I work in event marketing and for the past couple of months I’ve been working on a mobile tour that was set to launch the last week of August. The mobile tour consisted of two custom wrapped sprinter vans and jumbo sized lawn games that travel to 50 different college campuses around the nation.
I’ll fast forward through the day to day details to the final week of preparation. We were finalizing all the different games and items that go inside the vans. As we prepped, things started to go awry. Moreover, to my eyes, it seemed like everything was going wrong. We were missing parts, things weren’t working and the client wasn’t happy. It was pretty stressful to say the least.
All in all, everything came together and the vans left for the first college campus tour stops. Now this is where it gets interesting.
For the next few days, every time I would see a sprinter van I would cringe. It would trigger memories of all the stress and angst of the previous week and my body would literally cringe in response. After the 4th or 5th sprinter van, I stopped myself and had a dialogue in my head about why I was cringing. In that moment I felt the Lord say, “Instead of remembering the stress and the mistakes every time you see a sprinter van, praise me because I was faithful and got you through it.” The Lord was so gentle in delivery, but His words were profound as they completely changed my FOCUS.
All this reminds me of the story of David and how he stood before Goliath and said in 1 Samuel 17:37, “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” I’m sure those battles with the lion and the bear were extremely difficult and terrifying. I did some quick research and found that Syrian brown bears can weigh up to 550 lbs. Furthermore, Asiatic lions prefer hunting prey that weighs around 770 lbs! Even if David was like the Rock in stature (6’4″ & 260 lbs), that is still only about half the size of the bear and roughly 1/3 the size of the lion’s preferred prey. There had to of been moments of fear and doubt for David. He was definitely bit, slashed, clawed, bruised, chewed and bloody, but he didn’t remember any of that. What David remembered was that the Lord had delivered him.
Back to my story of defeating sprinter vans! Similarly to David, the Lord changed what I remembered. I would cringe because I would remember the negatives about the project: how difficult it was, all the things that went wrong and my mistakes in the process. I remembered my wounds and the hits I had taken. I wasn’t remembering how the Lord showed up: how he made everything come together, the client was happy and that the vans left our building on time. As a result of my shift in focus, I’ve made it my thing with the Lord that every time I see a sprinter van, I praise him for his faithfulness on this project.
What about you? Has there been a time in your life when you struggled (battled a lion) or went through a tough period (faced a bear) and when you think about that time, you’re reminded of the wounds you sustained or the hits you suffered? Ask the Lord to change what you remember and to shift your FOCUS onto Him.
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