Discovering and Honoring God’s Gifts: Lessons from John McLernon

In a recent conversation with Emmanuel Manishimwe, Coach Jon (Jonathan McLernon) shared profound insights on how we can recognize the gifts God has given us, steward them well, and ultimately use them to glorify Him. His reflections—shaped by hardship, faith, and personal transformation—offer a powerful perspective for anyone seeking purpose and meaning.

How Do We Identify God’s Gifts?

One of the most surprising truths Coach Jon shared is this: our gifts are often invisible to us. The very things that come naturally—what we do with ease, what feels like “second nature”—are often the clearest indicators of God’s gifting. Yet, because they come so effortlessly, we tend to overlook them. Instead, it is often others who recognize these gifts in us first. But beyond natural ability, life’s hardships play a critical role in revealing who we truly are.

“You’re more likely to discover your gifts through the challenges and hardships life puts in your way.”

Through moments of pain, loss, or struggle, something deeper is uncovered—resilience, compassion, courage, or the ability to serve others in meaningful ways. These experiences don’t just test us; they reveal what God has already placed within us.

How Do We Glorify God with Our Gifts?

Glorifying God is not limited to words—it is reflected in how we live. Coach Jon highlights the importance of humility rooted in reality: life is fragile, and our time is limited. This awareness is not meant to create fear, but perspective.

It reminds us that:

• Our abilities are temporary
• Our lives are finite
• Our purpose is eternal

Rather than striving for recognition, we are called to daily surrender: “God, you’ve given me these gifts—how can I use them in service to you today?”

True humility, he explains, is not hiding or diminishing ourselves. It is acknowledging that what we have comes from God and choosing to use it in a way that points back to Him.

When we live this way, our lives themselves become a testimony—our actions, our character, and our service reflect God’s presence in us.

The Power of Forgiveness

One of the most profound moments in the conversation came when Coach Jon spoke about forgiving those who had tried to take his life.

Forgiveness, he explained, is not instant—it is a journey. After the attack, he struggled with anger and a desire for revenge. But over time, he came to realize that holding onto that anger was only harming him. “It’s like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt the other person.”

True forgiveness required a shift in perspective. Instead of focusing solely on the harm done to him, he began to ask: What led these individuals to such actions? This didn’t excuse their behavior—but it opened the door to compassion. Ultimately, forgiveness meant releasing judgment and entrusting it to God: “I cannot judge you righteously… so I commit you to God’s judgment.” This act of surrender freed him from the burden of bitterness and allowed healing to begin.

Wisdom for Life and Travel

Drawing from his global experiences, Coach Jon also reflected on the beauty of shared humanity. Despite the presence of hardship and evil in the world, there is also immense goodness. Travel, he noted, can open our eyes to this truth—reminding us that beneath our differences, we are deeply alike.

His practical advice includes:

• Don’t assume danger can’t happen—stay aware
• Take wise precautions
• Live modestly and respectfully in unfamiliar places
• Build connections with

