I love the way Paul begins his letters to the churches. They are not all perfectly the same, but they reflect the apostle’s heart. His introduction expresses his role as God’s servant. When he introduces himself in the first verse of his letter to the Colossians, he says, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” It’s Paul’s way of saying that whatever he is, he is because that’s what God made him to be. I like to think it’s like Paul’s “I Gotta Be Me” song. He accepts himself and God’s role in his life. He doesn’t question it. He doesn’t fret over it. He doesn’t wish he was someone else. He doesn’t wish he had a different calling. This is an important concept for us all. We might not be what we once thought we would be. We might not be all that someone else is. We might not be what others might want us to be. But, like Paul, we are what we are “by the will of God.” When Paul ends this letter to the Corinthians, he ends it with the phrase, “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” John Newton wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace.” As he thought upon the words: ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am,’ he said, ‘I am not what I ought to be. How imperfect and deficient I am! I am not what I wish to be. Though I am not what I ought to be, I can truly say that I am not what I once was—a slave to sin and Satan. I can heartily say with Paul: ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am!’”[1]
Joshua had to go to war against three of the Giants who lived in the land that God wanted him and the Israelites to occupy. They’re called “sons of Anak.” They have names. According to Joshua 15, they are “Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai.” In Hebrew, the names have particular meanings. Sheshai means “who I am.” Ahiman means “What I am.” Talmai means “What I can do.” Adrian Rogers says in his sermon on this passage, “I tell you, friend, before you’ll ever live on the mountaintop, you’re going to have to deal with those three giants, right?”[2] These are the giants that stand between us and the land God wants us to occupy. Coming to grips with who you are, what you are, and what you can do will make all the difference in life.
Elizabeth Elliot, in her book Let Me Be a Woman, records the story of Gladys Aylward, unable to accept the looks God had given her. Ms. Aylward told how when she was a child, she had two great sorrows. One, that while all her friends had beautiful golden hair, hers was black. The other was that while her friends were still growing, she had stopped. She was about four feet ten inches tall. But when at last she reached the country to which God had called her to be a missionary, she stood on the wharf in Shanghai and looked around at the people to whom He had called her. “Every single one of them,” she said, “had black hair. And every one of them had stopped growing when I did.” She was able to look to God and exclaim, “Lord God, You know what you’re doing!” He knows what He’s doing with you and me also!
[1] Tan, Paul Lee. 1996. Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times. Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc.
[2] Rogers, Adrian. 2017. “How to Live on the Mountaintop.” In Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive, Jos 14:6–15:15. Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust.