughout church history are kind of small. And pastors pastor small churches. And that's pretty much the story of Christian history. And then occasionally you've got the breakouts, but those have always been exceptions. And it's just, you know, small congregations doing small things in quiet places, glorifying God and receiving amazing treasure when they go to church.
heaven so you know that's hard it's harder for us to to wrap our brain around Last one, run together the finished well. I think I'm making an appeal in the final chapters to say that this is what life is supposed to be like. This is what ministry is supposed to do. We don't charge forward alone. We need.
one another all the way. To the end, I'm not sure how we would have done it over the years without those friends that are praying for us, that are alongside us, that know all the dirty details, but continue to love us and encourage us, not cast blame or point out sin in other people, but they can point out the truth about us. Yeah. And I think that's been really life-changing for us. And that's where I'd want to say to the listeners, you know, there's a real temptation in the day we're living to kind of do Christianity more on your own.
Yes. Or to spend Sunday mornings watching it on TV. But the reason the three of us are able to say what we're saying is because we've believed something about how Christianity is lived in community and that we can't experience community simply by texting other people. That we believe in the local church, which means we want to be there on Sunday mornings. We're receiving the preaching of God's word.
We're connecting with other people. We're getting connected into smaller groups so people know us so that they can ask intelligent questions about the reality of our life. We can pray for each other. I agree with that. And if you're listening or watching this and you're not in a local church, find one.
That are preaching the gospel, they're preaching the word. When you go, you're like, yeah, I. I feel like I'm growing here. I'm connecting to some people and get to know some people. Don't just sit and leave.
Get to know some people. Yeah, we all need Jesus with skin on. Yes. And that's Clay Potts. Yeah.
That's Jesus with skin on, and it's messy. It is messy. It's not going to be perfect. It's going to be hard. And you're going to be tempted to say, I'm going to step out of this community.
They're not treating me the way I should be treated.
Well, guess what? You're part of the problem. You know, I'm part of the problem. I don't want to admit that, but we all are. It's true.
This has been so good. Yeah, Dave, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and to open up my heart a little bit and to talk about the book, which I.
I believe in, and I just so hope that it helps Christians. I so hope that it helps leaders. Yeah, you can get the book, The Clay Pot Conspiracy. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes. And while you're there, you have some free resources.
What are those? Yeah. So I'm offering to anybody that would want it a book titled Rescuing Ambition. Rescuing Ambition is a book I wrote probably 14, 15 years ago. It was during the Young, Restless, and Reformed, where there were versions of humility that were emerging that seemed to militate against godly ambition.
And I was beginning to see men and women who were so modest, they aspired to nothing. And I realized for some reason, we have a vision of humility that's competing against what we need to be able to start businesses, what we need to be able to plant churches, what we need for civilizations to move forward. Forward. We need ambition. And so I wanted to think deeply about that.
I wanted to have a theology of ambition. And so I wrote this book called Rescuing Ambition. And what I want to do is, I want to offer it to anyone listening that would be willing to give me your email address and I'll send you a PDF copy of this book. And then with your email address, I'll also register you to subscribe to the weekly Tenacious Tuesday devotional. I release a devotional each Tuesday and then an article, two Tuesdays a month, an article, more thoughtful article on the third Tuesday of the month.
And we would register you for that as well.
So free book for your email is the deal. And I hope the book would be of service to you. That's great. Click the link in the show notes and you can get that. Thanks, Dave.
Thank you. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a Crew Ministry: 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
