I want to start today by reading one of my favourite passages
of scripture. I chose this passage because I think we as women can often get
into a cycle of discontentment with who we are, comparing ourselves to those
around us and forgetting how precious we are to God. I want to use this
scripture to set the context for the rest of my talk. Most of you have heard
this many times, for some it may be new, but I really want you to meditate on
the words, picture the scene where God is creating you, planning for you, and
finding joy in you.
New Living Translation (NLT) Psalm 139:13-18
13 You made all the delicate, inner
parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
17 How
precious are your thoughts about me,[a] O God.
They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up, you are still with me!
How many of you knit, or have watched someone knit? There’s a
method, there’s a pattern, a design that is followed. Each stitch is important
and planned carefully. Each stitch is a part of shaping and designing, and
molding the wool into what it will become, to serve the purpose of the creator.
Similarily with us, God didn’t just randomly stick attributes, circumstances,
and features in a bag, shake it up and see what would come out. He carefully
planned for us, each circumstance, what family we were placed in, our
personality, our gifts, were planned and put into place to enable us to serve
our purpose, the one he had planned for us before we were born. We may at times
look at ourselves or others around us the way we look at And though
we might look at ourselves or others and wonder why God did this or allowed
that we know that he plans all things for the good of those who love him.
That verse also tells
us we are loved. (Personal Story: When Michael and I started dating)
When a holy God’s thoughts of you cannot be numbered, that’s love! To be loved
by God means you are valued. Isaiah 49:16 says I have written
your name on the palms of my hands. He gave his son for us, that we may be
forgiven, redeemed, and saved for a purpose.
That means ladies, that you are
WORTHY. That God can and will use you. That you don’t have to wait until you
have it all together, that God will take you right where you are, weaknesses
and all, and accomplish his purposes with you.
So, let that set the premise for what
I really want to focus on and that is the intentionality of God in his design
for each of our lives. And how we need to find contentment with how we were
created, and work with in that to serve God’s purposes.
As I was looking into this I came
across an acronym that I felt was the perfect word to use for a reminder to
women that we are who we are because God planned it that way.
What is the one thing women tend to
be least content with themselves about?....It is how we look, our “SHAPE” We’re
too plump, too thin, too tall, too awkward, our eyes are too close together,
our hair’s gone grey, our teeth are crooked....etc.etc. Millions of dollars are
spent every year on the beauty industry, and why? because we want to change who
we are, and how we look.
I want to use the word SHAPE to remind us to be content with God’s
creation, and with who he deisgned us to be, and to not only stay at a place of
contentment but to come to a place where we praise him for who we are
S- S is for Spiritual Gifts: God has
given each of us different spiritual gifts. At different seasons of our
lives we may notice that different gifts seem to stand out more then others, or
our spiritual giftings may change and develop over time as our walk with Christ
deepens and is strengthened. These gifts are not simply meant for us to receive
and hoard, but they are meant for us to bless others with, to serve and to give
these strengths to those around us. In 1 Corinthians 12:7 Paul says “ A
spiritual gift is given that we may help each other” and in verse 11 he goes on
to say that “He alone [God] decides which gift each person should have,”
Therefore we shouldn’t be looking to the lady beside us in envy of her spiritual
gifting. If we spend our time bemoaning the spiritual gifts we don’t have, we
miss out on using the ones God has chosen for us. We need to figure out our
spiritual gifting, work on strengthening, and preparing them so that we are
ready to use them to serve and help others for His glory when he calls us to it.
So, S- spiritual gifts.
H- Heart, Proverbs 27:19 says “as
water reflects a face so a heart reflects the real person.” Our heart , what is
that, what does it mean to have heart? What does it mean to say our heart
reflects us? Heart can be described as “who we are” deep inside. What is it
that hurts us? It’s how we respond in certain situations, it’s our passions,
our dreams, and these desires and responses are placed there by a God who wants
us to serve a purpose. God gave us our passions, and he will call us to use
these, which can lead to seasons of joy
and fun within our ministry, but at times he will also chose to push into areas
that we dislike, or we feel we are weak at calling us to release our heart and
our gifting to him, allowing him to direct us on how to use these gifting. In
this way, we will experience stretching and growing times, but we will also see
God do things with us we could never have imagined as possible. (Personal Story: My Experiecnes in God calling me to what I like and
don’t like) Having experienced God using me in both ways has lead me to
believe that When Paul says, “ I serve
with all my heart” in Romans 1:9—it means I will passionately serve God in my
interests, in my loves, and I will passionately serve God when he calls me into
the ministry I don’t like or, in ways couldn’t have imagined being used. God
has given us our heart he has created us with passions that will be different
then the women around us and that’s okay. Instead of trying to rewire our
hearts to make us like the women we admire, we should instead spend time,
reflecting on what it is we love, what it is that moves us, what it is that
hurts us, what it is that angers us, and take these to God, asking for direction
in where he wants to use these attributes.
S-spiritual gifts, H-heart, A is for
abilities.
