CAFO2024 Opening video and keynote address
Few gatherings in my entire life have felt as meaningful as the CAFO2024 Summit.
It seems to me that God set abundant feast for His people. He fed us, marvelously. Each person received, even more than we came for. Each also served, like waiters delivering sumptuous plates from the Master – so many delightful gifts, savory and sweet, large and small.
We’ve now returned to 45+ nations and every US state – so full of heart, strengthened, well-provisioned for the road ahead.
This year’s theme was a single word: Becoming. Below is the video that opened the Summit. Following that is the text, lightly expanded, of the opening keynote talk. The full keynote is also available for viewing here. – Jedd Medefind
CAFO2024 Keynote: Becoming in the blacksmith’s shop
Close your eyes for a moment. Can you see it – there at the edge of the village: the blacksmith’s shop?
All is darkness as you enter. Fireflies dance in the far corner – no, not fireflies; they’re sparks rising from fanned coals.
You glimpse a barrel-chested man in a leather apron, his forearms big as your thighs, face glistening with sweat. With his tongs, the dark form lifts a strand of glowing metal from the coals, lays it on the anvil. He raises a massive hammer, and brings it down with a crash, again and again. Fireflies fill the room.
What’s it all for? The Blacksmith knows. He labors for a future good no one else yet sees. He intends beauty and usefulness, perfect form and perfect function, in one object. That is the end to which He works.
He will apply every tool at His disposal to bring it about: tongs and bellows, searing flame and cooling bath. He is the Master. But the steel plays its part, too – either resisting or … participating with the Greater Power to become the good that He intends.
This is the great end to which He works. Form and function, beauty and usefulness, in one object.
God’s highest good for you
Let us now consider this thesis: God’s great interest in your life, in mine, is not in what we can accomplish for Him, even the very important work He’s given us to do. He could do those things without us if He wished.
Nor is God’s highest good for you your comfort or success or good name. Those can be wonderful gifts, and He often delights in giving them to His children when they won’t get in the way of even better things.
But God’s great interest in your life runs much deeper. His highest good for you is nothing less than the person you are becoming. It is that you would become a certain kind of person: “conformed to the likeness of His son” (Romans 8:29), that “Christ be formed in you.” (Galatians 4:19). In short, it’s that you would grow more like Jesus every day. “
It is that the calm, the joy, the patience, the strength and tenderness that filled Jesus would also fill you. It’s that you would know the light yoke of self-forgetfulness. That your food would be the pleasure of doing your Father’s will. That all that you think and say and do will bring glory to Him and good gifts to others. It is that goodness itself would spill out of you – not by strained effort, but because of who you are becoming in Him.
That is God’s first interest in your life, His highest good for you. Everything else – everything – is a distant second.
What does it look like in a life?
Now we must admit: we do not always see this happening in a person, certainly not just because they call themselves a Christian.
There may be nothing more disappointing, more damaging even, to faith than to see a person who claims the name of Jesus and looks nothing like him. It’s one of the worst things on earth.
But … BUT … the opposite is also true.
One face that comes vividly to mind for me is Joni Eareckson Tada.
Many of you know her story. In 1967, Joni dove into the Chesapeake Bay, struck bottom and broke her neck. Just seventeen, paralyzed for life. Waking in a hospital bed, she saw only misery ahead if she were to live.
One of the most significant conversations I’ve had in all my life was interviewing Joni a few years ago for the Justice and the Inner Life podcast.
She described those first days as a quadriplegic, “I wanted to die but couldn’t.” Week after week, Joni lay in that hospital bed, trapped in a body that now refused her simplest requests.
In the middle of another endless night, she felt unable even to hope. And yet, staring up into darkness, she did what she could. She chose to pray. The words were raw. “Jesus, if I can’t die, you’re going to have to show me how to live, because I can’t do this. I don’t know how to live as a quadriplegic.”
That choice, she said, “was just the first choice of thousands and thousands I have made over these [50+] years living in this wheelchair.”
Other small decisions followed, many of them imperceptible to everyone around her. She determined to express words of thanks, even when she felt zero gratitude emotionally.
Joni knew she could not do everything. She couldn’t do much at all. But make a habit of thanksgiving? “I could do that,” she said.
“Thank you, God, that my hospital bed is in the corner of the room by the window. Thank you that my parents and family are still supportive. Thank you that my breakfast is warm.”
