I spent most of my life trying to find a new story, at the very least trying to write a new chapter. The more I searched for the real me, the more lost I felt. This left me in the wilderness season, circling my brokenness. It’s a place many of us find ourselves in. You believe what the world tells you, find yourself, become someone different, and write a new story.
But by God’s grace, I realized that story you’ve been trying to escape is not something you’ll ever undo. What’s been done is done, and we can’t just erase history from our brains. Even though I think that’s what we’d like to believe in searching for something different.
The better news is, God wants to redeem that story. Not to erase it but to use it. And the only way he can do that is to help you shift your perspective of what’s been done, using it to write a better ending. I found this so freeing. The idea that I didn’t have to run from who I am, but I could own it in a way that surrendered it to God to use it. In all of its brokenness, God wants to bring light in the midst of that. To use it for good if only I would lay it at his feet rather than live my life running away from it.
Inside this podcast, I share the journey of the Israelites. They were left wandering in the wilderness until they accepted the courage by the grace of God to cross the Jordan into the promised land.
Here is what I know, you don’t need a new story. You just need a new ending. Let the author of perfection be the one who pens that, not your past history. And courageously walk forth through your own Jordan-sized problem to your promised land.
Changing the course of your life. Rewriting history.
A story of deliverance.
The Israelite’s story was a place I fell in love with reading the Bible. Of course, I fell in love with God because of the gospel. Still, I seemed to relate so much to the story of the Israelites. They were held in slavery and then liberated by God, to end up in the wilderness and questioning everything about the God who just liberated them from slavery.
They desperately prayed for God in their pain and problems and yet quickly forgot about his deliverance as they were about to prepare to go into the promised land. A place many of us find ourselves in. Waiting to pray until we find ourselves deep in problems but failing to invite God into the process.
The Israelites had forgotten where God had delivered them from. They forgot e had delivered them out of bondage and slavery and provided all of their needs in the wilderness. He rained manna, sweet like cakes that tasted of honey, to supply their nourishment, yet they complained.
If that isn’t a depiction of my life, I don’t know what is. Living free of my past bondage in the salvation of the cross with my future secured in eternity. Yet, grumbling about the goodness I’m living in.
Your past doesn’t have power over your future, unless you give it power.
I take slow steps forward while looking behind me, longing to run back to my old patterns and way of life. All because I fear where God is leading me is greater than the trust I have in Him.
Yet, God doesn’t want us to settle for anything less than His promise. And I don’t believe He wants us to wait to live in his Glory until we enter the pearly gates of Heaven. God wants to bring Heaven to Earth today. As the Lord’s prayer states, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. I don’t want to miss that. I don’t want to settle, and I don’t want you to settle. In a life where we had faith enough to be saved, but we don’t have the faith to be the hands and feet of God. We don’ have faith to live in the Glory that he created you for this world.
He wants you to enter your promised land. Will you have the faith to do it? Or will that old story, that Jordan-sized problem, keep you stuck wandering in the wilderness? Fearing your pain more than you feared the living God who has provided everything you need. Don’t let yourself stop before you experience the Glory of God.
You don’t need a new story, you need a new ending.
Today I want to tell you about the story where God delivered his people into the promised land he created for them.
Choosing not to change the story of where they came from but use it to write a better ending. One that God could only orchestrate. But this new ending, a life lived in the promised land, only happened when the Israelites learned how to fear God more than their Jordan-sized problem.
The truth is, we all have pain. We all have a level of trauma, something we’ve gone through, no matter how great or small that is. We all have baggage that we carry around that weighs us down as long as we carry it. That problem, that deepest thing that holds you back, that signifies your Jordan River. The only thing that separates you from living the story God created for you.
The tricky thing is, we have a natural tendency to keep looking back. To keep circulating the place we came from, the same one we begged God to deliver us from as we stand on the banks of the Jordan. But here is what I want you to know. If you have given your life to God, you have surrendered your story to him as well. Meaning you don’t have to fear it. The pain he delivered you from, just like the pain the Israelites were delivered from in Egypt, no longer has the power to destroy you or hurt you.
It may feel like it can, but you have to know it can’t. And as soon as you recognize it no longer has the power to control you, you can step into the waters of the Jordan. You can step into the pain. Allowing God to move it out of the way so you’re no longer in your own way. Creating the path for you to walk freely into the promised land on dry ground.
We don’t have to fear what God has power over.
We all have something in our story, in our life, that is holding us back from living out God’s plan for our life. Something that stops you and keeps you stuck in the place you hate. Fearing the pain of whatever you faced when we should fear God. In fearing God, we don’t have to fear what he conquered. We don’t have to fear what he has power over. We don’t have to fear because God is in control, and God is over all things.
He already wrote your story, the beginning, and the ending. And he wants to use it all for his Glory. Stop trying to deny your past while circulating around it, keeping you stuck from taking steps into your promise. But own the past, laying it at the feet of God to write a better ending.
Surrender your story, allowing God to narrate a better one.
We don’t deserve it, just like the Israelites didn’t deserve to cross into their promised land, but that is who God is. You don’t need to find a new story or write a better one. You need to trust God to write a better ending. The story you’ve gone through, that’s a part of you. Stop running from it and surrender to allowing God to use it. Your story isn’t over. It’s only just beginning.
Will you trust God enough to move you into the promised land?
Will you trust God enough to move you into the promised land? To live out the Glory of God on this Earth?
Stop living for your pain and surrender it to God, who can use it.
