Biography
Gordon MacDonald is former President of InterVarsity and now Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in New York City. He is the author of many books, including Magnificent Marriage, The Effective Father, and Rebuilding your Broken World. He and his wife, Gail, are popular conference and seminar leaders across North America. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Adding Value to Your World" 
Not long ago my wife and I traveled to South Africa for several weeks of preaching and lecturing with Christian leaders in that country. During the time that we were there in the southern tip of Africa, I had the privilege to sit with more than a few people who have suffered terribly over the years under the pressure of apartheid.

One morning I had the privilege of sitting for at least a couple of hours with one of the most remarkable young men I have ever met. He was a black man and he spoke with tremendous clarity about some of the geo-political realities in our world. He spoke as if he had been in every part of the world; he spoke with tremendous discernment and insight about the winds of change going on not only in his country but in ours. I was overwhelmed with his brilliance but, more than his brilliance, I was overwhelmed with his sense of character; his insight into the human predicaments; his understanding of suffering and what it was going to take for his own country to bring changes about that would benefit everybody with justice and righteousness.

Somewhere in that conversation I became so impressed with the depth of the man that I asked a rather innocent question. I said, "Where were you trained?" I anticipated an answer like, "I went to Oxford or Cambridge or the University of Pretoria," or something that most of us would anticipate.

Instead he smiled and then he said calmly, "I was trained on Robin Island."

Immediately I knew I had met someone who was far more unique than I had realized. Perhaps you have never heard of Robin Island. If you have, you know that it is an Alcatraz-type of place where many of the great leaders of the black movement in South Africa spent many years in prison, including the twenty-five years that Nelson Mandela spent there. I was immediately caught up with curiosity and said to this young man, "How long were you there?"

He answered, "Five years."

Then he began to tell me about some of the things he had learned while he had been there breaking rocks in the quarry, living under some of the most austere conditions that anyone could imagine. He told me what those years had meant to his soul and I sat there learning a lesson that I shall never forget.
As I talked to this young man I found myself saying, "Here is one of the most purified, clean people I have ever met, focused and committed; a man who has cleaned his soul and understands exactly why he has been called into life and what purpose he is living."

I went away from that interview saying to myself, "If it took five years in prison to create some of those character traits and qualities in me, I think I would gladly give myself to that kind of environment."

Then it occurred to me that that is one of the great secrets of the Christian journey, that almost nothing of value is ever learned unless a persons goes through some form of stress or another. As I mused upon that even further, I began to realize that is the secret of all beautiful things which are produced.

When you go to the studio or the shop of the craftsman or the artist, you learn that there are some simple techniques that bring things from rawness to beauty, from valuelessness to value. For example, the diamond cutter takes a raw piece of rock. With a hammer and a chisel, he begins to chip away at it. He makes it smaller, but in making it smaller, it becomes more beautiful and more valuable. The potter takes a lump of clay which is unsightly in the beginning. He puts it on the wheel and with the use of his fingers and with other kinds of tools, he shapes it into something which is absolutely magnificent to behold. The painter takes paint out of a pail or from a palette and he puts it on canvas. By adding one thing to another, he begins to shape something which is beautiful that we can all look at. The craftsman sometimes takes various materials that he has made; he puts them into the kiln and exposes them to tremendous heat; he beats them like a blacksmith takes molten metal. When he is through, the thing is not only more valuable but it is stronger than ever.

It occurred to me that is the truth God's word teaches both in the Old and New Testaments: that all the men and the women who grew to have value in the sight of God, in the sense that they were useful to God, in the sense that they could make a difference to their generation, that they could become givers rather than takers, all of those people had at least one thing in common. They went through some kind of crafting experience. They understood, like the diamond, what it means to be cut. They understood, like the clay, what it means to be reshaped. They understood, like the paint on the canvas, what it means to have things built in and added to your life so that you can become more beautiful to behold. Almost everyone of them understood what life in the kiln is all about or what it means to be beaten and tempered until one ends up stronger and more valuable than ever.

One of the great missions of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as we read of it in the New Testament, was the mission of adding value to people. One of the most common invitations He gave to men and women who were about Him, went something like this -- we used to sing it as Sunday school children -- "Follow me and I will make you to become fishers of men."

I have often been impressed with that simple little phrase, "I will make you..."

It is not as though human beings are valueless without this making experience. We have all been created to be unique and special, but there is a marvelous promise in the call of Christ to every human being that we can be made into something which is more valuable if we will commit, surrender and submit ourselves to the Lordship of the Son of God. No person ever chooses to follow Christ who is not made into a kind of person who is more closely to what God designed us to be.

No one impresses me more than Simon, or St. Peter, in that kind of a situation. Here was a rough-hewn, young fisherman who came out of the work-a-day world much like all of us live in. He was a man who had known hard work and labor many, many hours far beyond the normal work shift, a man who knew what it was like to be beaten sometimes and licked and to be exhausted and at other times to be victorious and prosperous. One day he came into the presence of Christ and he heard that invitation, "Follow me and I will make you to be something special."

If the diamond cutter knows how to cut something into smaller pieces so it becomes more valuable, Jesus knew how, if you can put it in that language, to cut Peter and make him more valuable. There was the cutting of rebuke. There were moments when Peter made an utter fool of himself only to hear the sharp words of Jesus who loved him enough to speak truth to him, truth which sometimes was painful and which exposed and named those ingredients in his life which were not very godly or very righteous.

There were other times in Peter's life when he had to be reshaped. Sometimes Jesus did the potter's reshaping in Peter's life when he exposed him to tasks which were bigger than he was. Slowly but surely, Peter became a new and different man in terms of the pressure he faced in doing things which seemed almost impossible.