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You welcome Coach John. John is here with us today and he'll be sharing with us more insights on reconciliation. How can we identify God's gifting to us?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I would say that oftentimes it's not something we find in ourselves. However, I would point to if there are some things that you that you do that seem second nature to you. This is often why we struggle to find in ourselves. It will be others who see the gift because they see the things that we do naturally or with ease. And so, but oftentimes it's actually experiences and hardships in life that will reveal to us when I say what we're made of and what helps us to get through the hardest experiences, whether it's and what do we do when we experience hardships or others around us who we love experience hardship. How do we step up to serve, whether it's with a word of encouragement or and so the other thing I want to be maybe thoughtful of is we are stewards of these gifts. There is a small risk of becoming enamored with the gifts that we possess. And we want to be clear that we are stewards of them. And I keep calling them gifts because we got them free of charge, we didn't earn them through merit. They are not really ours. They are unloan to us while we're on this earth. And so sometimes perhaps there's this idea that with these gifts that we possess that somehow we might have this very prosperous and abundant life. And I go, well, life isn't really about that. If you if it so happens that you have the good fortune of being able to earn a living with what you're gifted with, that's a wonderful thing, but it's not the be-all and end all. You're really likely more likely to find out who you are and the gifts that you possess through the hardships and challenges that life puts in your way. And I'll just like I said, I listed three kinds. There's you know, nearly dying, there's losing everything in a financial betrayal, and there's being crippled in a in a freak cycling accident. Each one of these experiences has uncovered or revealed something more in me that I didn't realize that I had. And so I think just being open to the experiences that when your life is in God's care, it doesn't mean you won't experience hardship, but it means hardship can work something or reveal something in you that maybe you didn't realize you had.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Very much. And how can we make sure we glorify God with the gifts He has given us?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, I think just being reminded every day that I am fragile. It sounds it's not that we live in existential dread at all. I don't mean it like that, but just remembering that maybe if I put it this way, we're we're a meat suit wrapped around a skeleton with a fat noodle on top. That's a that's a bit of a humorous and a simplified description, but like, you know, in the one hand we have these incredibly powerful minds that can conceive of many, many things, and we have these incredibly, in one, in many ways, incredibly capable bodies that can do wonderful things, but are also incredibly fragile and and can come to an end in an instant. To draw from Stoic philosophy, not that I necessarily endorse it, but they have a quote memento mori, which is just remember that you were mortal. And so I think it it's it's not that again it's not that we get live with existential dread or terror, but we live with there's a reality to life that this life is limited. And so the the gifts that we have, we want to be good stewards of it, but we really need God's spirit to guide us in that. And sometimes it takes maybe I'll very quickly describe something. So let's just say we're born with a gift, we don't know what that gift is. Sometimes people will see that gift in us, they'll tell us about it. There's other times we'll become lifted up in that gift. Hey, look at this, I do this really well, I feel good when I do this thing, people give me praise when I do this thing, and da-da-da-da-da. And then life will hand you experiences that humble you and you'll discover the limitations of that gift, like what happened to me. Sometimes you'll want to discard your gift, sometimes you wish that you didn't have your gift, sometimes you'll wish that your life take it was it was uh there's a different path that you were called or asked to go down, and so on and so forth. But eventually you get to a place where you go, okay, I recognize that left in my own hands, um, I often will be brought to ruin or despair, or just I will not become closer to God with these gifts. And so I actually have to make sure that I I go to God every day and say, These gifts that you've given me, how can I use them in service to you today? Glory to God isn't necessarily always verbalizing those words, but it's just acknowledging that I have these things because of the one who created me. So my life points to God. The light that is in my heart points to God. When we think about Christ in us, Jesus said, A city set on a hill can't be hid. You are the light of the world. Let your light therefore shine before men, that they see your good works and praise God who is in heaven. In other words, humility is not hiding and pretending we don't exist or pretending we're worthless. Humility is recognizing that we have been given gifts by God to be stewards of. We use those gifts in everyday life, living before others, in whatever way it is, whatever path of life is open to us. But we just remember that they are gifts and they come from God and that we are mortal.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

We have three more questions I would like you to help us with, and then finally you'll give us your final word of encouragement before we leave. I'm going to ask you three hard questions, and I think you don't mind. Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

