Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

God @ the Billboards:
I Don't Wanna Be
11.23.05
Pastor Mark Batterson







All of us start out as one-of-a-kind originals. Too many of us end up carbon copies of someone else.

In his essay, Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "There is a time in every man's education that he arrives at the conviction that imitation is suicide. He must take himself for better or for worse."

That is precisely what David did in I Samuel 17:38.

"Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor and on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them."

Arming a warrior for battle was a major ritual in David's day. Armor was an extension of the warrior's character. David could have gone into Battle dressed like a king. But David said, "I cannot go in these because I am not used to them. So he took them off."

What if David had gone out to meet Goliath on Goliath's terms-fully armored, fully armed? I think David would have lost because David wasn't a swordsman. In fact, he'd probably never touched a sword in his life. According to I Samuel 13:19, the only two people with a sword in all of Israel were Saul and Jonathan.

For better or for worse, David was a shepherd. The sword would have posed a greater threat to David, through self-inflicted wounds, than it did to Goliath. But David was deadly with a slingshot.

David came to a crossroads. He had a choice to make. He could go into battle as Saul-wear Saul's armor, wield Saul's sword, hold Saul's shield. Or he could go into battle as himself-a shepherd with a slingshot. David decided not to don Saul's armor or brandish Saul's sword for one very good reason. He wasn't Saul.

David decided to be David.

There comes a point in all of our lives where we have to take off Saul's armor and have the courage to be ourselves!

Pink Shirts

When I was in the sixth grade I experienced one of my most embarrassing moments. I have a handful of memories from Junior High that are framed in my memory and hanging on the wall of my brain. Most of them are really good memories. This one was painful.

I'm not sure what possessed me, but one day I wore a pink shirt to school. I thought the shirt was kind of cool. I actually liked the neon pink color. And it was Ocean Pacific. Come on!

Little did I know when I got dressed that morning how much I would get teased that fateful day. I was one of the biggest kids and one of the most popular kids in my class so I didn't get teased very often. But I overdosed that day. The kids laid into me! I pretended that it didn't bother me, but I never wore that shirt again. Why? Because when you're in Junior High you want to "fit in." You want to be like everyone else! Call it peer pressure. Call it the herd mentality. Call it whatever you want. At some point in our lives, all of us try to fit in. So we go into hiding-we hide our idiosyncrasies and insecurities and injuries. We hide anything that would differentiate us. We try to look like everyone else. We try to dress like everyone else. We try to talk like everyone else. So what happens? We become like everyone else!

Most of us spend most of our lives trying to fit in. But something is lost in that process. We lose our personality. We lose our originality. And at some point we lose our soul. We stop being ourselves and we start being who we think everyone wants us to be.

Maybe it's time to pull out the pink shirt?

Dual-Destiny

There never has been and never will be anyone like you. That isn't a testament to you. It's a testament to the God who created you. Why did God go to all the trouble to insure the absolute uniqueness of each one of us? It's the nature of God.

Here's a cool thought: no one else can worship God like you can. When we gather together to worship God corporately we may all be singing the same words but God hears a unique song from each of. You are invaluable and irreplaceable. And God wants you to be you!

Each of us has what I call a dual-destiny. One destiny is universal-to become like Christ. Everybody is somebody's disciple. In other words, all of us pattern our lives after someone consciously or subconsciously. A Christian is someone who has made the conscious decision to become like Christ. All of us who are followers of Christ have a universal destiny-to become like Christ.

But we also have a unique destiny. God doesn't want you to become more like Mother Teresa or Billy Graham. God wants you to become more like you!

We have a core value: conformity doesn't equal maturity. One of the mistakes we make is thinking that spiritual maturity is measured by our conformity to some external standard. That's called legalism. We confuse cultural conformity with spiritual maturity. People dress the same way, talk the same way, act the same way and that's the measuring stick of maturity. That's not maturity. That's superficiality. No one was better at conformity than the Pharisees. Jesus didn't come down on anyone harder!

Conformity to Christ will result in originality.

Creative Genius

In our attempt to fit in our true self gets buried. We bury our feelings, our dreams, our convictions. We trade them in for conformity.

I read about a fascinating study in Get Weird by John Putzier. It found that 98% of children between the ages of three and five score in the genius category for divergent thinking-thinking outside the box. Between the ages of eight to ten, that number drops to 32%. By the time the kids become teenagers it drops down to 10%. And only 2% over 25 scored in the genius category for divergent thinking! For what it's worth, Putzier says we need to "tap our natural weirdness."

A few years ago Gordon MacKenzie wrote a great book titled Orbiting the Giant Hairball. He worked for Hallmark for thirty years as their creative guru. He used to do workshops on creativity for elementary schools and he made a fascinating observation.

