Sermon Catch-up Project: Soul Print Week 6 (The

Over the Summer I got very lax with the blog and even stopped uploading the messages I gave.  So over the next week or so I will be 'catching up' on the messages that I haven't shared.  I then hope to start blogging again regularly, but we will see.  This first message really should have uploaded a long time ago as it is the sixth and final message in a series based on Mark Batterson's book, 'Soul Print'.  Sorry it took so long for those of you (must be thousands, right?) that have been waiting.

Revelation 2:17 (NIV)

   ¹⁷ Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

2 Samuel 7:1-21(NIV)

 ¹ After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, ² he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”

 ³ Nathan replied to the king, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.”
 ⁴ But that night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying:
 ⁵ “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? ⁶ I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. ⁷ Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’
 ⁸ “Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. ⁹ I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. ¹⁰ And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning ¹¹ and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders^[a] over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies.
   “‘The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: ¹² When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³ He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ¹⁴ I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands.¹⁵ But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. ¹⁶ Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me^[b]; your throne will be established forever.’”
 ¹⁷ Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation.

 ¹⁸ Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and he said:

   “Who am I, Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? ¹⁹ And as if this were not enough in your sight, Sovereign LORD, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant—and this decree, Sovereign LORD, is for a mere human!^[c]
 20 “What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, Sovereign LORD. ²¹ For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.

Prayer: God, we have gathered together to worship you and to seek you and to know you more.  As we come into your presence, help us see you, but also help us see who you have truly created us to be and who you are calling us to be today and tomorrow.  Guide us by your Spirit to leave a legacy, a legacy shaped by not what we have done but by what you have done through us.  Amen.

Today we finish 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. Over the last two months we have looked at five pieces that help us get to understanding who God designed us and is calling us to be

First, we are who we are on purpose, for a purpose.  The secondly, to be ourselves we need a Holy Confidence in a God that is Holy, that loves us and that has planned nothing but the best for us.  This Holy confidence is trusting and leaning on God.  Third, we looked back at our lives and the ‘life symbols’ that help remind us that ‘the ultimate objective of every circumstance is to cultivate the character of Christ in us.

Then we talked about integrity and how its directly connected to our destiny.  God is less concerned with what we do than with who we are becoming in the process And God won’t get you where God wants you to go until you become who God wants you to be. 

We also talked about how God can use even the embarrassing moments of our lives to let us know who we are, who we aren’t and what God might be calling us to do.  Then, finally, we looked at sin and how our sins affect our ability to reach how we were called and created to be.  But we were reminded that it is not our mistakes or sins that define who we are but rather the person of Jesus Christ

All of that leads us to today and our final look at the Soulprints God has given each and every one of us.  Each of us has a unique destiny which only we can fulfill and each of us has been given our own combination of gifts, interests and abilities that fit perfectly with that destiny.

When we view our lives properly they are evidence of God’s providence.  But gaining the right perspective on who we are and what we were made for requires not just asking the ‘right’ questions, but also asking the right questions to the right person.

In our passage from 2 Samuel, David is asking the right question, ‘Who am I?’.  David is not only asking the right question, but he is addressing the right person – as the question is asked of God during prayer.  If David would have asked his father this question, he might have said he was simply a shepherd.  His brothers likely saw an delivery boy that brought them their meals on the battlefield.  Saul at first saw him as ‘only a boy’. 

None of these people had the vision for David’s life that God had.  None of them saw who David was designed and destined to become.  Self discovery begins with sitting in the presence of God and asking God – and no one else, not even yourself – to define you

Batterson says: The reason so many of us are strangers to ourselves is because we don’t sit before the Lord.  If you want to discover your destiny, you’ve got to spend time in the presence of God.  There is no alternative.  There is no substitute.  True self-discovery happens only in the presence of God.  It’s only when you seek God that you will find yourself

Let me say that again: It is only when you seek God that you will find yourself.  And if you try to find yourself in anything outside of a relationship with the one that designed and created you, it will lead to a case of mistaken identity.

I am an only child and when Jack was born, I quickly realized that our two boys were very different.  And as different people, with different personalities I began to understand – and am still working to understand – that I needed to interact differently and parent differently with each one of them.  I needed to love each one of them uniquely, because they are unique.  This is how God loves each of us – uniquely, as if there were only ever one of us – precisely because there is only and will only ever be one of us.  God’s love for you is unlike God’s love for anyone else ever.

And if you remember, that is where we began this journey to understand and discover our soulprints - with the fact that God has created us each to be unique, with no one else, ever just like us.  But, this isn’t a testimony to us, it is a testament to the God who created each of us.  

Our uniqueness is a gift from God.  It is also our gift back to God.  And it is our uniqueness that enables us to worship, serve and share about God unlike anyone else.  No one can worship God like you or for you.  And as we have talked about many times, worship isn’t just about what we do during this hour in this place every Sunday morning. 

The best and truest form of worship is becoming the best version of who God has created you to be.  Worship is more than a lifestyle.  Worship is a life.

