Soulprint Week #2 - Life Symbols or remembering God in our past

Below is the message I shared last week at Good Shepherd.  It is the second in  a series based on the book, Soul Print by Mark Batterson.  The first message is contained in an earlier post if you are interested.  
Remembering where we have been  - and how God was present and active in the moments of our past is an important element of beginning to move forward toward who God has called us to be.  Hope you hear God speaking to you here.

1 Samuel 17: 41 – 54 (NIV)

⁴¹ Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. ⁴² He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. ⁴³ He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. ⁴⁴ “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”   ⁴⁵ David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶ This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. ⁴⁷ All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

⁴⁸ As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. ⁴⁹ Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.   ⁵⁰ So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.   ⁵¹ David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword.     When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. ⁵² Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath^[f] and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. ⁵³ When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp.

Today we continue our series based on the book ‘Soulprint’, working towards understanding who God has uniquely made us to be who we are and searching for the unique call and destiny that God has placed on our lives.

Last week, as we began the series, we focused on two things.  First, on the importance of not trying to be anything that we are not – and simply living into who and what we are.  This idea was reinforced for me this week on Monday as I came across two quotes from very different sources that dealt with being who you are:

The first is from Oscar Wilde, and he simply advises: ‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken.’

The second is a Jewish proverb I was told, which goes: ‘If I am like someone else, who will be like me?

The point of these quotes and of our time last week was the simple, but important reminder that we are who we are for a reason.  We are who we are on purpose, for a purpose.  The second point from last week was that in order to be ourselves, even in difficult we need confidence.  But this confidence isn’t in ourselves and doesn’t come from ourselves, but rather we need to have a Holy Confidence in a God that is Holy, that loves us and that has planned nothing but the best for us.

Moving forward in that Holy confidence, we move forward by looking back.  Looking back at where we have been in our lives can help us see the way that God has always been working in, around and through all of our lives.

We all keep things from our past – you saw a few of the things I have kept a few minutes ago during the children’s message – but we don’t always end up keeping things that really have any meaning.  And rarely do we keep physical reminders of the spiritual lessons we have learned along the way – or to mark those particular times where God has interceded powerfully in our lives.

In the Old Testament these physical reminders were sometimes called ‘Ebenezers’ – in Soulprint they are called ‘Life symbols’.  David, took a life symbol from his battle with Goliath.  Making what must have been an extraordinary effort, after making sure Goliath was dead, David took the time and effort to remove each piece of the giants armor from him.  If you do the conversions and add them all up Goliath’s armor and weapons the total is 125 pounds and 15 ounces.  David likely didn’t way much more than that. 

Why?  Because we quickly forget, not just the little things that God has done and is doing for us – but even the earth shaking, giant felling things that God does can sometimes be, if not forgotten, at least moved to the back of our thoughts. 

We have forgotten the practice of alter making that the Jews travelling in the desert knew so well.  Leaving an Ebenezer to make the place of God’s intersection with our lives and remind all about God’s faithfulness.   In claiming Life symbols, surrounding ourselves with physical reminders of God’s work in our lives we can remember God’s faithfulness and renew our own Holy Confidence in a God for whom nothing is impossible

The word remember is found and repeated over 250 times in the Bible, because God knows the importance of remembering the right things.  In our lives we most often lose faith in God because we forget God’s ‘faith-fullness’.   In the business of life and with our narrow and often short-sighted vision we miss or forget just how present God has been.  We forget how faithful God has been in caring for us, in providing for us in reaching out to us.

One of the most critical things we must do as we look back at our past is not simply focus on the obvious – what happened – but look deeper, through the lens of God’s plan and call on our lives and think about the why.  This is especially true of the failures, difficulties or pain that lies in your past. 

Batterson says in Soulprint that: ‘why is more important that what.  It’s not our experiences that make us or break us.  It’s our interpretation of and explanation for those experiences that ultimately determines who we become.  Your explanations are more important than your experiences.’

With this in mind it is critically important to remember that ‘the ultimate objective of every circumstance is to cultivate the character of Christ in us.

As Christians we claim Christ not just as our savior and our Lord, but also as our model for how to live life and to interpret life.  Christ understood so clearly the ‘why’ of the suffering that he endured. 

Because of that understanding Jesus saw beauty, power and purpose in the persecution and suffering he bore.  That is why some of the best things come out of the worst circumstances – because they help us identify with the sufferings of Christ.