You go go right ahead.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yes, the first one is whether you have unconditionally forgiven. Forgive me if I call them monsters. The monsters who tried to murder you in in Africa.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. Forgiveness is a journey though, I'll say that. So it began. So after it happened, there was a change in me. I wanted to kill people. I never acted on those urges, those impulses, but I wanted to kill people. I wanted to somehow take what was taken from me in a very unjust situation, but the there was a rational part of me that recognized this is not who I am. And I was I became exhausted with being angry and vengeful and spiteful all the time. And there's that expression it's like drinking poison and trying to hurt the other person. And so I recognized I had to go on this journey of forgiveness. But how do you forgive people who wanted to kill you? Well, they didn't actually know me. It wasn't necessarily about me. We could say it was maybe about my skin color. Uh, I'm not offended by it, I'm not hurt by it, because I say I'm a potentially a representation of something he felt had been a source of historical oppression. That's a mouthful. But anyways, just for the we'll use the economy of words. And so I asked the question, what happened to these men? What happened to them where this is the life they were living? The life because they had murdered a man the night before. They eventually were caught. I didn't go back to the court case, I was too traumatized to really bring myself back there for the court case and to face them again. But they were caught. But I had to ask myself, what happened to these men? Why is this what they were doing with their life? In a different circumstance, in a different life, would they be doing this? Probably not. And it's not to excuse their behaviors, but it's to say to start to cultivate some degree of compassion for who they are and whatever they must be struggling with or tormented with that led them to these this path in life. Forgiveness for me was not just saying, I forgive you, but I hope God kills you. It was I forgive you and I hope God sees your heart and judges you righteously. In other words, I forgive you, but I hope God smites you. No, no, no. It's to say, I actually cannot judge you righteously because I have a limited, finite, and biased human heart, and you hurt me. And so I'm going to commit all judgment to God. I I let go of all wishes for vengeance, pain, and suffering brought on you, and I just trust you to God's righteous judgment. That was a I can describe it in a couple sentences, but that was a process of a number of months to really cultivate. Every time the rage would come back, the anger, the desire for justice, and so on, was to work to cultivate compassion and go to God and say, I'm I'm wanting to give this to you. I want I want to trust this to your judgment, so I don't carry this weight and this burden with me anymore.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yes, I am quite concerned about some other people who might be afraid to come to some areas. Obviously, I hope this was an isolated area. Uh and an isolated incidence.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I would like to think so. I mean, uh one of my great laments, just as a side note, one of my great laments is that in our time in South Africa, we didn't really get the opportunity to explore more of the African continent. Um, there's so many places. My wife and I um have been very privileged to travel quite a bit, and we we love to travel and explore the world, and we think the one thing that travel does is it reminds us of our common humanity. There's so much good in the world. We can get very a distorted perspective because there's a lot of evil, there's a lot of hardship, there's a lot of heartbreaking, terrible things that happen, but there's also a lot of good. There's a lot of beautiful people around the world, and we've had the privilege to meet people from a number of countries all around the world, and at the end of the day, a lot of us are just struggling through this thing called life, and um, when we can see sort of our common or shared humanity, it's it's a wonderful thing, and when we can actually be okay with our differences too. Yeah, it's uh because at the end of the day we all bleed red, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yes, and then the second, uh, would like to ask you to share your wisdom for people who will be who who can travel to such places, isolated. I want to insist these are isolated areas, but of course, what is your wisdom to people who travel so that they can remain safe using your experience?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Well, one I would say don't assume that it can't happen to you, because it can. You can't plan for every possible contingency. There was no way I could have preemptively figured out this was going to happen to me. And so, but take take prudent precaution. In other words, don't go to areas that are prone to violence. When you come from a first world country, we lived in secondhand clothes and we don't we didn't wear any jewelry, didn't carry any fancy electronics, things like that. We basically maintained a very similar standard to those that we were sort of walking with, so we we didn't elevate ourselves and status above anybody else. Connect with locals where you can. It's wonderful if you have a faith and you can make a faith group connection because then people who live in the area can also help to keep you safe. That's a real blessing as well. So I think in the age of the internet, it shouldn't be so difficult to connect with uh with people so that if you do go to a place, you can be met with with warmth and human welcome and maybe a little bit of an established relationship. I think that makes a huge difference as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Thank you very much. And one more before we close. Yes, when you realize God has given you a rare gift, how can you ensure you remain submissive so that the same gift does not lead you away from him?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

That's a really good question. God had to really humble me greatly, I would say. Yes. In other words, it took some very it took losing all of my money, being taken advantage of, losing everything in business to teach me that I can't trust in my ability to generate money in business. Um it took nearly losing my life to learn that I can't trust in like guaranteed years to old age, and I can't trust in being a smart Christian that I have to yield my heart to God. It took suffering, a crippling injury, and a freak cycling accident to remind me that my story isn't about my weight loss. It's actually a journey of resilience and overcoming hardship. And it's not that I'm special, it's in fact it's the opposite of that. It's showing people that like our shared common humanity means that within each one of us there lies this resilience and this ability to overcome great difficulty with the help of God. I think the humbling experiences showed me the limitations of my gift and realized that like in my own stewardship it leads to loss and it leads to uh great difficulty. And so maybe it's not so hard to be humble because I'm also middle-aged and a grey beard, and I have enough life experience to sort of, you know, to realize that the illusions of grandeur aren't really aren't really all they're made out to be. I have the great privilege of being a father to two beautiful boys and married to a wife of 20 years. I tell you what, they keep me humble too. Um you know, having children is one of the greatest gifts that that could ever ever happen to us because our actions are under scrutiny and children have no filter and they tell things exactly as they are. And um I think that also helps keep me humble.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Thank you, and of course, hosting you on this podcast is one of the great things I appreciate God for. Thank you so much. And your final message to our audience, and then we close.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

I would say appreciate every experience that comes your way and trust it to the care of God, because this life isn't the final destination. And so each experience, when given over to God, can work eternal riches in you. And at the end of life, when no matter how many years you're granted, you'll never regret giving your life to God.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure hosting you, and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Thank you, it's been a pleasure.