God is no longer part of my story...

God is no longer part of my story…

Oh the gravity of You, draws my soul unto its knees

I will never be the same, I'm lost and found in you. (The Rend Collective)

During debrief I was listening to Mike from All Nations drawing parallels to the story of Abraham, the father of our faith. He was explaining that Abraham walked straight to the altar to offer Isaac because He believed that God is a God that can resurrect!  That is the father of our faith. Bold and confident. Faith in a God that is bigger than him, bigger than our natural laws, bigger than what we can wrap our minds around. We are part of a big story, Mike re-iterated. We are mighty spiritual beings. I was so inspired.

In the past month, I have been trying to work through the year and to get a hold on it, to wrap it so that I can store it away safely in my heart. As anyone can imagine, that is quite a difficult thing to do… and I’m beginning to realise that in doing so I fell back into an old behaviour pattern.

We are part of a big story. God is a big deal! For too long I’ve been trying to fit Him in my frame of reference, fitting Him into certain times of the day, fitting Him into religion.  And now trying to wrap my head and heart around a God-filled life-changing year.

For too long God has been a part of my story.

One of my favourite moments in our Luke 10 was one night at our church-of-peace where the church started singing one of my favourite and oldest Afrikaans songs (O Heer my God) in Spanish. Our blue team, Afrikaans to the core, were singing at the top of our lungs - in Afrikaans - that our God CARES for us day after day because we were living it, seeing it, breathing it on our journey of faith. And in that moment I was so completely overwhelmed by the knowledge. The God that I’ve been singing this song to since I was small is being worshiped in a small town in the mountains of Ecuador. The same God transcends over boundaries and language and continent.  Again and again I was confronted with this during this year.

I was struck by how real God is. He is so real that who He is and what He can do should permeate our whole lives. I discovered He is the answer to things like depression and stress and unforgiveness and a identity-crisis and broken relationships and unlove and actually almost everything that is wrong and broken in our world.

As I look back on the year that is exactly what has been revealed to me bit by bit through the grace of God. When I look back on my life I realise that He has been painting painting painting:

We are part of a big story! God is huuuge! God is real! Back in South Africa I’ve felt like screaming it at the top of my lungs. Stuck between wanting to scream and wanting to cry when I hear my peers around the braai-fire belittling Jesus and the Bible while “celebrating” Christmas.  Stuck between wanting to scream and wanting to cry when I’m confronted by racist “Christians”. Completely overwhelmed by the number of Sunday-Christians that I encounter daily.

My prayer is that in this time of Christmas we will stand still for a moment. We will allow ourselves to stand and think and realise for a moment that if we confess with our mouths that we believe in the God that created the universe we have to realise we are part of a huge story! We have to realise that our relationship with Him should be all that matters in this life. We have to realise that it is IMPOSSIBLE for us to put limits on the extension of the influence of  Him in our lives.

My revelation of God and Jesus and His heart for me and the world has changed me for the better. I want to live for Jesus. If I say I have faith in Jesus, that I believe in the full gospel then it WILL affect my life radically – the way I interact with people, the reason I get up in the morning, the way I interact with God, my dreams, my hope. It is no longer I that live but Him in me.

I do not have it all figured out. I do not know what the future holds. I lack faith for so many things when it comes to the demands and expectations of the world. But I do know that life looks different.

Truth is I’m struggling to find my feet, struggling to fit the year into my “normal” life and relationships. Truth is I’m not supposed to be fitting anything into my life.    

God is not a part of my story. I am a part of God’s story.

You are a part of God’s story. Start living it!