Day by day, hour by hour, the repeated choices began to etch patterns.
What began to grow caught her totally by surprise. “As I started giving thanks to God in those small things, not feeling an ounce of emotion, God did a miracle. Months later, He gave me this emotional thankfulness. Oh my goodness, I was shocked. I was so surprised.”
For Joni, these choices were not merely about being positive. She was choosing to turn her face toward God, like a sunflower tracking the sun. She was opening her hands, like a child to receive. She was seeking to participate with God as He formed her heart into something very different than it had been.
As Joni tells it, small, daily choices like this have been the wellspring of the life she’s lived. Day by day, week by week, year by year, simple habits became the conduit of God’s care and forming work.
Talking with Him before opening her eyes in the morning. Memorizing Scripture and hymns by heart. Expressing thanks for specific things, even when she feels flat.
For Joni, these patterns – some began five decades ago in a hospital bed – are as essential to her life as her heartbeat, maybe more so. As she puts it, “Small matters, little choices totally remade my life.”
Today, more than 50 years after her accident, Joni continues to spill good into every person who encounters her. Some of this she does through her formal ministry with Joni and Friends, a tremendous organization.
But the most beautiful gift Joni gives is not in her achievements or formal ministry. It is in who she is – her heart, her character, her presence.
She’ll freely confess she’s ready to go to be with Jesus. But for now, when you are with her, she’s all there, delighted to be with you, fully present, as if you’re the only person in the world. Her eyes twinkle, tender and bright. They whisper, they tell you that you are valuable, you are a joy – to her and to God. Without moving from her wheelchair, she seems to reach across and wrap you in a long, motherly hug.
That’s a little glimpse of what it looks like – feels like – to be with a person who’s becoming a bit more like Jesus every day.as our little choices … our thought life … and ultimately our character are becoming like Jesus.
Better than a billion dollars
Most all of us would say that is beautiful. But if we’re honest, it’s also troubling
Does God really care less than we do for our health or comfort or success? No. I daresay He cares for these things with even greater strength than we ever could. It’s simply that God sets our becoming above all other goods.
It is not cold severity that does this. It is love. It’s love that drives the hammer. It is love that fans the flame.
That’s because being steadily changed to be like Jesus is the best thing on earth. It is, literally, better than a billion dollars.
Why? Because if you get a billion dollars, but nothing changes in you, you’re still the same person. Some of your burdens will be lighter; others heavier. And if you’re easily annoyed now, you’ll be easily annoyed then. If you’re anxious now, you’ll be anxious then. If you’re insecure or envious or self-absorbed, that won’t change at all with $1 billion. If anything, you’ll be more of those things – more of what you already are. They’ll be amplified by your increased capacities.
Anything that doesn’t change your character leaves you right where you are, as you are – as you are, even if you buy a home in Tahiti or start a ministry in Timbuktu.
BUT … when you are being changed from the inside out, becoming steadily more like Jesus, the opposite is true. Not one single external thing may change, but everything is different.
You might have lots of money … and great, you’ll use it generously and do lots of good. Or … you might have nothing, but you’ll still say like Paul, “I can be content in any and every situation.” You can even be treated terribly, face all kinds of trauma, thrown into a Philippian prison, whipped by a jailor, sitting there in the stocks, your back bleeding … and yet you’re singing songs of Thanksgiving. Even there you’re joyful, calm, giving thanks in all circumstances .
That’s better than a billion bucks. Will you say that with me, “Better than a billion bucks?” Much better!
It’s not about self actualization
Now, let’s pause for a moment. Maybe all this sounds a bit like self-actualization – aiming to be the best version of yourself, live your best life now.
On one level, there’s some truth to that. God does want us to become our best selves, the person He made us to be.
But most versions of self-actualization are actually the very opposite of what we’re talking about here.
- In self-actualization starts with self, literally. Christian formation starts always with God.
- In self-actualization, I seek to assert my will. In Christian formation, I seek to align my will with God’s will.
- In self-actualization, we aim to drive the process, imagining it’s our project. In Christian formation, we seek to participate with God, joining Him in His work, like a child working with their father.
- Self-actualization seeks to impress others. Christian formation seeks to bring good to others.
- Self-actualization prioritizes self-care. Christian formational learns to receive God’s care.