In the passage we read a few minutes ago from the book of Revelation, we hear described a time when we will hear the Voice of God.  And we will hear God call us by a name that only God knows, a name we have never head, but a name we will know.  A name written on a white stone.  Our true name.  That name, somehow, will encapsulate all that we are and all that we have done. 

All the pain and all the joy.  All the hopes and fears.  Everything.  In that moment all of our lives will click into place and make sense because God will reveal who we really are – as God sees us. 

Our God-given name will capture the essence of who you are and it will include all that we will become in an eternity spent in the presence of God.  In that moment our Soulprint will be given its true name.  Names are an interesting thing.  And names carry meaning.  Names and nicknames, what we choose to call people, reveal thinks about how we view the people we are naming.  Nicknames especially reveal different aspects of people’s personalities.  Nicknames reveal what we see in the people we are naming.

We usually get our nicknames from others, but sometimes we ask to be called something because of how we want to be viewed.  We had this experience when we went for Charlie’s first parent teacher conference this past year.  We discovered that while at school he was asking to be called Charles.  I don’t think either Traci or I had ever called him by his full name. 

Over many discussions for the rest of the year we gathered that he was asking to be called Charles at school – actually just in his classroom – not because he liked it better than Charlie, but because he sensed that it was the more formal or serious name.  Charlie loves school, but he takes it very seriously and he deemed Charles more appropriate than Charlie for his school work.

What we want to be called and what others choose to call us tell us about how we want to be viewed and how others really see us.  Jesus often called people by names that meant something. 

He looked at Simon and saw Peter – the rock that he would build the church on.  He saw James and John as the ‘sons of thunder’ calling out in them the potential buried deep within their personalities. 

Similarly, when God looks at you, he sees the real you.  The you that He created you to become.  And in calling you your true name Jesus is calling us to live into the destinies that we were created for. 

Who are you?  How will you be remembered?  What is your legacy?

Ultimately, our destinies are determined by the choices we make – It is in our actions and our reactions that we live into the name that defines us.  That daunting idea is made wonderful by this fact: In Jesus Christ we are redeemed and made clean.  We are not defined by our bad choices or our mistakes –what we have done wrong.  Instead we are redefined by what Christ has done right. 

When we accept the grace of Christ we are defined by His righteousness, His perfection and His obedience.  That is both our destiny and God’s legacy. 

It is never too late to become who God has called and named you to be. 

Let this be the moment that you begin to live into that name, by entering into the presence of God and asking the question: Who am I? 

Then allow the Holy Spirit of God write the answer on your heart with the life you live. 

Amen.

Whats in a name?

Today, I wanted to share the message I gave at church yesterday.  It was an attempt to connect three things happening this past weekend.  One was World Communion Sunday, the other was 'peacemaking Sunday' - which is a special offering in the PC(USA) for local/national and global peacemaking ministries.  And the third was a child presentation at our church.
The child presentation is a Cameroonian tradition that is pretty awesome.  The tradition involves having to bring a child to be presented to the elders, the church and to God in the worship service before the child and the mother can go anywhere.  Traditionally, the mother would stay at home with the child for 3 months - with the family and community caring for her and the rest of the family - that has gone by the wayside, but elements of the tradition, especially the presentation to God and the church, remain.  
Saturday night there was a celebration of the birth - and Cameroonian celebrations, with all the food and fellowship that come with it, are not to be missed.  [Seriously, it has been one of the great joys of this calling to be allowed to participate in these traditions from another culture and to be invited to be a part of them].  
So that is the setting for this message.  
The text for the message is 2Timothy 1:1-14, which can be found here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Timothy%201:1-14&version=TNIV
So here is the message:

There is a lot going on today with Worldwide communion, Peacemaking Sunday & of course the celebration that comes with a child presentation and it occurred to me that it is all about  and connected to a name.  The names or labels we call each other and whether those names and labels mark the other person as an ‘us’ or a ‘them’.

Let me share a story to try and explain what I mean, many of you are probably familiar with the phrase: Blood is thicker than water.  I was given a clear lesson as to what the phrase means one Thanksgiving as a child.

For this particular Thanksgiving our neighbors from down the street – including my best friend Brian and his little brother Tim – were joining us.  [And what you need to know about this scenario is that Tim is 4 years younger than us and was a fairly constant taker of abuse for his older brother.]

So after dinner, as we were heading downstairs to play, I did what I had seen and heard Brian do at least 100 times – I started making fun of Tim.  [Now, obviously I shouldn’t have been making fun of him – but I was young and that isn’t the point!]

The point is that Brian immediately took exception to my treatment of Tim and vigorously defended him.

I am an only child, and I learned very quickly that day that blood is thicker than water and that no matter how close Brian and I were as friends and no matter how badly Brian treated his brother – it wasn’t okay in Brian’s eyes for me to mistreat his brother.

I was just a friend – a best friend – but Tim was his family.  As good friends as we were, Brian and Tim were on the inside and I was on the out.  In a critical way Brian saw he and his brother as an ‘us’ that I was not a part of.

