Full Quiver Ministries

Have you ever felt like you missed out on something that you were “due”? Have you felt like you were overlooked when you should’ve been chosen for the big award? That’s where the phrase “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” comes into play. It’s the idea that you’re passed over for the honor and will only ever get to celebrate others instead. I just recently finished my second year of bible school and the school I attend only has one award. I’ve been blessed to be nominated for that award both years that I’ve been there but I haven’t won the award either year. So let me walk you through how this phrase tried to ruin my night a few weeks ago. 

So we established the nominations I received, no need to rehash that. This year though, I had the absolute honor of being nominated alongside some of my closest friends. I purposed in my heart to celebrate them all the way through the process. I wanted to celebrate their win on the night of our graduation. I knew long before graduation night that I wasn’t going to win. I had a moment with the Holy Spirit where He told me that I wasn’t winning. So knowing that, but still holding onto hope (I mean, I wanna win. I’m competitive!) I went into the process of promoting and celebrating the people that mean so much to me. I honestly began to celebrate the others that had been nominated and started rooting for them as well.

On graduation night, they wait until the very end of the ceremony to announce the winner. We sat and clapped and clapped and clapped as people made their way across the stage. Then we did the same thing. We walked the stage, receiving our certificate of completion. Finally came the moment when we would learn who the winner was. There was a nervous excitement in me during that moment. They announced the winner, a woman with an amazing story of the Lord changing her entire family. She is actively changing the world and deserves this honor and more! We clapped and cheered and celebrated her that night.Then the process of graduating was over. After graduation ended we were milling about, talking to other students and teachers and families. Standing there, singing along to the background music, I heard that age old cliche in my mind, “Always the Bridesmaid, never the bride.” At that moment, I knew that  I had a choice to make. I felt like it was an opportunity to agree with disqualification. It might seem like a normal thought, something that everyone may deal with once or twice in life, but let me explain a little bit of what led to that moment.

I had done a lot of soul searching during this year’s process to make sure that I wasn’t operating out of the same spirit I did the first time I was nominated. The first time, I immediately began to disqualify others in my heart. I began to find reasons, make up reasons, why I should win and no one else should. I began to find faults with the questions the other nominees asked and the statements they made during our classes. All the while knowing my heart posture was wrong. At the end, when I was blessed by loss, I knew in my heart that I was trying to meet my own needs for approval and for provision by winning this award. I spent time with Jesus over the summer trying to understand where all of those crazy emotions and beliefs had come from and where I landed was that I was trying to prove to Jesus that I didn’t need Him. I felt myself saying, “I’m a big boy now Poppa, I can do it for myself!” That’s not the heart I want. I want to be fully dependent on Jesus, so I repented and surrendered to His Lordship over my life in a deeper way. It was a beautiful time with Him, one where I feel like I grew. 

This year, I had kept watch over my heart to make sure that those feelings didn’t resurface. I wanted to make sure that they were dead! Especially because I would have to disqualify my close, covenant friends in order to retain these old heart postures! I feel a deep disgust when I think about that possibility. So, hearing that phrase made me wonder if I again had those feelings and beliefs lying deep below the surface. Did I still believe I could do it on my own without Jesus? No! I am and want to be fully dependent on Jesus’ love and intervention in my life. In every area of my life. Then I realized that what I had heard was an invitation. It wasn’t a good invitation. It was an invitation to believe the lie that I would forever be disqualified, never be good enough, and I believe that agreeing with it would have disqualified me from so much more.

While I was examining my heart and looking into this subject in scripture, I felt the Lord leading me to John chapter 3. The most famous verse in the Bible is here, but there is also a curious exchange between John the Baptist and some of his disciples. Let’s look at this exchange and what John says afterwards. We’ll start in verse 23.

Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming to be baptized. (This was before John was put in prison.) An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan – the one you testified about – look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”

To this John replied, “A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater, I must become less.”

John 3:23-30 NIV

Boy, I feel like this passage is full of stuff to unpack, but I want to focus on John’s attitude towards the success of Jesus. What’s interesting to me here is that John’s disciples, the same people who heard John testify that Jesus is the Messiah, are upset because there is seemingly competition between the two rabbinical camps. It’s like they were saying, “Aren’t you upset? We’re losing people to the guy YOU baptized!” But John had some amazing insights and I think that those insights birthed an amazing heart posture.

