Lately, I have been considering the way God reveals himself
to us through stories. I don’t mean fictional stories, as though he makes up some
ingenious drama through which he illustrates something about life. I mean that
he fills his Book with true stories of how he has related to people in the
past, and how he has made his character known through so many real-life
experiences, so we can not only know what he is like as a person, but can watch
for the ways he is doing the same things in our own lives.
This is very encouraging. After all, we all have a story.
Our stories will contain elements we would rather not talk about. We may have
experiences that seem to so fly in the face of the will of God that we can’t
imagine God doing anything good in our lives at all, let alone using that very
story to help and bless other people.
But the simple fact that his Book is filled with real life
stories of his work in people of every kind, in circumstances of every kind,
dealing with sins of every kind, showing his grace, and mercy, and love, and
power, and goodness, and sovereignty to our needy hearts, declares to us that
he is quite willing and able to do the same with us.
While every child of God will have distinctive qualities to
their stories, just as Moses and Jonah can tell about quite different
experiences with large bodies of water,[1]
there is this one universal characteristic to every story God builds: for every
child of God, God works all things together for good.
God’s Book states it like this:
And we know that for those who love God all things work
together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.[2]
What stands out to me as I consider the many stories that
fill God’s Book is that everything anyone went through, including any mistakes
they made or terrible things that were done to them, became significant
stepping stones to the story of good that God was building. Not only were there
stepping stones for the participants to enter into greater experiences of
knowing God, but these stories themselves now become stepping stones for our
faith to trust God with our own stories.
David is introduced to us as the youngest son in his family,
a shepherd to his father’s flock of sheep, having faith to take on Goliath when
everyone else was quaking in fear, anointed as the second king of Israel, hated
by the first king of Israel, entering into his reign as king, falling into
adultery with Bathsheba, setting her husband up for death on the battle field, repenting
of his terrible sins, writing many of the Psalms that have blessed millions of
people over the past three millennia, and assuring thousands upon thousands of
brokenhearted men that their very worst of sins cannot stop God from making
them men after his own heart.[3]
Joseph was a young man who was hated by his brothers, sold
into slavery, falsely accused of sexual misconduct, imprisoned for a crime he
did not commit, forgotten in prison after correctly interpreting the dreams of
a couple of fellow prisoners, suddenly the only one who could interpret Pharaoh’s
dreams, appointed to the position of Prime Minister, saves Egypt from famine,
saves his family from famine, and encourages all of us today that whatever the
devil means for our harm, God will work for good.[4]
How can we fully appreciate Peter’s ministry to the church
without including the way his three denials of Jesus humbled him and prepared
him to lead the church, and the way Jesus graciously asked him three times
whether Peter really loved him, and that, even with such a story of denials, Jesus
wanted Peter to go and shepherd the flock of God.[5]
How can we speak of Paul’s ministry to the world without including
all the elements to his story, how his position and accomplishments as a Jewish
man that puffed him up with such pride that he was persecuting Jesus’ church,
approving of the imprisonment and death of Christians, became stepping stones
for God to make him a powerful servant of Jesus Christ, able to tell the world
to this day why good people have no cause for confidence before God, but how
everyone needs to be born again by the Spirit of the living God through the
salvation that is by grace through faith.[6]
One of the primary stories God used to get my attention on
this was to remind me of all the different people involved in the story of Jesus’
resurrection. By the time the church began proclaiming the gospel of salvation
under the filling of the Holy Spirit they had to tell a story of all kinds of
disappointments, and grief, and foolish mistakes, that led them from unbelief
into unstoppable faith.[7]
Some had to admit that they went to the tomb on that third
day, not to celebrate the Savior who promised he would be alive that specific
morning, but to apply the burial spices to his corpse because they had no
concept or anticipation of his resurrection. Others had to admit that, even
when some came with the incredulous story that the stone was rolled away, and
the tomb was empty, and angels had appeared, and Jesus had been seen alive,
still would not believe such an amazing thing could be true.[8]
But quickly God built the story to include another encounter
with the resurrected Christ. He then added two men telling Jesus all about the
bad things that had happened in Jerusalem when this Jesus of Nazareth man was
put to death, until Jesus broke bread and they suddenly realized they had been
talking to him the whole time![9]
One member of the band of disciples would go down in history
as “Doubting Thomas” because his inability to believe that Jesus was alive,
even when all the rest of the disciples said they had seen him for themselves.
However, this became a stepping stone in the story that has helped doubters
throughout the ages feel there was hope for them as well.[10]
When we bring this to ourselves, it makes me want to turn
around the way we talk about the bad things that have happened to us, and
agonizingly embarrassing mistakes we have made, and struggles we have
experienced in our relationship with God. So often I have heard believers speak
of their disappointing experiences as the reason their story with God is held
back from flourishing. I have seen professing Christians completely shut down
towards God and his children because there is something in their story so
painful and hopeless that they simply cannot conceive of it having any good use
whatsoever.
What I want to bring into my life and relationships is this
wonderful truth that God is building our stories in the constant and consistent
theme of working all things together for good in the lives of all his children.
What people have done to our harm, God is working it for good, so let it be
part of your story.
This is what Joseph told his brothers when they neared the
end of the story and were afraid of what the last chapter would involve for
them. Instead of Joseph adding together all the bad things they had done, and
all the bad experiences they had caused, and using his authority as Prime
Minister to inflict terrible punishment on them, he saw how God had built every
experience of bad and good into a story in which a whole nation, and a whole
family, were saved from the most severe famine they had ever witnessed. In
Joseph’s own words, “As for you, you
meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many
people should be kept alive, as they are today.”[11]
My contention is that, between stories like Joseph’s, where
he testified that God worked everything together for good, and the clear
declaration of God’s Book that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those
who are called according to his purpose”,[12] all of us should bring our worst and best of
experiences to God as a sacrifice of praise that his glorious grace works these
things for good. We should then ask God what he would do with our lives if we
would surrender to his sovereign goodness instead of hiding in our hovels of self-protection
because we have no hope.