For many of us, this might just be
the hardest letter to be content with. I know, I can look at a friend and
think, man I wish I could paint like her, or I‘ll listen to another friend play
the piano and sing, and find myself envying her musical talents, oh if I could
just sing half decently on key, (Personal Story: and trust me, I
don’t have that talent, I know you musical people say anyone can learn to sing,
but trust me, I can’t, Michael has tried to teach me, and after years of
marriage has resigned himself to chuckle at the fact that I just don’t hear it,
and given up) these are not my talents, God has given me other abilities
that come more easily to me. I can choose to complain about what God has not
given me the ability to do, or I can take the talents he has given me and I need
to be aware of what they are and work on them, preparing myself for his
calling, that I may use them to bring glory to God. In Romans 12 Paul says “In
his grace God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well” he
goes on to say “whatever ability he has given you use it to enthusiastically
serve the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul uses the picture of the body, how each
part is important, that no part is less valuable then another and that if one
part, for instance the mouth, wants to do another part’s job, say the ears job,
not only would the mouth’s job not be getting done, but the job it was trying
to do, hearing, wouldn’t be done well either because the mouth wasn’t given the
ability to hear. God has given you your abilities for his purposes and for you
to use, it is our job to respond, give
thanks for these abilities, and use them.
S-spiritual gifts, H-heart,
A-Abilities, and P- is our personality
Our personality can be somewhat
linked with our heart and with our abilities, in that it is a part of how God
has gifted us. Our personality is the little quirks that make us different from
our peers. Some are funny, some are serious, others are laid back, gracious,
kind, servant hearted, organized, like to take charge etc. I find that as women
we tend to respond in two ways to other women’s personalities, we either judge
that person because their personality just rubs us wrong, or we put them on a
pedestal, wishing we could be more like her. Neither of these responses is
healthy. Both lead to discontent in our hearts, one will cause us to try and
change people or can lead us to a false sense of pride where we can say, well I may not be perfect, but at
least I am not like her. The other response creates an idol, it creates
insecurity and instead of being content with who we are, we try and change.
Often we will alter our personalities so much that we lose sight of who we are,
we try to act like them, dress like them, adopt their quirks, but this doesn’t
work. Instead of bettering ourselves, we become phony and people can’t relate
to us because we aren’t living authentically. We hinder our relationships with
others because people see through the act and instead of being able to serve
them we put distance between us. When we can’t be real we become untrustworthy.
(Personal Story: changing to fit in) So as Paul says, “If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a
teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it
is giving, give generously, if it is to lead, do it diligently, if it is to
show mercy, do it cheerfully. Do you notices all the “gifts” Paul mentions are
words we use to describe someone’s personality? When someone says, what is
Renee like, they would say “she’s serving, kind, generous etc. These gifts
mentioned are our personalities, they are who we are. We need all personalities to accomplish God’s
plan for this world. Accepting our personality, doesn’t mean that we don’t work
on it, each personality comes with flaws and weaknesses that we need to be
aware of and bring to God to mold and shape, however, improving our personality
is different than trying to change our personality. When we try to change who
we are it is like we are telling God that we could have created ourselves
better than he did. When we work to accept the personality we are given, and allow
God to work on the weaknesses it is like a jeweler, taking an old tarnished
necklace, and cleaning it up, removing the years of damage, to restore the
necklace to the beauty it was created for. When we allow God to do this we come
out a beautiful creation that he can use.
S-spiritual gifts, H-heart,
A-Abilities, P-Personality, and the final letter is E-experiences.
Our experiences, where we grew up,
who our parents were, what happened in high school, who we married, and all the
other bumps along the way were part of shaping who you are today. Our
experience are just that, Ours. They are
personal, they are private, and they can be emotional. Often we want to keep
our experiences to ourselves; we feel it is our right, that they belong to us.
But, God, he has another plan. You see, before you were born, he wrote your
days in a book, every moment was laid out, all your experiences recorded, and
God doesn’t plan for anything to go to waste. He has designed your experiences
to be used to bring him glory, and to serve. Even our most painful experiences
are given that we might serve others. In 2 Corinthians 1:4 it says “He comforts
us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others when they are troubled. We
will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us, so the experiences
we have in this life, the painful, the happy, the mundane, they are all given
to enable us to serve the purpose we were created for. We may feel that our testimony is too dull, or
our past is too messy, or we’ve made too many mistakes for God to use us,
especially when we compare ourselves with the women around us, but look at the
women that are mentioned in the genealogy of Christ: Tamar, a widow willing to do
what it took to stand up for what was her right, Rahab, a prostitute, Ruth, a foreigner , one
raised to worship an evil pagan god but chose to love the God of Israel, and
was faithful, Bethsheba, an adulteress,
and Mary, a simple small town girl who loved God. Even in the lineage of Jesus
we can see that no one is beyond redemption, and no one’s experiences are too
dull or to messy to be used by God to serve mind boggling purposes.
So, there we have it, our SHAPE. We
need to know our SHAPE, learn to be content with our SHAPE, to embrace our
SHAPE, and to love the SHAPE God has given us. We need to use our SHAPE to serve
others and bring God glory. Our SHAPE, spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality,
and experiences, are all meant to serve a purpose and to accomplish kingdom
work, the unique purpose we were created for in a way that no one else was. Our
SHAPE is really about you and me, about loving, serving, and doing life with
one another, not comparing, envying or tearing each other down . And so, when
you start to compare yourself to the women around you, when you find it hard to
be content in who you are or you start
to believe the lies that you aren’t good enough, you aren’t valuable, you
aren’t loved I wasn’t you to remember
“[You] are God’s masterpiece. He has created
[you] anew in Christ Jesus, so [you] can do the good thing he planned for [you]
long ago.” Ephesians 2:10
