Writers and readers love stories, but do you ever think that each one of us is living out a story within God’s story.
We know the ending of God’s Story from the book of Revelation, but where does our story fit into His story?
I am in the process of reading the book, STUCK How we are Reverse Born Again, by Steve Shores. He speaks of “the Western story of self-sufficiency”, in which “we see a story that has no storyteller. It has no authority, because it has no author. It cannot be a resource, because it has no resource.” (p.19)
Humm…. self-sufficiency cannot be a resource, because it has no resource??? So where do we find a resource to build our story???
We are living our stories right this minute. We have an old story that “goes a long way toward providing an identity. The story settles us into a familiar version of ourselves, and that familiarity brings predictability and stability.” (STUCK, p. 21)
But… what if we see the need for a change?
What if we want to let God write a new story for us?
We visited a new church on Sunday. The preacher said that we need to let God keep the pen and write our stories, and stop taking the pen away from Him. 😉
Maybe it’s time for a new story for us — totally dependent on God. The author of Stuck says, “A new story calls on us to soften our identity, to make it more changeable, to experiment with another version of ourselves. This can be unsettling, and we deeply need Christ to see us through the challenges of newness.” (p.21)
What if we stop striving and just live the story God has put us in and stop trying to change it ourselves?
And take note of Isaiah 5:21…“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” (NIV)
The author of STUCK continues… “God’s story in the Old Testament often highlights His anguish…. God does get angry in the Old Testament (just as Jesus gets angry in the New Testament), but that anger is neither a fit of pique nor a bad mood looking for a target. God doesn’t have an impulse to anger such that he’s looking to discharge it. Rather, He has an impulse to restore creation, and when it resists this good and right intent, God experiences the disappointment expressed in Isa 5 (Isaiah)…. Rather than read about His anger and interpret God as ill-tempered, we should move toward a story of a brokenhearted but determined pursuer.” (pp.29-30)
How does it look to pursue God?
It can’t be hard because Jesus said, “…my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30 (NIV)
Maybe it’s as simple as this:
“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:5-7 (NIV)
Or this:
“and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NIV)
Or maybe it is as easy as just living each day without worry about what will happen next:
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34 (NIV)
Get through one day at a time.
While waiting:
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14 (NIV)
“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks him.” Lamentations 3:25 (ESV)
And finally:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30 (NIV)
Then…
A NEW STORY of PEACE comes:
“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” Isaiah 26:3 (NIV)
What story are you letting God write in your life?