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We spoke yesterday about the difference between creating and discovering your destiny. It is when we expend our time and effort at creating destiny that victim thinking takes over in our lives. As we go along with God on the journey of discovering the destiny He has placed in our hearts, we find this life to be more of what God intended it to be.
Today, I want to replace the word destiny with the word story. There are so many of us worried about what our life story will be when all is said and done. Though our story and our destiny are similar in many ways, I think that people are talking about two different aspects of their lives when they talk about destiny as opposed to their story.
Where destiny speaks of purpose and results of a life well lived, story speaks more of how we got to that place of destiny, if you ask me. Our story is more about how the things we did shape how we got to where destiny was the outcome. In some respects, our story is more about the points along the way on our journey to destiny. As different as these two things may be, working to create our story is just as damaging to who we are as working to create a destiny to support our identity.
I happen to believe that the story of our lives isn't something that we should have to think much about. Sure, there are times where we need to help make BIG decisions when we come to major crossroads in life. Choosing a spouse, picking a career, having kids, even making a major job change can all be crossroad decisions that we need to be aware of when it comes to how these events shape our story. However, even these kinds of major decisions shouldn't be something that paralyze us in identity crushing ways like I have seen it do so many times in my life in the past. When it comes to our story, even the wrong turns make our story more of what it is suppose to be.
That's the power of believing in an all-knowing, all-powerful God. If He is part of our lives the way I think He is, we just can't go wrong. Before you go off the handle as a result of that last statement, let me explain a bit more what I mean.
I live with the philosophy that God knows where we started and he knows where we will end up. I don't believe that He is a puppeteer in the sky pulling our strings to get us to go here and to go there so that we end up where He wants us to be. If that were the case, our story wouldn't be all that much to be concerned with.
No, God isn't directing our every step. What He is looking to do is be part of all our steps on this journey of life. In other words, He doesn't' want to control us, He wants to be with us. It is the fact that God desires to be with me more than He wants to direct me that makes me think we just can't get it wrong. If God is part of all that we do, even when what we do isn't exactly what God wanted for that moment, I think God's blessing is still with us in ways I'm not sure we will fully appreciate until we get to heaven.
If you think God's blessing is success in what you have decided to do, victim thinking is but one step away. If you think God's blessing is absent because what you decided to do didn't turn out the way you thought, then victim thinking is what will cloud every decision you make in the future. Blessing tied to the absence or presence of success is one of the most well worn strategies that make victors step into victim thinking ways that this world has ever seen.
Blessing is so much more than success. God's blessing is all about His presence. Read the Bible and you will quickly see that blessing came in the middle of godly men and women being successful in what they did less often than that same blessing being there in the times the world would define their efforts as being a complete failure. Jesus, God's own Son, is the shining example of that last statement.
It isn't that we need God to direct our each and every step. It is that we need God to be there with us as we take any step in our lives. Whether that step takes us on the path to success or to failure has no bearing on whether we are blessed or not. If we have chosen to let God into the process of deciding what step to take, His presence is all the blessing we will ever need.
That's why I don't think we can ever get it wrong. If God's presence is with us if we succeed or fail then why wouldn't His blessing be there if we brought Him into our decision making process even when what we decide isn't exactly what God wanted for that particular circumstance.
This begs the question, what if what we decide to do makes it so that God's plan for where we are to end up can't happen? All I have to go by to answer that question is the Bible itself. The vast majority of the decisions people made in the Bible really didn't matter when it came to God's plan. For those few, and I mean maybe one in a lifetime kinds of decisions, that might actually alter the course of God's plan for this world, God made it abundantly clear with His presence how that Biblical character was to proceed.
Moses and the burning bush, Joshua and the captain of the Lord's army, Jonah in the belly of a whale, Paul and a blinding appearance of Jesus Himself, Peter and a vision leading the way.... These are but a few of the many examples of where God's presence was so unmistakable that God's plan moved forward is world changing ways.
Most of our story making decisions really don't have any impact on whether we will get to where God has planned for us to arrive. If we do come to a crossroad where we might alter God's plan for our life, I think He will make it abundantly clear how we are to proceed. We still have free will to make any decision we want, but I believe God's presence makes our decisions something that fits in exactly with what God wants for our lives.
What's your story? I hope that question weighs less and less on your life as you realize your story is happening as you go on this journey of life blessed by God's presence. Don't try and make a story happen in your life. Let God take the steps with you that make the fullness of your story develop. That story takes time. It happens as you let God into your life in ways where His closeness becomes more and more of a blessing. Just like your destiny, your story is guaranteed! God put it there for us to be a part of discovering and seeing happen in the span of life we have on this earth.
All I can say is enjoy the process of your story coming into focus. Don't worry about what that will look like. Trying to figure that out is such a victim making proposition. Make all you do today be all about walking with God by your side. In that way your victor status will have the power needed to make whatever happens fit perfectly with the plot God put into action even before you were born.
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