Actually, if you have spent any
time at all hiding in your hovel of self-protection because something has hurt
so bad that you can’t imagine for one minute that any good could come from it
all… guess what! That is something God is building into your story!
Now let me bring this Pondering to
a close with the mention of one of my favorite stories in God’s Book. It was an
interchange between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Here’s what her story includes.[13]
She grew up knowing that Jewish
people hated Samaritan people. She knew the sting of Jewish men hating
Samaritan women in a distinctively painful way. She had five failed marriages, and
was presently living with a man, something God identifies as the shameful sin
of adultery. She came out to the community well alone, not in the social
gathering of the other women of her village.
When she meets this Jewish man at
the well she is shocked that he speaks to her at all, let alone asks her to
please give him a drink of water. She then finds herself drawn into a
conversation with him in which he builds a story before her eyes that is so
amazing, and gentle, and gracious, and deliberate, and to the point, and filled
with hope, that she comes to the conclusion that she has just met someone who
very well could be the Messiah her people had been waiting for. He even
addressed the problem of her people and the Jewish people disagreeing over
where God wants them to worship, declaring that God is looking for worshippers
from among both the Jews and the Samaritans who will worship him in spirit and
in truth no matter where they are.[14]
The story then rises into this
wonderful crescendo as the lone women returns to her town bubbling over with
good news. She told everyone, “Come, see
a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”[15] Do you see that? A Jewish man telling a Samaritan woman all
that she ever did, which included uncovering the shame of her broken
relationships and adulteries, was now part of the woman’s story that she may
have met the Christ!
The result was that, “Many Samaritans from that town believed in
him because of the woman's testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’”[16] How could she have told them that she had met the Messiah
without this distinctive experience that he had known all that she ever did,
and yet was willing to sit with her at the well, and ask her for a drink of
water, and talk with her as no Jewish man had ever done in her whole life, and
uncover her sins, and invite her to become a worshipper who worships God in
spirit and in truth?
In other words, it was because of
her specific story in relation to the most humiliating and shameful experiences
of her life that she could tell her community (and us) that she had met the
Messiah.
The conclusion to the story is
described in God’s Book like this:
So when the Samaritans came to
him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many
more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer
because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and
we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”[17]
I believe that, because God’s Book is full of such stories,
and they include this mix of people’s specific experiences leading others to
know for themselves that Jesus “is indeed
the Savior of the world,” that we ought to look at anything that has
happened to us to our harm, anything we have done to fill our hearts with
shame, and guilt, and fear, and honor God as the glorious Father who can work
all these things together for good, including the good of using these stories to
bring people into the kingdom of heaven.
Do you have a list of hidden and painful things you have
seen as nothing more than a hindrance to your relationship with God? Why don’t
you write out every one of those things as real, admitting the powerfully
damaging effect they have had on you, telling God you will entrust these things
to his sovereign goodness, and then leave space to write down anything God says
or does when you ask him to use your story for his glory. You can be sure that,
whatever God does with these painful and disappointing experiences, working
them into transforming changes to make us more like our Savior “from one degree of glory to another”,[18] will
also be for our very best and greatest good.
God’s Book promises, “that
he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus
Christ.”[19]
Not only has God begun a good work in his children, but he will use the very
worst and best of our experiences to build his story into our lives. And, part
of the glory of the story will be how he uses us to touch the lives of others
with just the testimony they need to hear to know that the Savior of the world
has come, and that he has come for people like them.
© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Moses was walking with God when he saw God lead the people of Israel through
the Red Sea (>>>); Jonah was running away from God when he was thrown
into the Sea, was swallowed by a huge fish, and carried to the destination God
had set for him (>>>).
[2]
Romans 8:28
[3]
David’s full story can be found in the historical books of first and second
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.
[4]
Joseph is introduced to us in Genesis 30, and his story is found in Genesis
37-50.
[5]
Peter is a central figure in Jesus’ training of his disciples so we find him
mentioned all through the gospels. His denials are described in Matthew 26,
Mark 14, and Luke 22. Jesus questioning Peter about their love-relationship is
found in John 21. We then see Peter’s leadership role in the church take center
stage in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost, and continue all through Acts. We also
have the blessing of his two letters to the churches in first and second Peter.
[6]
We are introduced to Paul as a young man (originally named Saul) in Acts 7:58
where we find him approving of the martyrdom of Stephen. From there he becomes
another of the central figures of the book of Acts as we read of his
conversion, and his assignment as an apostle to the Gentiles. Most of the New
Testament letters to the churches were breathed-out by God through the apostle
Paul. The distinctive message of salvation by grace through faith is expressed
in Ephesians 2:1-10.
[7]
All four of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry (Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John) include the details surrounding his death, burial, resurrection, and how
people related to these dramatic and confusing episodes of history.
[8]
Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-31
[9]
Luke 24:13-35
[10]
John 20:24-29
[11]
Genesis 50:20
[12]
Romans 8:28
[13]
John 4:1-42
[14]
This leads into the very clear message of the New Testament that the gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ is for everyone who believes, no matter what people group
they are in when they hear of the Christ (see Romans 1:16-17). Revelation 7:9-17
shows us “a great multitude that no one
could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (vs 9) to assure us that no
one is rejected because of their ethnicity, or even religious background.
[15]
John 4:29
[16]
John 4:39
[17]
John 4:40-42
[18]
II Corinthians 3:18
[19]
Philippians 1:6
No comments:
Post a Comment