John the Baptist says in verse 27, “A person can receive only what is given them from heaven.” Everything I have is a gift. It comes from Jesus. I could try and argue that some of the things I have were earned through hard work, but all of my skills and abilities that were used in this “earning” were gifts from God. Everything I have, without exception, is a gift. 

I think that John, making this statement, has the mindset that people being turned to the Messiah is a gift also. John had spent his life testifying about Jesus and now to see the fruit of that testimony has to be a blessing for him. The ‘gift’ in this instance, is not followers and disciples, it’s fulfillment. I think John sees that and is able to latch onto the joy of seeing his hopes and dreams and beliefs come to life. Hopes and dreams that have grown in his heart throughout the years of being in the wilderness. Beliefs about Jesus that have been growing since he was a baby in his mothers womb! Let’s put John’s position and call away for just a moment, and ask a question. I want to go to the bare bones of things for a second. What would it be like for you to be filled with joy when people win that, in the natural, you should be or are in competition with? Hold the answer to that in your heart as we continue. 

John then goes into this beautiful story about a wedding. In this story, John is not the bridegroom. But what John says is that when he attends the bridegroom and hears his voice, he is filled with joy. In other words, what John has been waiting for, is finally happening!

In natural, earthly reasoning John’s disciples are right. John “knows” Jesus is the Messiah, and has it confirmed for him in his imprisonment by the answer Jesus gives one of John’s disciples (Matt. 11:2-6). But by the rules of the world, the one that came before should be greater, right? John came before, preparing the way. He was already doing, baptizing people into repentance, what Jesus would come and complete. Wouldn’t he be worthy of a following and a growing number of disciples. Not in John’s heart. “He must become greater, I must become less.” (John 3:30)

The invitation for John at that moment was not to humble himself though, become something less so that Jesus could be glorified. John was being invited to offense, confusion, frustration, and disqualification and it all would have come through agreement a lie. To me, the lie at this moment was that John was worthy of Jesus’ position. Wow, how many times have I taken the position in my own life that I am worthy of a position that was designed only for Jesus? Sounds kind of blasphemous right? Let me ask a few things to put the first question in perspective.

1. Is Jesus the Lord of everything in my life, or am I ruling? 
2. When I take control of areas of my life, areas that are supposed to be surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus, am I not putting myself in the position that only Jesus was meant to have? 
3. Isn’t that the same heart posture John was tempted with, me in the place of Jesus? 

Submitting to the rule of Jesus doesn’t take you out of a leadership role or lessen your impact. It doesn’t make you less than or disqualified. It sets you in a position of power in authority as one under authority. If John would have agreed that the external circumstances of his disciples leaving to be baptized by Jesus’ disciples disqualified him from leading or negated his impact, he could have found himself jealous of and fighting against the very person he had been proclaiming for years. 

What if we could hold others in that same regard? What if we could honor others the same way that John honored Jesus and celebrated His success? What if we could adopt the heart posture that in the kingdom there is no competition? I truly believe that when we as children of God adopt a spirit of competition and disqualification that it takes everything good that has come before, that has been done through Christ for the body with pure motives, and calls it into question. 

The statement “Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride,” has an element of the desire to be celebrated in it. ‘Always’ and ‘Never’ are the keys to unlock the statement. It says that someone else is always destined to receive what I have longed for. Others are deserving of what I desire. It has the smell of victimhood which makes us unable to celebrate others when they are recognized. There’s an air of sinister comparison about this. “Who they are is better, and I don’t like them for it.” Or something like, “They’re so much better than me that I might as well never try.” In order for me to adopt those heart postures, I have to take on the identity of a transient or a servant, and not a son. If someone else finishes something I started in the kingdom, they will probably be celebrated here on earth for its completion. But that does not negate my part in the process, or my reward. I truly hope that your journey with Jesus leads you to be secure enough in who you are as a child of God that you can celebrate others and you don’t become less or disqualified. The truth of the Kingdom of God is what one of my mentors would say, “In the Kingdom, we can both win.” 

When I plug this mentality into my situation, especially the one I mentioned earlier, I find myself beginning to enjoy the process of celebrating others in the possibility of defeat. I understand that the circumstance doesn’t define who I am and that the relationships I’m forming are the most important part of any situation. Rather than adopting the mentality that one of us must lose in order for the other to win, let’s take the heart posture that I never lose! When I am celebrated I win! When I celebrate others, I win! I am simultaneously, always the one celebrated and the one celebrating others. In the Kingdom of God, I am always the bridesmaid and always the bride!