By: Steve Wilmot
Have you ever considered what they would write if someone decided to write a book about your life? Me, neither. Until a few days ago anyway.
There I was, minding my own business, reading from Psalms for my morning time alone with God, when wham!
I was reading Psalm 78. It’s a long retelling of the history of Israel up to the days of David. It is something every Jewish father was to relay to his children.
It’s a story telling how God fought on Israel’s behalf in miraculous ways — the plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea.
It’s a story about God’s consistent care and provision for Israel through the wilderness — manna, water from the rock, meat, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead them. It’s a story about God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise even when Israel wasn’t.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to stop and read Psalm 78 right now and ask God to speak to you as you read.
Sadly, the primary refrain that is repeated in a variety of ways is that despite all God’s care and faithfulness, they kept on sinning. Read on… “But they continued to sin against him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High” (verse 17).
“In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; in spite of his wonders, they did not believe” (verse 32). “How often they rebelled against him in the desert and grieved him in the wasteland! Again and again they put God to the test… They did not remember his power” (verses 40-43).
“But they put God to the test and rebelled against the Most High; they did not keep his statutes. Like their fathers they were disloyal and faithless, as unreliable as a faulty bow” (verses 56-57).
As I read through this psalm, I kept frowning and shaking my head. How could they do such things after all they’d seen God do? This psalm is a summation of the life of Israel over hundreds of years. Not a good report. Not at all.
But then, God tapped me on the shoulder and asked: “If someone wrote a psalm describing your life, what would they write? Would it be like Psalm 78 or something entirely different?”
Without hesitation, I said to God that I hope it’s the latter. And I realized whatever might be written about me starts with decisions I make today… and tomorrow… and the next day… and every day after that for the rest of my life.
Andy Stanley asks a similar question as he offers advice on making good decisions. He instructs us to ask, “What story do you want to tell?”
For me, I know it’s not a story like Psalm 78. God has done so much for me in my life. He showed me that he cares when I went through my fight with cancer.
After I was fired from a church, God showed me I can still trust him with my future even when things don’t look good.
He showed me he will provide for my family when I’m unemployed and have no income. When I went through situations in which I prayed and God answered in a different way than I wanted, he showed me his plan for me is always better than I could have imagined.
He showed me he will defend me when I’m slandered. He showed me he can restore relationships I never believed could be repaired.
When God grabbed ahold of my oldest son and brought him back to his faith and his family, he showed me he answers prayer, even when it takes longer than I’d like.
You have your own list of God’s goodness to you. Those things and more would be written in a Psalm 78 about our lives. But would it also record how, just like Israel, we forgot what he had done when the next crisis arose?
Would it reveal how we continued to try to be in control instead of letting God be in charge? Would it divulge that we continued to rebel and sin against him? Tough questions. Convicting questions.
We don’t want a psalm like Psalm 78 to be the story of our life, but we find ourselves in too many of those verses acting just like the Israelis. You don’t want to be but sadly you are. What story do you want told about your life?
I want a story telling how I loved God as my most cherished treasure for which I joyfully sacrificed everything. A story showing how I loved and cared for family and friends.
A story revealing the times I dropped everything in my schedule to help someone in need rather than consider it an interruption.
A testimony to my passion for guiding people to do life together and grow spiritually through connecting with others as part of a small group.
That’s what I hope they’ll write about me after I’m gone. But would they? Could they? Could they write something similar about your life? Today is the day to start a new chapter and write a new ending to your story.
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Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.