There were other occasions when Jesus added things to Peter's life like the painter or the artist adds paint to a canvas. He taught him; He led him; He guided him; He affirmed him. When Jesus got through with Peter, he was a magnificent human being capable of things of which he had never been capable before.

Then there were those moments when Jesus Christ allowed Peter to suffer in failure. Yes, this great man of the early church who seemed so successful and prosperous in his service for God, on several occasions knew abject and utter failure. He was ground to powder; he was put into the kiln; he was pressurized and tempered. When he came through that process, he was a man among men like few have ever seen before or since.

I think the beauty of the story of St. Peter is that throughout the centuries God has been permitting people to face such tempering, such stress, such pressure, such rebuke, such reshaping. When people submit themselves to such a process, there is a marvelous promise which becomes true for them. God makes us women and men after His own heart.

The man I saw in South Africa who was trained on Robin Island was such a contemporary example to me. I began to see that in the pressures of life there is always something wonderful to behold, for God never permits a difficult situation to be wasted.

I say all this because I am very much aware that in a television audience like this there are more than a few people today who feel that they are being cut, who feel that they are being reshaped by the circumstances of life, who feel that somehow they are having things added into their lives which they are not always sure that they want. There are certainly people going through the stresses and turmoil and trials of reality in life in the marketplace, in personal relationships. For a moment, things can seem very, very bleak and somewhat gloomy. It would be easy to quit; it would be easy to become bitter, but I would like to remind you that the kind of training that makes strong men and women of character and Christ-likeness, those kinds of experiences happen on the Robin Islands of life.

The Book of Hebrews says: "No discipline seems pleasurable at the time, but rather painful, but later on it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

There are some in the world who would try to tell you that none of us ever should have pain; none of us should ever be defeated; none of us should ever experience failure. Perhaps there is an element of truth in that, for God does not seem pleased when people have to sweat and suffer. But, our God is a marvelous God who takes every circumstance, even the ones we make for ourselves in defeat, and by His grace and by His power and mercy, He uses them to make better people for us.

I hope that today if you find yourself on a particular kind of Robin Island experience, you will let God speak deeply into your heart and make it possible for you to become the man or the woman that God has made you to be. May the Lord's strong hand be upon you in such purposes and in such experiences.

Interview with Gordon MacDonald
Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: Gordon, you talked about the man who was so strengthened and built by his Robin Island prison experience and how Jesus was really ground to powder. When I think of trying to have a relationship with people who are healthy, like not being a co-dependent to an alcoholic daughter or a son, but rather being really loving, it sometimes involves making sure they have the experience. I think of God never rescuing Christ -- always being there for Him, available whenever He wanted Him, encouraging Him and making Him know that it was all right -- but He never bailed Him out.

Gordon MacDonald: Dave, one of the experiences I have observed in lots of people in my world and in my own personal life and in a few times when I knew utter abject destruction in myself, is that it looks to me as if God provides that person a very special envelope of grace. He gives them an ability to stand up under the toughness and to hear something of the meaning of this, at least toward the end, if not right in the middle of it. He gives them grace to stand the pressure. Sometimes those of us on the outside watching are saying to ourselves, "How does that woman or how does that man stand this?"

They are moving through it with a strength and an ability that just amazes us all. In those moments, I have discovered that you have a choice to make. Either you fight the pain, you try to deny it, or you willingly walk right through it and ask yourself, "What is God saying to me through this experience?"

If you do the latter and not the former, there is always a benefit that comes out the other end.

Hardin: There is always a learning, isn't there? There is something happening in the experience which is important for you.

We talked about how strong people have somehow all dealt with very difficult scenarios in their lives -- the people that you mention, the people that I know -- who really got it together in terms of loving and being there for the world and for themselves, seem to have suffered.

MacDonald: If you do a survey of all the leading biblical personalities, you will discover that almost everyone, with very few exceptions, went through tremendous catastrophic and breaking experiences, either of their own making or by somebody else's hand. They were always different and deeper people when they came out the other end.

Hardin: One of things that maybe happens is we find that the thing we are afraid of, like going to prison or having a serious illness, when we get through it, we got through it! We did it.

MacDonald: Yes. None of us would really wish to repeat that experience by any means. I would not want to go back to some of my broken-world experiences for anything, but I do know that when I come out the other end, if I have listened properly, there is something that has been learned that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Hardin: Yet so many people come out of prison not strengthened but almost destroyed.

MacDonald: You have a man like Judas Iscariot who had a terrible broken moment and couldn't recover from it. There are a number of biblical personalities who were bitter and defensive or went into denial and simply couldn't accept the message of the pain.

Hardin: One of the things that we do on this program is to celebrate differences by being sensitive to and appreciating the differences. With things like the [Clarence Thomas] hearings, etc., people have become very aware of differences that might be offensive to the other sex. Are we enhancing relationships, are we growing with that, or is it not a good idea to be so sensitive about whether to hold the door, whether to address someone with a familiar tone or what? Where is that?

MacDonald: I suspect men in my generation will always hold the door. That is the way we are going to be. If that offends, I guess it is going to have to offend. It is an interesting time in which we live because all of us are learning things that we have done to one another in the gender differences, for example, inadvertently, blindly, that really hurt, that demean, that dehumanize, that belittle. I guess I am grateful that we are finding some of those things out.

Yet I must say that what really worries me is that there is an anger afoot and a vindictiveness today which may roll back all the good and substitute something very destructive in relationships.

Hardin: That we need to work on. It has been great having you with us. Thank you very much.