- Self-actualization, the ultimate aim is self-satisfaction. In Christian formation, the ultimate aim is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
And here’s the biggest thing we need to know. Self-focus is poison to the human soul. Any ambition, any mindset, any therapy that has you thinking mainly about yourself will leave you unhappy and anxious.
Only as we lift our eyes to God – to His goodness, to His gifts, and His invitations to give our lives for others – do we taste true joy, true peace, true freedom. That’s the light yoke of self-forgetfulness.
My friends, I hope you’ll take that phrase with you: the light yoke of self-forgetfulness. That’s the becoming we’re talking about here.
What does living this way feel like?
What does it feel like to live this way? To live with deep-down confidence that what really matters is not our success or comfort or reputation – but rather, before anything else, the person we are becoming?
In a word, it feels light. It feels wonderfully light.
As a boy, my brothers and I worked with Dad out in our almond orchard countless days, since long before I could remember – pruning, fertilizing, irrigating, harvesting.
I always thought he wanted us out there because he needed our help.
But a few years ago, he and I were talking about all that work we did, and with a little grin he said something like, “Well, you know, Jedder, when you first started working out there with me, you weren’t a lot of help.”
“What!?!” I said.
But it was true. We were small and weak. We did things wrong or got in the way. Worst of all, after an hour or two, we’d often start whining about the heat or cold or nuts falling on our heads.
“The truth is,” Dad said, “in those early years, it would have been easier to do it myself.”
But then he said this. “I had you out there for good reason. I wanted to be with you. And I wanted you to learn to work like men.”
I think that’s a glimpse of what God wants, too. He wants to be with us – and He wants us to grow more like Him as we join Him in His work.
As that happens, we do become useful. God has good, good work for each of us to do. At times, it will take everything you’ve got – your strength, our money, maybe even your life. But before any of that, God’s first priority is the person you are becoming.
Why’s that? First, because He loves you – and becoming like Jesus is … better than – what? – a billion bucks. It’s the best thing on earth.
But second, this becoming is the start, the source, of everything else He desires for us, too. As we become like Jesus, all the rest follows. We will lay our lives down, like Jesus did. We will pour ourselves out in service to others, even our blood if necessary. That’s what He did. And that’s what will flow naturally from us if we’re becoming like him.
My friends, when we’re confident of this, it lifts that terrible load that comes with feeling we need to “change the world” to justify our existence … with imagining that our identity comes from what we achieve or own. We’re freed from our ambitions … from our insecurities … from relentless work or numbing distraction … from constant worry about what others think about us.
It is the light yoke, the light yoke of self-forgetfulness.
God is the Blacksmith, the vastly greater power. We simply join Him in His work, like children in their Father’s workshop – seeking to align our will with His will, pairing our little strength with His great strength, joining our small, daily choices with His eternal purposes.
The fires
Over the years, Rachel and I have walked closely with many, many dear friends who’ve been through some of the worst things imaginable amidst the callings that many of us in this room share: foster care, adoption, ministry to hurting children all over the world.
They’ve followed Jesus into the fires and, it often seems to me, have been burned there – emotionally, physically, financially, even spiritually. Some are still there.
One dear couple has two adopted daughters. Years ago, one of their daughters graduated valedictorian of her high school class. On the very same day, the second daughter ended up in a psychiatric hospital. And she’s been in and out ever since, and run away from home, and run away from hospitals; many days they’ve lived in dread of the phone call telling them she’s been found dead. They’ve been hurt again and again and again.
It’s hard not to look at it all and think, “Maybe they heard God wrong. Maybe they shouldn’t have opened themselves to that kind of hurt.”
But I’ll tell you, my friend is a remarkable man. He doesn’t minimize it. He told me he once cried for four hours straight. But you know what else he said? “If I was starting over, I’d do it again. She needed us. And we needed the work that God’s done, is still doing, in us through this.”
Then he said this: “Nothing in life, nothing, has taught us more about God’s love, His persistent love. Nothing in life has been harder, but nothing has shaped us more to be like Jesus.”
In the short run, this makes no sense. If the purpose of life is comfort or convenience or control, it’s literally madness. But if the great purpose of life is to grow like Jesus, then it makes all the sense in the universe.
