Ghosts of Christmas Past – Part 3
Today’s Post will conclude our series entitled “The Ghosts of Christmas Past.” Things from our past like to linger and mess with our lives right now, don’t they? Two weeks ago we looked at Overcoming offense. In that search we realized that our lives are too short and our calling is too great to live offended. It’s a waste of our lives walking around and being all offended at every little thing. It’s a waste of our lives living bitter and unforgiving. We need to proactively choose not to be offended. We need to, with God’s Help, overlook offenses. Forgive the offenders. Last week we looked at the Ghost of Shame. We confuse doing something BAD with being bad. Shame can haunt your life, ruin your relationship or eliminate any potential ones. We need to move the focus off of ourselves. Off of what we’ve done or who we are and onto Who Christ is. If you’ve trusted in Christ, God has rolled your shame away. No need to focus on yourself. Focus on Christ.
Shame and other negative feelings about yourself and myself, they don’t just come out of thin air. Many times someone said or did something and that stuck with us.
Today we’re gonna talk about the power of words and what to do about the labels that seem to stay us over the years
You’ve probably heard this expression before:
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
That’s got to be the Dumbest phrase ever! The Bible tells us this:
“The tongue has the power of life and death,”
Proverbs 18:21a NIV
The truth is that words do hurt.
And we struggle in the present, here and now…because of labels from the past.
When your name is Matt and you’re an overweight kid, it’s just like the grade school name calling is too obvious to skip over for some people.
When I went to Highschool it took me a little while to realize that I wasn’t really worth a bully’s time. I would hear “hey fat” or something like that…but really someone was just calling “Matt.” I was on the defense because of the label from the past and I let it impact my present.
Maybe for you it’s not your appearance, but someone said something about you and it made you feel less-than. Maybe you never could address it to that person, tell them how that made you feel and dealt with it. You’re still, today walking around with that label on you.
Made a wrong choice. Made several? Perhaps you’ve got a family member that will never let you live it down. They might not say it in these words but you feel it: “You’re a loser. You’re hopeless. You’re a lost cause.”
And the more you listen to those labels and dwell on them, the more they haunt you in the present. Remember: we’ve got to deal with these Ghosts of Christmas Past to Change our present so we can have a Christmas Future…a good one!
So when you’ve let the label haunt you, you begin to Own it. People label you “Lazy, black sheep, bad with money, Over the top (too much), stuck up, selfish…” you NAME it… USPS have these “flat rate boxes” and they have the slogan “If it FITS it SHIPS.” Well for Labels if it “FITS it STICKS.” If you start to believe those labels about yourself, it will continue to stick.
The problem is that there may be a sense of truth to the label.
If someone calls you lazy…you just might not be the most motivated person.
If you’re labeled MESSY…you just might not be the most cleanly or organized person around.
Perhaps people think of you as bossy or pushy. You might not be the most meak and flexible person ever.
But know this…and this is going to come up a few times before we are done here today. Listen:
“What’s True about you NOW doesn’t have to be true about you LATER.”
Why? Well because…
God’s POWER is greater than your PAST.
If you struggle with this, I think at various levels we all do…If you’ve believed these labels about you and they are messing with your present…they don’t have to mess with your future.
What do we need to do? We’re going to take a cue from Jacob in the Bible and Name it something different.
Say what? Is this that “Name it claim it stuff?” no…just hold on, tune back in for a second.
There is something in your life that is messing with your present, we need a paradigm shift that will radically alter your future and my future. And it’s going to be a much better future when we name it something different.
In Genesis we see a love story unfold. When Jacob met Rachel, he immediately loved her and wanted to marry her. He asked her dad for her hand in marriage, and Rachel’s dad said “work for me for 7 years.” Jacob agrees, but when it comes time for the wedding, Dad switches the girls and Jacob marries Leah. Leah…did not have the figure or beauty of Rachel. What does the bible say she had?
Leah had weak eyes,
Genesis 29:17a NIV
Jacob wasn’t pleased with the trickery and his father-in-law tells him he can have Rachel as well if he works another 7 years. Jacob agreed. He really loved Rachel. This can’t be understated.
Jacob worked for 14 years to marry his DREAM girl.
He loved her from the moment he saw her. They couldn’t get pregnant. Everyone else was getting pregnant and for along while, Rachel had no little tot to call her own. Her sister was having kids…(bet that made Leah feel better about herself.) But not Rachel. Until one day Jacob and Rachel have a son and name him Joseph. And sometime later, maybe not very long…they want to have another kid . Unfortunately this pregnancy doesn’t go well for Rachel.
16 Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. 17 And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.” 18 As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni.[a] But his father named him Benjamin.
Genesis 35:16-18 NIV
Rachel Named her son…one thing. His father named him something else.
Names are so important.
Have you ever looked up the meaning of your name?
When I was a kid, we’d get to visit the stores in downtown Ottawa,IL and one of our favorite little shops was the Christian Book Store. I wasn’t interested in books, but I liked their toys…like prizes you’d give kids for attendance in Sunday school or for memorizing bible verses. I enjoyed listening to Demo tapes of my favorite Christian Artists, and if I had saved up enough money, I could buy one of these tapes to listen to at home. But one other thing they had there was a binder of cards with names and correlating scriptures and motivational pictures. People could use them for book marks for their bibles or perhaps just something that sat on your dresser and reminded you of what your name meant.