The importance of the relationship between those you are connected too, that my childhood best friend new and understood, is not unique but universal.  And the naming of – and what we name those we are connected to is not inconsequential, but central to understanding who ‘we’ are, who ‘they’ are and how all of us are connected.

In the reading from 2Timothy this morning, we see that the apostle Paul understood that there is a connection between our family – and our name – and our faith.  Paul also understands that there is no inherent conflict between the personal and communal aspects of faith. No human being is born an orphan. We are all born into a family.

Lamin Sanneh, Christian scholar and Yale professor originally from Gambia, shares a saying from his tribe to explain this concept: a person is a person because of other persons.  We are born into relationship, we grow and live in relationship and we die in relationship. Thinking of ourselves ‘individually’ without connection to others distorts the truth about us.

Sanneh, goes on to say that it is in our relationships that we find meaning and through our relationships – or more accurately through who we are related to – that we discover ‘who we are’ and what our name really is.

Faith connects us with others, grants us a name and an identity by which we can respond to God’s call, and assures us that others know that name. The giving of a name is in some ways the giving of life -  the abundant life of relatedness.

And so in our passage, Paul affirms Timothy’s faith by a threefold naming -- the names of his grandmother and mother and his own name. Wherever the faith has spread it has promoted and been promoted by this sense of names. As long as our names exist the church has hope of continuing community.

I believe we need to be reminded of the Christian perspective on names. Naming is a form of theological reasoning, a kind of discourse in divine relatedness.  Scripture abounds with examples of naming as invocation, supplication, vocation and answerability.   Naming lies at the center of healing and wholeness. With it we remember, recollect, respond, act and celebrate.

Without it we invoke the chaos of the ‘unnamed void’ seen in the opening verses of Genesis, a chaos that speaks to our modern disenchantment & detachment:

 Where diseases are named and individuals  are often unnamed suffering in hospitals and clinics;

Where The human toll of natural disaster, war and poverty is told by numbers – not names or stories.

Where the namelessness in workplaces drives people to despair.

But recall a name, and you impart life; make it a family name, and you bring eternity to earth. A name is a burning bush that illuminates human centeredness.

Timothy, child of Eunice, child of Lois, is not his own. Like Israel, he is united in his parents, scattered in the tribe and gathered under the covenant. His name is fed by the blood of Jesus Christ, nurtured by human milk and inscribed in the soul. When it is called he answers as no one else can.

Each of us has been given a name that is uniquely ours – that only we can answer to – but a name that is connected to our parents, our faith – and each other.

On days like this – when we celebrate the blessing of a child being presented to God – it is good and important to remember and think about the unique God given name that each of us has. 

A name shaped by our connectedness to the Holy Spirit of God and to each other.

But there are other things going on today – a focus on peacemaking and the celebration of worldwide communion.  These things are about names too – not our individual names but the names that we all share.

The entire point of worldwide communion Sunday is to recognize and represent that Christians around the world – in different countries, from different denominations, with varied theological backgrounds and different styles of governance – that all of us are united in and by the saving blood of Jesus Christ. 

Worldwide communion Sunday is about Jesus Christ, the name above all names.  The name under which all of us stand and are united to each other and with God.  A name bigger than any difference we may have.

Overcoming differences is what peacemaking is all about.  And I believe the key to real peace within ourselves and with each other is in yet another name. 

Another name that all of us share – and I really mean all of us:  not just ‘us’ gathered here this morning or all of ‘us’ celebrating communion this day but literally all of us – every human being.

Every one of us shares the name ‘child of God’ – name we are able to claim by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

That title – ‘child of God’ is part of our name whether we claim it or not because in Christ Jesus, by his blood, God has claimed all of us.

And blood is thicker than water. 

And the blood of Jesus Christ is think enough to cover and connect each and every one of us.

Because of the blood of Jesus we are all part of the family of God – and that means that when we look around in our communities there is no ‘them’ there is only an ‘us’

Jesus Christ has claimed all of ‘us’ as children of God

That means we need to treat those around us – all of those around us – as our brothers & sisters, because that is who and what they are.

This understanding changes everything:

God has made us part of his family with all the privileges and responsibilities that come with that adoption

We are called – by the very nature of who and what we - are to care for our sisters and brothers and to help them discover their identity and their unique and true name in Jesus Christ.

It is easy and even natural to look at the world around us and separate who we see into ‘us’ and ‘them’ – and to take no responsibility for the ‘them’ around you.

Jesus doesn’t allow us to do that.

Blood is thicker than water and the blood of Jesus Christ has been shed to cover each and every one of ‘us’ – God’s children. 

It is because of the blood of Jesus Christ that we have been adopted into the family of God and welcomed into the ‘us’.  And it is because of the blood of Jesus Christ that we are called to invite and welcome all those around us –even and especially those we might like to name as ‘other’ or ‘them’ – into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and into the family of God.

We have the great blessing of knowing our true names and identities in Jesus Christ and it is our responsibility to reach out to those around us and share the blessing of being called by your true name – child of God – and welcomed in to the ‘us’ of the family of God.

Amen.