If the greatest good, the greatest joy and lightness comes as we are formed into the likeness of Christ, then bring it on. Everything else is rubbish in comparison. That’s what Paul said.
That point isn’t that we want to suffer. We don’t. But we’ve begun to see that every trial holds the fires of a forge. We see their power to reshape us. And we want so badly to become more like Jesus that we can embrace even this if God will use it for that marvelous end.
You know, that’s why Christians can think and speak about trauma very differently than the world. We don’t minimize painful experiences or act as if they didn’t happen. We lament; we mourn with those who mourn, and we take our grief together to God. But we never, ever act as if trauma gets the final word. We don’t subtly talk as if people who’ve experienced trauma are damaged goods.
We believe – and we frequently remind each other – that God can use this, even this, for our benefit. He can comfort; He can heal; and He can take even what the Enemy intended for evil and use it for good – first within His children and then through us for the good of others.
That is a very different view of trauma than the world typically conveys.
Joining in the process
Now, a little caveat here. It’s so good to know – and thank God! – that it is not only the hard things God uses to form us. He uses all things for that great good: delicious meals, and live music, and snuggling with a child, and honeysuckle, and hiking in the mountains, and 1,000 other things.
These gifts form us, too, especially when received with thanksgiving.
All things – the good gifts of the happy and the good gifts of the hard – each play a part in God’s great undertaking, to help us become like Jesus.
All of it is grace, charis, pure gift, unearned and undeserved. Our part is incredibly small.
And yet – and this is key – God asks us to join Him. We are not only steel on the anvil; we are also sons and daughters, invited to join our Father in His work.
If this is to happen, we must choose to participate.
Now there’s so much we could say here about specific ways we participate. Lord willing, all of our workshops will touch on these themes in one way or another, and we’ll deepen in them together.
But now, we’ll touch on just one point, which has become a defining truth in my own life. It is this: our part in God’s formative work plays out mainly in the small, frequently-repeated choices of daily life.
Yes, our life in God often begins with a dramatic moment: a supernatural awakening, a powerful turning, what the Bible calls repentance, turning from darkness and opening to God’s light. But from there, the journey of our formation is lived out mostly in small, daily choices.
Those little choices, so easy to overlook, tend to shape us more than anything else – more even than the seemingly big decisions – like what job we’ll take or where we’ll live.
Why? Because we make the little ones again and again and again; they shape our hearts and character and also much of the effect we have on others, too.
Small, seemingly insignificant decisions: like offering our first thoughts of the day not to our phone, but to our Maker; like giving thanks even when we aren’t feeling it yet; like choosing not to chew on a wrong that was done to us, but instead praying for the person who did it.
Every choice, no matter how minor, etches a small pathway. It’s like a water droplet running down a hill. At first, that drop could go any which way. But repeated again and again, the little pathway becomes a rivulet, then a stream — deeper, wider. Drop by drop, it grows into a riverbed … a gorge – eventually, those little drops form a vast canyon.
That’s how humans are formed, too. Small choices, at first made only with great effort, slowly become easier, then habit, and eventually a settled character. Scientists call it neuroplasticity. The Bible calls it being “transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
That’s why Joni could describe, “Small matters, little choices totally remade my life.”
What comes out when you’re squeezed
One last story. Earlier this year, a young man – the son of friends I deeply respect – faced a great loss.
Isaac was a high school senior – a very good wrestler, with a strong chance to win the state title.
There’s Isaac, on the far right, just before a tournament. That day, he won his first match easily. He was doing well in the second when his opponent made an illegal move and a loud pop sounded from Isaac’s arm. Pain ripped through his body. He cried out, ahhhh!
His coach and parents leapt to his side. His arm looked massively hyper extended. Isaac told me later, “I knew right then my season was done.” But seeing his mom’s distress, what he said out loud was, “God is good. No matter what, Mom, God is good.”
It looked so bad that doctors sent them to the children’s hospital, an hour away. The pain grew as they drove. Isaac slipped toward unconsciousness. “You gotta stay awake,” his dad kept saying.
To try to keep his head amidst the pain, Isaac talked out loud – to his parents, to himself. You know what he was saying? Romans 8, “And we know that in all things … in all things … God works for the good of those who love him…” James 1, “Count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds, because you know … you know … that the testing of your faith produces perseverance…”
At the hospital, the doctors sedated Isaac. An x-ray showed that both of the bones in his forearm, radius and ulna, had snapped completely.
