YOUR STORY... Sunday

Devotional for 8/18/13

Ever want to write a book about your own life?  In an autobiography we can pick and choose what we write about ourselves.  What would you choose to include?  What would you choose to ignore?  Would you embellish the good stuff and leave out things that are not so pretty?  Or would you be fairly honest about your life?  We all have things we are proud of or happy with in our lives, and other areas that we wish were different.  And each of us is unique with our own story to tell.

What would happen if someone else wrote a book about your life?  How would they write your story?  Would they say you were a good person, or would they tell all the things you had done in your life, the good, the bad and the ugly?  Would they remember to include your faith?  What kind of witness have you been to others?  Does your faith show clearly in your life?  Everyone sees things differently and has different perceptions about people. We generally want others to see us in a positive light and perhaps hope we would be remembered as good and faithful Christians that have touched other people's lives with God's love.

But our story has already been written - every day of it, before we were even born:    

"When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  Psalm 139:15b-16

The beginning of that Psalm says that God knows us inside and out, every move, every thought , every word even before we speak it.  It also says He hems us in, and his Spirit is always with us, everywhere.  Wow!  On the one hand, these are comforting thoughts, knowing that God knows and loves us that much and is always with us through it all.  On another level that is frightening, knowing that there is nowhere to hide when we do wrong things - God sees it all.  However, even then He loves us and forgives us, no matter how small or how big our wrongdoings are.  So if we have not been good witnesses to others of his love, or not allowed Him to use us as His tools in other people's lives, He is still there holding us in his arms and saying to us:  "I love you and forgive you."  He knows all our troubles even before they occur, whether they are placed upon us by others or brought upon us by our own doing, and He is there to comfort us and rescue us.  He even gives us our faith in Jesus as our Saviour, and nurtures it to help it grow.  He knows every chapter in our lives, because He is the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), and has written our life story... and it has a wonderful ending!  God has written your story, and He is reading it and can't put it down!

Written by Jan Andersen