Of course I went straight for mine. Matthew. I’m not making this up to make myself sound good or something…the card said “gift of God.” It also had Isaiah 40:31 on it. “but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (NIV)
Names are important and have meanings. A trend I’m hearing today is some couples are waiting a little while to figure out what to name their kid…They take some time, look at their little baby girl and say…”Wow. I don’t think you look like a Gertrude at all. More of a Bathilda.” And now the baby’s name is Bathilda.
Others have a list ready. Perhaps they have so many kiddos that they can just move down the list like the meteorologists do when naming hurricanes. “Oh we’ll use that name next time.”
But Names are important because they have meaning. They can be an observation or a hope filled blessing. “This is what this is…or this is what this can be.”
So Rachel Names her son BEN-ONI.
Ben (meaning SON) and ONI (meaning Sorrow)…put them together and you get “Son of my Sorrow.”
Rachel was in great pain. She was physically dying. We don’t know what the complications were. Perhaps if this had happened today she would have survived childbirth. But she was in pain, and she knew this was it. This probably brought on emotional pain as well. She had been blessed with giving birth and raising Joseph. Seeing his first steps. Caring for him. As she physically died she was in emotional pain knowing she’d never have those firsts with her second son. Physical and Emotional sorrow. That’s what was produced in giving birth to her son. In her final moment, as she breathed her last breath, she used it to name this little boy..name him the sorrow she experienced and felt. Ben-Oni. Son of my Sorrow.
Then you have Jacob straight away naming his son something else.
You might think, How insensitive! How dare he. Her dying breath named that child, by golly. Keep the name she gave him!
The problem was that Rachel couldn’t see past that moment. All she had in her final moments was sorrow. But what’s true in the moment doesn’t have to be true later. What was true for Rachel in her experience did not have to stick to her son for the rest of his life. Did not remind Jacob of that sorrow every time he said his son’s name. Jacob Named his son something else.
He named him Benjamin. Names are cool. Benjamin means “Son of my right hand.” How cool is that name? The right hand symbolizes favor and power. Another way to translate Benjamin is that it means “fortunate one.”
Rachel wasn’t the only one suffering and full of sorrow in those moments of Ben’s birth. Jacob was losing the love of his life. His best friend. The woman who he worked so hard for. But in her last moments their son became not sorrow for Him, but blessing.
Jacob wasn’t unfamiliar with re-naming things and people. He himself use to be “jacob” meaning “deceiver” but God changed his name to “Israel” meaning My God Prevails. Even the location where God changed his name…Israel decides “Let’s call this place Peniel, because I saw the face of God and lived.”
We are NOT doomed to live, haunted by the ghosts of our past. By labels the enemy placed on us. If you don’t like the label, call it something else.
It’s got to be intentional.
Labels
Paul
How do you feel about people with a criminal record? How must they feel about that? Inmate. Convict. In Acts 21 Paul was arrested. The charges? “Teaching all men everywhere against our people [the Jews] and our Law [Torah].” (Acts 21:28a)
The rest of Paul’s life could have been all about being falsely accused, falsely imprisoned…but instead of being a victim of an unfair system, Paul called it something else. He changed the label. It wasn’t wasn’t unjust or unfair. It was an opportunity.
He spoke in his own defense SEVERAL times, each time before a more powerful group of people. He was able to reach people with the good news of Jesus MORE than if he’d never been accused and carted all around in chains.
Mary and Joseph
Mary had some labels: Pregnant out of wedlock. Long ago, the phrase used to have a more chilling and shameful connotation, didn’t it? Unwed pregnancy is more commonplace today than ever. But Mary didn’t get pregnant in our day and age.
What about Crazy? Yeah, there hadn’t been a record of angels speaking with people in a long while. But let alone a young lady and let alone the crazy message. You’re going to have God’s son!
Joseph Shared this next Label: Disgraced.
“18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
Matthew 1:18-19 NIV
So he knew of the shame and wanted the disgrace to dissipate. Only way to do that was to end the marriage arrangements. But God stepped in.
“20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” ”
Matthew 1:20-21 NIV
Despite what the neighbors, the family might say about Mary or even about him, Joseph took her home as his wife, believing something better than the label that others would be putting on them.
What was true about them right then, wouldn’t be true forever. The Shame or disgrace would not compare with the blessing and joy that that little boy would bring into their lives. Into the world.
Back to Jacob for a moment. Jacob was in pain, full of sorrow at the present loss of his dear wife. He loved her more than anyone else. But he decided to take the label and name it something else. You are the son of my right hand. My Son. Every time he looked at Joseph or Benjamin, he saw the love of their mother. How fortunate he was to have her in his life. How blessed he was that she gave him these two children. It’s no wonder why he favored them and sheltered them above their half siblings. He knew, as he named his son Benjamin, God’s power was greater than his past.
Conclusion
What about you? Will you allow God’s power to be greater than your past? Will you believe that for yourself today? It’s true, whether you believe it or not. The difference comes when you choose to name that label something different.
When we name it something different, we aren’t ignoring the past or the present. We are choosing to be hopeful in a better future. One that only comes from putting all our hope in Jesus Christ.
Viroqua Naz 