“Well, that’s just the story of my life!”
Have you ever heard someone say that? Have you ever said it yourself? In all the times you have heard or said those words, do you ever remember them following a positive experience?
“My son just got a full ride scholarship. That’s just the story of my life!” … “I just won the lottery! That’s just the story of my life!” … “I got a promotion and a raise! That’s just the story of my life!”
Those life stories are not in my circle of friends. Probably not in yours either. Aren’t we more likely to hear statements like these?
“I got a speeding ticket on the way to work. That’s just the story of my life.” … “The water heater broke and flooded the house. That’s just the story of my life.” … “I got in the shortest checkout line at Wal-Mart and it took 20 minutes because the lady in front of me had 30 coupons! That’s just the story of my life.”
Man! We need to hang with a better crowd that has better life stories!
Or maybe we all need to choose better stories to define ourselves. Why is it that we choose the negatives as our defining stories? I don’t have an answer for why that happens, but I do know the consequences of it: We start to really believe it and our beliefs lead to self-fulfilling prophecies because we start adjusting our behavior to fit our stories.
What if we decided to choose our lives by choosing different stories?
There’s a guy in the Bible who did that. The Bible is full of stories of people who had their names changed when they had a significant encounter with God. Jacob became Israel. Abram became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. Simon became Peter. Saul became Paul.
But there is one person mentioned in the Bible who changed his own name. He was one of the apostles of Jesus, and his experience with Jesus so powerfully affected him that, when he wrote his recollections of the life of Jesus, he referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
His name was John and he wrote 4 of the books in our New Testament: the Gospel of John, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and the Revelation. When we read the Gospel of John and see “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” he is talking about himself.
John didn’t believe that Jesus loved him more than the other disciples. He just believed that the defining story of his life was that he was loved by Jesus. It became his life story and life message. History tells us that, even in his old age, “love one another because He first loved us,” was His constant message.
How might your life be different if you were to decide that the story of your life is that you are loved, valued, and approved by God and that your life really, really matters to Him?
