I have always really liked symbols. You know, something that symbolizes important things or historic things. That’s why I like flags and really like authentic old battle flags. They mean something beyond themselves and symbolize struggle, passion, victory and defeat. The Father likes to speak to me through symbols as well. Whether it be just a picture of something and I go study that thing and learn how it relates to the Father and his love for me or his direction for me, or it may be a song or movie that gets to me. Whatever it may be, I look for the Father in the everyday ‘things’ of my life every single day. I guess it was about a year ago or so, we were invited to come to a weekend marriage retreat that was being taught by Tim and Debi Chapman with Cross Generation Ministries. Tim and Debi came into our lives after we became friends with their daughter Hannah through the birth world when Cindy began training as a doula and midwife. We loved Tim and Debi and their heart from the first time we met them and shortly after I asked Tim if he and Debi would mentor us as a couple and as a family. They agreed and so began a journey for all of us over the past several years that has been marked by lots of joy, laughter, and victory; but also by lots of pain, tears, and defeat. Through all of these turns and bumps in our road, they have remained there, supporting us and praying us through.
As a part of the weekend retreat that we attended, Tim challenged us as a couple to go off (they gave us a certain amount of time) and write down all the things that were important to our family we felt like the Lord was putting before us and to come up with a “Family Mission”. He and Debi get away every year for at least a few days alone to go back over their mission and to reconnect and to pray to ask the Father for more vision on whether their vision is still accurate or if he wants them to change any of it. This resonated with Cindy and I so much because at this point in our marriage, we had just come out of the absolute darkest time not only in our marriage but in our entire lives. We had been going through a ton of healing for almost a year and then got the chance to learn from Tim and Debi. It was such an incredibly timely charge from them to find our purpose in the Father and seek HIS direction for our lives, our marriage and our family.
One of the other exercises they had us do as a part of that was to come up with a “Family Logo”. Kind of a family crest of sorts but more specific to us and our journey and mission. The Lord gave me a couple very detailed pictures while Cindy and I were sitting next to the pool at a hotel in Grapevine, Tx, discussing and praying through what symbols were the most meaningful to us and what that would look like. It has gone through several revisions since that day and those who were at our Evans’ memorial, you saw it there, but here is our Family Logo that was birthed at this weekend retreat:
I wanted to go through what each of the components of this logo mean to us, but first, I wanted to ask, do YOU have a mission statement for your family? Do you have a “Family Verse”? If you don’t, I challenge you to do so. It is a rallying point for your family to go back to and when I go over the significance of our logo, that was started and developed over a year ago and how it pertained to when we lost Evans, you’ll understand why it is so special to us. I also teach the kids where our strength comes from off of our logo. In Joshua, when the Lord brought the Israelites across the Jordan river, he told them to bring out 12 stones from the center of the river (one for each of the tribes of Israel) and erect a monument on the bank once they all crossed. Then the Lord told them, “When your children as in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. when it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” The Lord wants you to remember all he has done for you and wants you to tell your story to your children and your children’s children. Our family logo is a compilation of some of our “stones” if you will of our journey thus far.
Our family Mission Statement is this:
“Our mission is to follow and trust the Lord, no matter what. To love each other and to love and bless everyone around us.”
That is our purpose, now the logo has verses and symbols that are extensions off of that statement.
Lets go over the verses first and then I’ll walk you through the symbols. If you know me well at all, you’ll know that I get crazy obsessed with the details of certain things. Symbolism and what the meaning behind something is fascinates me (and annoys my poor wife LOL). So each of these have meaning to our journey.
Our Family Verse is Jeremiah 32:38-40:
“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.”
I could write an entire post on each verse, and maybe I will in the future, but to keep this under 10,000 words, I am just going to hit the high points in this post. This verse in our stake in the ground of our commitment between our family and the Father. The Lord gave us this verse from our friends Pete and Debbie Livingston who started Radically Married, a marriage ministry based around their marriage and life. We were blessed to spend a week with them doing a one on one marriage intensive a couple years ago after coming out of our “valley of dry bones” if it could even be that nice. They challenged us to get a family verse and to be in the word EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. And for Cindy and I to begin studying together and for me to LEAD in this. So we started that 2 years ago this very week. Verse 39 here says the Lord will give us “one heart and one way”. As a family, and as a couple, the Father honors unity. And you have to be unified in your mission, passion and direction first before you will get very far. So pray on what that is. It doesn’t mean you have to like and be passionate about all the same things. It means that as a TEAM you need to be on the same page.
Underneath our family verse on the right side is Psalm 127:3-5.
“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”
Next to my beautiful wife, there’s no one more important to me than my children. The blessing they are to me and I pray they are to other people is immeasurable and I take my mantle as their earthly father very very seriously. I have a lot to say about his verse in another post for later, but our children are “like arrows in the hand of a warrior”. As a father, you are the protector and warrior for your family. There is no greater weapon to defeat the enemy’s plan in your life and the life of your family than to raise up children who fear the Lord and fight beside you. They are in your quiver to mold and to shape and to sharpen while you have them in your care and then we get the privilege of releasing them into the world to fight for the kingdom. I released our Evans into the battle on June 14th of this year. I have asked the Lord a thousand times “Why so soon?!?!”. It just seemed like an arrow released before its time, but the Father has repeatedly answered, “His time was now” and I have watched as our little arrow has already created a massive impact for the Father and his people. I could not be more proud of my kids.
