The Story God is Telling

     A few weeks back, I woke up at 4 am and felt prompted in my spirit to read Psalm 78. Its a rather long Psalm that retells the story of the children of Israel in the Old Testament. It talks about how God delivered them from the hand of the Egyptians, how they rebelled and whined and complained and how God was patient and compassionate with them. Its an amazing story, but certainly one I've heard a thousand times in my life.

 

     Honestly, while I was reading the story again, I kept thinking in the back of my mind, 

"God, I've heard all this before.

What's the point?" 

     And it wasn't until I got all the way finished with the chapter that I looked back at the few verses I had underlined and heard the small whisper of God in my heart say, "That was their story and it was right for them to keep telling it over and over again... Just like you do."

Here's how I wrote it in my journal...

     "I love that this is the story of God for the people of God. That's what Psalm 78 is. It is them telling their story over and over again. It reminds me of our Coffee Shop and Movie Theater stories. It's the same thing.

     Like, I read this and I go, 'Yeah, right, its the same story, over and over again.' because it is. This is the story of their life and how God intervened and forgave and was merciful, and saved them from their enemies!

     They forever told the same story over and over because it was their story and it was right. And we must do the same!

     It is right for us to tell and retell the same stories of God's faithfulness through the years! 

     It is right for the next generation to hear them and learn them and tell them to their children too. 

     Each generation that comes through Next Level Church must have and tell their story! They must add their story to ours."

     

     In the same way, every life has a story! A story that must be told, over and over again. Every single one of us have a story of what God has done in us and through us that is the defining story of our life. In some ways we don't choose it and in some ways we do. We chose to move to Florida, but God chose to call us there. We chose to obey. He chose to open the doors He opened, we chose to walk through them and endure the pain.

      God chose for us to experience all we did in Indiana, we chose to not get bitter and give up. Parents of children with cancer don't choose for their child to get sick, all they can do is choose to not get bitter toward God, but instead let it be the defining story of their life. And they must choose to tell it.

     Telling our story is always a choice. The same choice Israel had to make with their story, and the same choice we had to make with our story. Each one of us must make the choice with the story God has allowed us to live.

•      Will we embrace our story? 

•      Or will we curse it? 

•      Will we choose to acknowledge that our story is not like anyone else's? 

•      How long will we keep running from the reality of our story?

     God will wait. Oh, how He will wait for us to come back to our story. He's not in any hurry. In fact, He's actually just writing more of our story.

? What about us? How well are you doing at embracing your story? How faithful are you being at telling it? 

After all, someone needs to hear it.

#AddingValue

@MatthewKeller