What Tessa Taught Me About Myself

In January of 2013, we adopted a beautiful pit bull terrier from a local animal rescue.  Her name is Tessa.

Tessa spent the first few years of her life on a ranch where she was not cared for at all.  She spent her days outside, roaming with the other dogs, looking for food and water.  By 3 years old, she had already had two litters of puppies and both litters contained multiple breeds of dogs.  As the only female, Tessa had been used by the other dogs at the ranch, to be sure.  She was pregnant with her second litter when she was rescued.

We met Tessa after she had been at the rescue for almost 8 months.  Somehow this sweet dog, the favorite of every volunteer there, had not been adopted.  I think God was saving her for us.

The people at the rescue were so excited for us to have her!  They taught us about how her breed, as a pit bull terrier, can be strong and powerful.  She could easily break through a plate glass window, if she wanted to.  She could jump a fence if we didn’t train her well.  I began to feel a little intimidated by her breed!

But for all of Tessa’s strength and ability, she was also a product of her circumstances.  Her years of abuse and neglect left this powerful dog scared of everything.  And I mean EVERYTHING.  She was scared of men.  The trash truck.  Big cars, even if they weren’t running.  She was hesitant to go outside.  When we took her on walks, she would walk with her head down.  She was a shell of the powerful dog she didn’t even know she was.  The powerful dog she was created to be.

Aren’t there times when we are like Tessa, too?  

With our identity given to us by Jesus, we are free to walk before Him as His beloved.  We are called to be powerful men and women, establishing the Kingdom of God wherever we go.

But sometimes we allow our circumstances to shape our identity.  We begin to believe what “the facts” of our lives have told us.  We are unworthy because we were rejected.  We are failures because of our mistakes.  We are disqualified because of things that have happened to us.

And these are the lies we begin to take as truth.  I believe Satan’s goal is to attack us at the very points where God wants to use us the most.  Our enemy wants to use our circumstances to drive us into a corner, where we are fearful victims instead of victorious warriors.  He wants us to hang on to unforgiveness and cling to old ways so that our eyes are never lifted up to our Savior, His healing touch, and the future that He has for us.

And so each of us has a choice to make.

Are we going to believe what our past circumstances have said about us and let that shape how we look at ourselves and our lives? 

Or are we going to look ahead at what God is calling us to and who He says that we are?

If we look back to our circumstances, then we are like Lot’s wife in Genesis 19.  God ordered Lot and his family to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, a place of immorality and destruction.  They were not to look back as they left, but to set their face forward where God was calling them.  But Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.

Looking back to the place of brokenness froze her – and it does the same thing in us.  When we keep looking over our shoulders to a past of hurt and pain, we get stuck there and are kept from moving forward into all that God has for us!

So let’s make the other choice:  let’s choose to move ahead into all that God has for us, in the fullness of who He says we are! 

“. . .forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 3:13-14)

God has so much more for us than what the circumstances of our life have been!  We must see ourselves as He does, as new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and as conquerors in Him (Romans 8:37)!

When we see ourselves as He does, and not as defined by our past, then we can be who God has called us to be – and this world needs men and women of God who know who they truly are and who are willing to do great exploits in His Name!

As C.S. Lewis said, “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

Amen!