Hello, My Name Is BOLD

I'm not, you know.  Not BOLD. Far from it, in fact. I've been accused of being timid, shy, standoffish, a wallflower...but never bold.  That's why when she handed me the name tag, I looked to the next person in line.  I was waiting for one that actually described me.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning.  I never had a problem making new friends; I just had a hard time keeping them.  I went to a small Christian school and when we would occasionally get a new student I would usually be the first to befriend the girls.  Sound bold?  Not really.  It took a while for the other students to warm up to them, invite them into their tight-knit circle so to speak.  I was just trying to make them feel comfortable and hopefully find a friend of my own in the process. But I was too timid to be myself around the whole group and usually wound up feeling like the outsider. Yeah, I was a lot more comfortable one-on-one.

As a teacher now, when I have to make my students practice speaking and listening skills (a.k.a. present in front of the class), I really do feel for them. I remember being required to give a speech every quarter from about the time I was eight years old all the way through high school.  That's a total of at least 40 speeches! Despite the fact that I plagiarized most of them straight out of my mom's encyclopedias, those speeches were the most stressful assignments I can remember - worse than Algebra!  I'd spend hours planning, writing, and worrying over a five minute speech, trying to get it just right so no one would laugh at me. Not that I needed to worry about that; they were all bored out of their minds twenty seconds in.  How I wished I could be bold like Samuel, who never practiced a single speech, but got up and winged it while the students laughed and the teacher checked off every desired box on the rubric.

At this point, some of you are thinking, Wait a minute, but you're a teacher...if you hated speaking in front of kids so much, how do you manage to do it every day? I ask myself that ALL THE TIME! Actually, its now within my comfort zone.  Kids are fun; adults are scarier by far!  By the time I started college, I had learned how to modulate my voice to hide my nerves, write my own convincing speech (without plagiarizing from the encyclopedia), and make eye contact while delivering my message. I also learned that only a turtleneck or scarf could hide the telltale redness that blazed from my chest and neck.  I still spent hours worrying, analyzing, and stressing over every detail.  Never once did I feel bold.

Now that you have a little background, you can better understand why I hesitated to take the name tag that said: Hello, my name is BOLD! I had taken a couple of girls from my youth group to a women's event at a church in Pittsburg, KS. At the beginning of the service they handed each of us a blank name tag and asked us to write a word or phrase that identified us: one we had been called by others, or one we used to identify ourselves.

Perhaps you can identify with the phrase I chose for myself.  Have you ever felt that you were NOT ENOUGH? Maybe, like me, no one has told you that face to face.  Maybe its just something you often find yourself suspecting when the people you love the most don't seem to notice your heart, or the patience you have remaining at the end of the day isn't enough to tolerate your own children's messes, when the paycheck you earn doesn't cover the bills piling up on the kitchen counter, and you just can't pump enough coffee in your veins to manage cleaning the house after a long day at work.

Or maybe someone has told you that you're not enough.  Maybe they've said far worse. It's hard, isn't it, when you've heard something about yourself so long that you wonder if perhaps it really is true? Over time, we come to identify with what others believe about us.

Can I give you some good news? It works both ways; you're not stuck believing the negative things others say about you if you will start listening to the positive things that God says about you!  He says you are loved eternally and unconditionally.  He says you are worth His grace.  He says you are forgiven.  You can read it yourself; it's all there in His Holy Word, his love letter written to you.

Who is this God who lavishes His love upon us?  He is the One who created heaven and earth, who formed you in your mother's womb (Jeremiah 1:5). He's the Mighty One who saves you, who quiets you with his love, who delights in you, and rejoices over you (Zephaniah 3:17).  He's the One who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not (Romans 4:17).

I think you need to read that again.  He "gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not."

Many of you are mourning some things you have lost, parts of you that have died.  You go on as a parent who loses a child: numb, broken, angry, lost. You put one foot in front of the other, take one breath at a time, all the while wishing you could go back and undo what's been done.

Will you hear me today? God gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. You cannot undo these things, but He can.  He speaks the word and, suddenly, something exists from nothing! He breathes into a situation and instantly it bursts forth with new life! What have you lost that He cannot restore? What is so dark that He cannot shine forth, so broken that He cannot heal, or so chained that He cannot set free? This Jesus, who considers you so worthy of his love, proclaims the year of the Lord's favor over you (Luke 4:18-21 & Isaiah 61:1-3)!  Will you choose today to hear His voice clearly, to disregard the ones that suggest you're not enough?

Let Him bring to life that which is dead in your life and call things that are not as though they are.  I did. I tried to look to someone else, wait for a different name tag, but the other lady just smiled at me and waited patiently. Hesitantly, I took the name card that said, "Hello, my name is: BOLD." The moment I did, something in my spirit began to rejoice.  Something I had thought was dead. I took it home and stuck it on the visor in my car and whenever I feel timid or scared, I flip the visor down and remind myself what He says about me: I am BOLD. If Jesus says it, who am I to disagree?