Our life is one big story.  There are so many things in our lives that make up the person we choose to become and the decisions and directions we choose to go.  In my counseling studies the past couple of weeks, I’ve written a series of essays around human development and the impact of things such as trauma, abuse, and addiction to development.  These things that cause deep seeded wounds in each of and if not addressed can drastically impact where our story leads.  Larry Crabb provided that in the pursuit of satisfaction, people will often exchange one error for another in trying to find what feels good.  It’s often an issue of trying to cope with the problems and not knowing where it is they fit in the world due to the pains they have suffered.  This suffering is not new to any of us. We all have fallen and have been faced with tough choices and decisions that have drawn from wounds we have suffered.

All of this is very interesting to think about because I know people, myself included, that have gone through sufferings and struggles in life and unsure of where they fit and what purpose their story has in it all.  What do you make of everything that happens and how are our choices influenced by what we know in life.  Then one day, I realized something.  I realized that my life and story is simply a small section or even paragraph in the grand epic story of God.  He is the real hero of the story that we all belong to.  Then I realized that it was not even my story, but His.  I belong to the Father now and ransomed by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, I now get to live my life through the life of Christ.  I found out that all the things I purposed of this world were meaningless and futile if the motives did not come out of faith.  Ecclesiastes 2:11 says, “But as I looked at everything that I had world so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless–like chasing the wind.”  A new purpose and direction was shown to me.

This may seem a bit deep for some, but I often think about life in this way now.  For years, probably the first 33 years of my life, I didn’t realize where my story fit.  Yes, I knew the faith on a surface level, but I never sought to know Christ deeply and pursued things that I thought were going to bring me satisfaction in this life.  I had a false sense of life and the story I lived and direction I was headed.  I stayed lost in myself and my sin.  God began to wake me up nearly 4 years ago around my 33rd birthday.  He struck my curiosity to really try to know Him better and develop and deeper faith.

Fast forward 3 years, just turning 36 and I could feel the Spirit stirring in me again, and this time on a deeper level.  Deeper than anything I had ever noticed before.  I began to really see my life and who I was to the Father.  I was not going to let myself get caught up in a religious fog, but rather get to know Him and finally realized who I was as His son, bought through the redemptive blood of Christ.  I learned a critical thing that I had never been open to.  I found out why I was created.  Having fully surrendered my life, God revealed to me why.  He showed me that I am His beloved son, that I had what it takes to live out my life as a reborn warrior, and was now calling me to be a warrior for the Kingdom.

It was awesome having my thoughts around all of this, and then at worship yesterday, my pastor, Tim Cash, shared a great Mark Twain quote.  “The two most important days in your live are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”  I heard that, I was like, YES!  It’s like an awakening when I was able to truly see who I was in Christ and what it was I created for.

But, now that I realize this.  Now that I know who I am in Christ.  Now that I know that I am bought and justified through God’s grace with the goal of reaching glorification when I enter the Kingdom, there was no way in the world that I could sit by and not do something about it.  How can you?  When you know your purpose and where you fit in God’s story, how can you simply ignore Him when He calls?  I was no longer going to do that.  I belong to the Father now, and through the full works of Christ, I get to live my life in this light. While I know I won’t get it all right, I pray that my life stands as a reflection of Christ to others.  We should all pursue this. God is calling on everyone of us.  It just took me 36 years to FINALLY act on it.