If you look at the root system on the picture there are four different verses:
1. Daniel 4: I couldn’t pick one verse out of this chapter because it is an entire story that really defined my (JB’s) life and what I went through from 2011-2012 as I walked away from the Lord and came close to losing everything and everyone I love and then the Lord restored me, saved me, and healed my family. That is the significance of the “Family Independance Day” on the left of the logo dated July 9, 2012. That marks the exact day around 11:00 pm when my Father said, “Enough is enough” and I turned my life and my family back over to him. I called Tim Chapman that night (I’m sure I woke him up it was so late), told him everything and Cindy and I started on our road of transformation immediately and have never looked back.
2. Psalm 52:8
“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever, because you have done it. I will wait for your name, for it is good, in the presence of the godly.”
Seriously?!? All of these verses but one (Psalm 126:5-6) were given to us by the Father A YEAR AGO!! This verse sounds a crazy lot like “We will trust HIM no matter what!” doesn’t it?? And we have and we are. Trees are a very special thing to me, hence the entire logo. I’ll talk about them later but they symbolize stability. “I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever”, we will not be moved. He knew we would be walking through this fire now, that is why we have been praying these verses over our family for a year. The Father knows everything you have been through and all you will go through. He will prepare you and HE will sustain you.
3. Jeremiah 17:7-8
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
This verse again, reiterates how much trusting in the Lord is a pre-requisite for making it through trials. I love the imagery of this verse. I love that it compares the man who trusts to a tree planted near water. A tree near water is ALWAYS taken care of because it’s source is close by. Just like us, if we “remain in him” (John 14:4-5), then He will supply all that we need and we will not get thirsty when the drought comes. We will be able to withstand the heat during a season because we are drinking and refreshing ourselves in the Father.
4. Psalm 1:1-3
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”
Wow. Where do I start with this one?!? Again, this is a blog unto itself, right?! “His delight is in the law of the Lord….” After going through our biggest struggle a couple years ago that we had experienced, I learned and experienced and developed an entirely new love of the Word of God and have literally lived the proof of the truth of his word (Proverbs 30:5). The Word is a living thing (Hebrews 4:12) and is our only offensive weapon in this fight we are in on a daily basis. You have lots of armor for defense (shield, helmet, breastplate), but the “sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17) is the sole offensive weapon for destroying the enemy. How many of us are walking into battles weaponless and unable to actually inflict any damage on the enemy?!?! You have your “shield of faith” and your “helmet of salvation” and your “belt of truth”….but you haven’t touched your “sword of the Spirit” in who knows how long and it sits there on your nightstand gathering dust. I can personally tell you the danger you are placing not only yourself but everyone around you in by not daily practicing with your sword. (If you’re not a Lord of the Rings fan then tune out for a couple sentences, I’m about to geek out.) What would have happened in “Return
of the King” if Aragorn (son of Arathorn, heir to Gondor, the white city) had never practiced with the sword he carried at his side??? When Elrond, the king of Rivendell brought him Anduril (the famed sword talked about in legend that was forged from the shards of Narsil, wielded by his father before him) on the eve of the largest battle of his entire life and he gripped the hilt of this sword….he wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Even though he was the son of the King, chosen heir of the Kingdom of Men, he would have not been able to fight the enemies of his land and they all would have either died or been taken captive. But he had been practicing, and he did know his weapon, and when the time came to go into battle, he did it as the Prince of the King and fought well and won. (ooops, spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen it…the good guys win. 
). So there’s no excuse to not spend time in the word. Your life and the life of everyone and everything you love depends on it.
The dates on the left side of the “H” that the tree makes correlate to the most important dates for our family: the day Cindy and I got married (4/26/03) and each of my childrens’ birthdays (Harper: 10/20/08, Ellie: 12/25/10 and Evans (6/14/14) ). We will add each birthday of all the rest of our children if the Father chooses to bless us with them on that side.
The last verse we have on there is Psalm 126:5-6:
“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing sheaves with him.”
This is the verse the Father gave us after we lost our Evans and were headed out to “plant” him with my family. We went out to sow his seed and dedicate his short life to the Lord and we went out weeping, but we left that cemetery with joy and faith that what the Lord had promised us would come to fruition. That our son’s life would break the chains of bondage, crush the hold of the enemy and set God’s people free. We sowed our son for all of you. What I’m doing right now….blogging….talking about him, is cultivating the crop his life is yielding and getting ready for the harvest.
Stay tuned for the symbols and pictures of our logo in the next post, but I don’t want it to get too long on you. Know that the Father has a plan for you (Jeremiah 29:11), but you have to trust him in it, and seek his face about it. It is your responsibility to develop of plan to accomplish his will and daily take up your sword to see that his will is accomplished. He will change your plans and will direct your paths (Psalm 119:105) but just keep seeking his face and STAND FIRM.
JB