He would ask the kids, "How many artists are there in the room?" He said the pattern of responses never varied. In the First Grade the entire class waved their arms like maniacs. Every child was an artist. In the Second Grade about half the kids raised their hands. In the Third Grade he'd get about 10 out of 30 kids. By the time he got to Sixth Grade only one of two kids would raise their hands and they'd do it tentatively and self-consciously.

MacKenzie makes a profound observation: "Every school I visited was participating in the suppression of creative genius. Why? Well, it's not intentional. It is not a plot. Genius is the innocent casualty in society's efforts to train children away from their natural-born foolishness."

"From the cradle to grave, the pressure is on: Be Normal."

MacKenzie says, "My guess is that there was a time-perhaps when you were very young-when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you. But none ever came."

Enter Jesus.

I think Jesus came to unearth those gifts and dreams and passions that have been buried when you decided to cave in and become like everyone else. He came to get you out of the psychological straightjacket you got yourself into. He came to help you become the person you were destined to be.

Jesus said something interesting in Matthew 18:3. "Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

I think God wants to turn us back into the person we were before we started burying our dreams and passions and gifts. The word "convert" means "to reverse." God wants to do some reverse engineering.

Some of you are buried beneath hurts. Some of you are buried beneath mistakes. Some of you are buried beneath the expectations of others. But you're in there. God is in the excavation business. We have a core value: it's never too late to become who you might have been.

MacKenzie says, "There is a fool in each of us, you know." But that "daredevil fool" was "hog-tied" and "locked in the basement." Jesus came to get us out.

Different Drummer

Henry David Thoreau said, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Jesus walked to the beat of a different drummer. I flipped through the gospels this week and here's the observation I made: Jesus was good at being Jesus.

He didn't try to fit in. He didn't cave in.

Jesus was counter-intuitive and counter-cultural.

Jesus touched lepers. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Jesus hung out with prostitutes. Jesus talked to Samaritans. Jesus washed feet. Jesus rebuked the self-righteousness Pharisees. Jesus made a whip and turned the Temple upside down. Jesus cried in public.

Have you ever known someone who is really good at being themselves? They don't really care what other people think about them? They aren't addicted to the opinions of others. They are themselves!

Jesus was good at being Jesus.

How did he do it?

He cared more about what God thought than what people thought.

Jesus came to a conclusion in Matthew 11:18: "John the Baptist didn't drink wine and he often fasted, and you say, 'He's demon possessed.' And I, the Son of Man, feast and drink, and you say, 'He's a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of the worst sort of sinners!' But wisdom is shown to be right by what results from it."
Here's what Jesus was saying in this passage: you can't please all the people all the time. That's reality.

Years ago I memorized something Abraham Lincoln said. Lincoln was the most vilified President in United States history. We honor him with a memorial. But he endured the most difficult presidency in the history of our country. And it ended with an assassination.

How did Lincoln endure it?

He said, "You can please some of the people all of the time. You can please all of the people some of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time."

You can't please all the people all the time!

When I was in Seminary I came across back-to-back Proverbs and they really bothered me because they seemed contradictory. Proverbs 26:4 says, "When arguing with fools, don't answer their foolish arguments, or you will become as foolish as they are." Next verse. "When arguing with fools, be sure to answer their foolish arguments, or they will become wise in their own estimation."

What? Back-to-back verses that seem to say the exact opposite? One of them says "don't answer a fool" and the other one says "answer a fool."

Here's the conclusion I came to: when you're arguing with a fool it's a no win situation. You can't win for losing! Why? Because they are foolish.

Second Temptation

Remember the three temptations in the desert? The second temptation is fascinating to me. The devil takes Jesus to the highest point of the Temple and tells Hm to jump off. He even quotes Scripture: "He orders His angels to protect You. And they will hold You with their hands to keep You from striking Your foot on a stone."

Permission to speak frankly?

This sounds like an amazing idea. What a way to launch your ministry. Gather a crowd. Jump off the temple. And the people can watch angels sweep you up and keep you from falling. Not a bad way to launch your ministry. Not a bad way to kick things off.

But it would have proved his identity in the wrong way!

He needed to prove his identity by dying on a cross. Jumping off the Temple would have proved his power. Dying on the cross proved His love. And if I don't know God loves me then I don't care how powerful He is. It would have short-circuited God's game plan. It would have been a selfish miracle. Jesus refused to prove His identity in the wrong way.

That's the challenge all of us face: trying to prove our identity the wrong way!

The greatest freedom is having nothing to prove.

Don't try to find your identity in what you can do. Find your identity in what God has done for you!