David lived through difficult experiences before his triumph over Goliath.  He wasn’t deemed worthy of a place on the battlefield (a place of honor) with his brothers.  But before that, when Samuel was lining up the sons of Jesse to anoint the next king, Jesse – David’s own father – didn’t even bother to mention David, let alone bring him before Samuel to be considered.

David faced a choice that each of us face –regardless of the nature and depth of the difficulties we face.  The struggles and trials we face (divorce, cancer, heartbreak, disappointment or loss – whatever they might be) don’t have to define us.  They don’t have to define us, if we let God use them to refine us.

That is the choice we are faced with in looking at the difficulties and struggles in our lives: define or refine.  And if we trust in God enough to let them refine us, then God will use even those negative experiences in our lives to help redefine us.

Corrie ten Boom, the heroic and famed survivor of Nazi concentration camps during WWII spent many years of her life speaking to people around the world, sharing her experiences and her insights,

When she spoke to people, it was often with her head down.   This was not because she was shy or because she was reading her notes, but rather she was usually working on a piece of needlepoint.

At the end of her story, the story of atrocities experienced at the hands of the Nazis, she would show the audience the needlepoint she had been working on.  First, she would hold up the backside, which would just be a mishmash of threads and colors with no recognizable pattern. 

Then she would say: ‘That’s how we see our lives.  Sometimes it makes no sense’.  

But then she would turn over the needlepoint to show the finished side.  And she would say: ‘This is how God views your life, and someday we will have the privilege of seeing it from His point of view.’

She would often end with this poem:

My life is but a weaving between my God and me, I do not choose the colors, He works so steadily, Oft times He weaves in sorrow, and I in foolish pride, Forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent, and the shuttles cease to fly will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.  The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver’s skillful hand, as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

Our soulprints are like the needlepoint,  identity is the underside and destiny is the upper side.

Lifesymbols can be for us the connecting threads between these two sides.   They are the colors that mark defining moments.  They are the frames that help us explain our experiences. 

They are the ‘shuttles’ that refine and define us.  And if we will simply put ourselves on the loom, God will weave a masterpiece in us. 

Amen.

No such thing as 'over-confident' in God

On Sunday I shared the second in a series of messages based on a book written by Mark Batterson.  The book called, Soul Print, is about claiming who God created you to be so that you can live into the life and destiny God has planned for you.  Below is the first message in the series.  I will be following with the second tomorrow.  I hope you are called into at least thinking about who God made you to be, and why God might have made you the way you are.  
Mark Batterson is a pastor in Washington, D.C. and is one of my favorite authors and communicators, here is a link to buy the book, if you are so inclined: here

1 Samuel 17:32-40 (NIV)

³² David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”³³ Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.” ³⁴ But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, ³⁵ I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. ³⁶ Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. ³⁷ The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”  Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”  ³⁸ Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. ³⁹ David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.  “I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.⁴⁰ Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

Over the next several weeks we will be looking at the unique design that God has for each of our lives.  We will be doing this in part, through a book, called ‘Soul Print’ by Mark Batterson

As we think about, talk about and seek out what God might have planned for each of our lives we will consistently look the life of David for examples of important turning points or defining moments in his life.

As we look at those defining moments in David’s life, we will (hopefully at least) gain insight into the potential defining moments in our own lives.

But before we skip ahead to David’s story, or even our own, I want to share with you why I chose to share this book – and the ideas that came to me from it –

Mark Batterson is one of my favorite Christian authors.  I have heard him speak several times and something about the way that he is able to communicate the Word of God really speaks to me.

So, when I heard he had a new book coming out, I was pretty excited.  Then I saw the title, read the description and (to be honest) got a little less excited. 

The book sounded like a typical ‘self-help’ book with some Christian language thrown in for good measure.

That type of book simply doesn’t appeal to me. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I know that we all need help.  But I really believe that as long as we are talking about how we can ‘help ourselves’ we are looking to the wrong place for help. 

I think all of our big, important problems are, simply, beyond us.

But, as I really like Batterson’s work, I got the book anyway.  And I read the first page:

‘There has never been and never will be anyone else like you.  But that isn’t a testament to you.  It’s a testament to the God who created you.  You are unlike anyone who has ever lived.  But that uniqueness isn’t a virtue.  It’s a responsibility.  Uniqueness is God’s gift to you, and uniqueness is your gift to God.  You owe it to yourself to be yourself.  But more important, you owe it to the One who designed you and destined you.’