When Isaac came to, his parents entered the room. He was still a bit groggy, but the first words he said to them were this, “I can tell you one truth. No matter what, Jesus Christ is Lord.”
The doctor looked at his parents with a smile. “He’s been saying that the whole time,” the doc said.
My friends, what comes out of you when you are squeezed like that – when the character formed over years of small choices spills out? For Isaac, it was Scripture. Even more, it was calm and confidence that God was working, even in this, for that highest good of all: to form Isaac into the likeness of Jesus.
Where does that come from? Especially in the life of a teenager, whose athletic dreams had just been crushed, who’d been orphaned as a child and adopted to a far-off continent at age 4 or 5?
I asked Isaac. Here’s what he told me: all through his growing up years after being adopted at age 5, his parents helped him and his siblings learn Bible verses, a new one every week. That included verses like the ones from Romans 8:28 and James. 1:2. Isaac told me they called verses like those “fighter verses” – truths meant to help them to stand strong when the going gets tough.
They memorized these and hundreds of other verses – including the whole book of James. It didn’t happen in one big, dramatic action, but in these and many other small choices, repeated again and again over years and years.
That’s how humans are formed.
The point isn’t that just memorizing some lines from the Bible makes you a great person. It’s that through countless little actions, those truths sank into a young man’s heart, They saturated his thought life and eventually overflowed in his actions. No wonder that’s what came out when he was squeezed.
Last month, Isaac started at college here in Tennessee. He wants to be a counselor … or maybe a pastor. Either way, he hopes he’ll become the kind of leader who can shepherd and care for people with wisdom and love. I’m confident he will.
Back to the blacksmith’s shop
All this brings us back to the blacksmith’s shop – to the leaping fireflies, the clang and concussion, the searing flames and quenching bath.
And even now, even this side of heaven, we begin to glimpse what the Blacksmith is aiming at.
I see it in Isaac. I see it in Joni. I see it in so many of you here.
And I will tell you, earnestly: When I see that, when I spend time with the people in this room, people who’ve followed Jesus into the fires and are being steadily formed into his likeness, I say to myself, “I want more of that. Whatever it takes, I want more of it.” I know you want more of it, too.
May we truly long for it – enough to pray “Lord, be gentle, but do whatever it takes to grow it in me!” May we want it so bad we’ll set the one thing before any other objective in our lives – for ourself, for the children we love, for the friends and colleagues we walk alongside.
What will set first?
My friends, this CAFO community, this shared movement, is having its 20th birthday. Some here have labored in these fields even longer.
Despite all the costs, even pain, so much good has come through you, and in you, as you’ve labored together with God and one another.
And honestly, I’m even more excited about the next 20 years. Who knows what adventures we’ll have? I suspect they’ll be even harder and even better than we imagine.
But here’s one thing I’m certain of.
This work we do – it is so good, so needed and God-honoring. And yet … this work cannot be our first priority.
If our driving priority is to change the world … even to change our town … to rescue kids from the streets or institutions or foster care… to meet the vast needs all around us … if that comes first in our minds and hearts, we will not last.
We may do some very good things, but in far less time than we imagine, we will run dry. The need, the hurt, it’s just too big. We will quit. That may include a big dramatic quitting like a mental breakdown or an affair or addiction. Or it may just be the quiet quitting that maintains our role and title while feeling zero love for what we do or the people we’re serving. That’d be one of the greatest tragedies I can imagine.
BUT … and I am just as convinced of this … if we make our first and driving priority to be with Jesus and to grow more like him, we will last. It won’t be easy. But we will persevere. And the work we do – the fruit we bear in others’ lives – it will last, too.
We may or may not change the world in some grand sense.
But you will know the light yoke of self-forgetfulness. The joy, and the calm, and the patience, and the strength and tenderness that filled Jesus will also fill you. Goodness itself will spill out of you – not by strained effort, but because of who you are becoming in Christ.
And whatever it is you are doing, whatever your work or title, your very presence will be ministry, bringing good gifts to others and glory to God –
That is God’s great interest in your life, His highest good for you: becoming more like Jesus every day. And it’s the best thing on earth.
– Jedd Medefind is the president of Christian Alliance for Orphans.
