What's your story?

What is your story?

There are two aspects to this question. Before we can share our personal story, we must address the larger question of what story are we a part of? It seems popular today for people to share their testimony. While there is nothing wrong with that, if we are a part of God’s family, there is a larger story from which our story emerges and into which our story merges.

From the beginning, God has intended for human beings to enjoy relationship with God and with one another. In the Garden of Eden, God created a world for humans to enjoy and care for. In the blink of an eye, that world was disrupted and sin entered the picture. Through Adam and Eve’s decision, all of creation was subject to the curse.

Since that fateful day, our world has suffered. Paul writes in Romans 8:19-23, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”

We are a part of that story of redemption. Starting with Abraham and culminating in the person of Jesus Christ, God was unfolding the story of redeeming all creation. While the incarnation of Jesus Christ is a key part of the story, it is not the end. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He did mean that God’s redeeming act had been accomplished. However, our part in the story is not finished.

You are I are called to join God’s story. This is not our story; it is God’s. We are called to join God’s ongoing work of redemption and reconciliation. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20)

As characters in God’s story of redemption, we are representing the Creator of the universe. We are acting in behalf of the one who created us and the world we share. We are not hear to live our own story. Instead, we must live lives that resonate with God’s greater story of making things right in the world.

What’s your story?

shine!
Jason