After making clear that this isn’t a ‘self-help’ book he continues: ‘So let me be blunt: you aren’t good enough or gifted enough to get where God wants you to go.  Not without His help.  But here is the good news: there is nothing God cannot do in you and through you I f you simply yield your life to Him.  All of it.  All of you.

This book is all about you, but it’s not about you at all.  The fact that there never has been and never will be anyone like you simply means that no one can worship God like you or for you.  You were created to worship God in a way that no one else can.  How?  By living a life no one else can – your life

And with that, the book had me.  It had be because I think it clearly communicates two seemingly opposing, but actually linked and complementary truths that we often miss today: We aren’t nearly as great – or capable – as we often think we are.  And there is nothing – really nothing, not anything – that is impossible for us when we have fully submitted our lives to God.

We have a unique and irreplaceable role to play in the story God is telling in the world and playing the role designed for us begins with understanding – or maybe better – discovering who we really are in God’s eyes and who God created us to be.

I mentioned the title of the book, Soul Print, that is a term I had never heard before and it is a term worth defining as we begin to seek out who we really are

A soulprint, like a fingerprint is a unique way of identifying who you are.  A fingerprint, however, is only skin deep.  A soulprint is a unique identifier that runs not skin deep, but soul deep.

Our soulprint is a hardwired identifier of our true identity and our true destiny or calling.

Our ultimate purpose or calling is central to understanding who we really are, because even though we move ‘forward’ in a progression through life – God works the other way around.  Our God always begins (in our hearts, in our minds and in our lives) with the end in mind.

God hasn’t called us to be anyone other than who we are – than who God created us to be. 

We are not ‘just’ anything – we are, each and every one of us, masterpieces of God’s hand.  To think of ourselves as anything other than that is to distort and devalue our true identity

Before David was King, and before he became mighty warrior, he was just the youngest brother in a big family.  A shepherd boy and nothing more. 

But that wasn’t who he was – that wasn’t David’s true identity or his true purpose.  David was a giant killer, a mighty warrior and a great king. 

Over the course of the next several weeks as we seek our own soulprint, we will look at 5 defining moments in David’s life that helped him discover his. 

The first of these, which came as he was preparing to face the giant Goliath, was in some ways the most important, as it paved the way for all that would come after it. 

David had a chance, as he went out to fight the mighty giant, to wear the kings own armor, and carry the king’s own sword.  The finest protection and the best weaponry available to anyone in the world at that time.  But they weren’t right for David, because simply, they weren’t his.  The sword and the armor were Saul’s and David wasn’t Saul.

Instead David took what he was used to, part of what defined who he was – the slingshot that he used daily to protect his father’s flock and grabbed 5 smooth stones and was ready to make history.

All because he was willing to take off Saul’s armor and be himself – exactly who God had called him to be. 

Today’s sermon is subtitled Holy Confidence.  Holy Confidence is not about being confident in what we can do our how well we can do it.  Holy Confidence, is about who we are confident in.  Our confidence becomes Holy only when it is placed on God.  Another word for this ‘Holy Confidence’ is trust.   Trusting in God, having the Holy Confidence that God is in control and we are not. 

Putting our trust or confidence in God is never more important than when we are waiting for something to happen or waiting for our life to start. 

No one ever tells us when ‘our moment’ is going to come.  David didn’t wake up the morning he defeated Goliath and know that that day was going to be the day that defined who he was and that set his life on a different course. 

And if David was anything like me – or like most of us.  I can imagine that he spent many of his days out in the fields tending his father’s sheep, waiting for his life to ‘really begin’.

But here is the great lesson for us.  It was the skills he learned as a shepherd (a slingshot is a shepherd’s tool, not a soldiers weapon) that prepared him for his big moment.  There is no skill, experience or event that is unredeemable or unusable in God’s eyes and in God’s plan.

Finding our true identity and true, God ordained destiny begins with the courage to take off Saul’s armor – or anything else that doesn’t belong on us or to us. 

The next step is letting go of the attempt to control our lives – even the timing of ‘when they will begin’ and having a Holy Confidence that God is intending what is best for us and loves us.

Amen.