Are You a Mighty Misfit?

Have you ever felt like a misfit? Like an accidentally shrunk good-for-nothing ugly sweater, rejected by its owner and donated to Goodwill?

I have. At one point, I doubted God could ever do anything with the mess my life was in. But that is God’s specialty. God turns misfits into champions.

That’s what he did with the men who followed David. When David first began building his army, 1 Samuel 22 says that the only men who wanted to follow him were the misfits, those in debt and those who were in distress. Imagine being called by God to be the king of Israel and the only people who recognized your calling were the wimps. These men were not Olympic material. These men were a brood of losers!

Well somehow, these wimps became warriors. These misfits are the same men that eventually became David’s famous mighty men. I find it encouraging that God didn’t pick the best. Instead, He transformed the worst. How did that happen? The same way he transforms us—through hardships, through struggles, through pain, through facing our issues and refusing to allow misfortune to overcome us.

God takes the least likely to succeed and if we allow him, he transforms our pain into purpose. He takes the misfits and makes them mighty.

That reminds me of a craft project I just finished.

I’ve wanted to make this project for quite awhile, but sometimes a vision has to wait. The inspiration has to proceed the transformation. A couple of years ago I bought a wool sweater at a garage sale for a couple of dollars. I didn’t want to wear the sweater. I wanted to repurpose it. I wanted to make a pillow out of it. When I saw the sweater lying in a pile of unwanted clothing, I didn’t see a misfit, I envisioned the finished product—a beautiful sweater pillow like one I had seen at Pottery Barn.

But first, I knew I would need to shrink the sweater.

Shrink a perfectly good wool sweater on purpose? Yes!

If you’ve ever washed and dried a wool sweater you know it ends up a fraction of its former size. But there’s an amazing feel to shrunk felted wool. The texture is phenomenal. It’s dense and course. It’s tough and thick. It’s been through the heat and it has come out refined and more beautiful than ever.

Repurposing this sweater reminds me of a dear friend who is going through a really tough time. God is healing some major issues in her life. Let’s just call her Amanda. Amanda feels like a rejected shrunk sweater, a fraction of her former size. But God’s specialty is redesigning lives. He takes the pain, the misery, the brokenness and refashions it all into something far better.

Of course, like Amanda is experiencing, we all have to go through some stuff to get onto the better. The process of getting smaller so God can use us bigger is not fun, but the finished product is beautiful.

So if you feel like a misfit, if you feel like you’re going through the wringer and getting squeezed, remember…God can use you better smaller. Just like he did with David’s mighty men, he takes the misfits and makes them mighty! And when he is through with you, you’ll be the inspiration for a whole new project.