No, this isn’t a Buzzfeed quiz.
I was talking with a Christian friend at breakfast the other day and he raised the point about how his Christian friends who are having problems always are likening themselves to Bible heroes. “This is my Gideon moment.” “I feel like Jacob wrestling with the angel right now.” That sort of thing. Even for those that don’t believe, historical stories with general applications are likely to be useful ways of putting problems into context.
The problem that he, and I, have seen, is that Christians often want to identify the story before the experience is over. Following the tradition of Christian writers and speakers I respect the most, I’ll use myself as an example. When I decided to prepare to run for Congress recently, I received the instruction to do so as a specific and direct call from God in a way that I had only heard a few calls in my life. In my fear, I likened myself to the prophets. I read the call of Jeremiah and was encouraged. “I’m like Jeremiah”, I thought. “God will put the words I need in my mouth and if He wills it, I will be given authority.”
Well, as my last post pointed out, I ended up not running. I wasn’t discouraged by this at all, but while talking about the experience with the friend I had breakfast with, I realized I actually felt something like I imagine Abraham did when he found out he wouldn’t have to sacrifice his son. Abraham brought his only son to a mountaintop to sacrifice him because he believed God told him to. He was stopped at the last moment by an angel and was given a ram to sacrifice instead. Obviously, running for Congress is not exactly the same as sacrificing a child (and, to my knowledge, child sacrifice is not yet required to pass legislation). However, I can relate to the idea of being given an incredibly difficult task, preparing for it because God said to, and then being relieved of having to do that task at the last moment.
If I had become too fixated on the Jeremiah analogy, I might have decided that God was going to raise me up, miraculously put hundreds of thousands of dollars at my disposal, and magic up my speeches so that I would win the hearts of the people in the face of a race that I had no statistical reason to place higher than fourth. In my fixation, I wouldn’t have heard the still, small voice telling me, “Well done. You may go.” when it became clear that I wouldn’t win this particular race at this particular time.
In the same way, if we decide too soon who we are in the story, we restrict our ability to follow the path God has actually written for us. Sometimes the lesson is different than we think, or contains parts of multiple stories we know to form a new story. Sometimes the lesson is a simple idea (albeit a challenging implementation), such as patience, or trust. Our goal is to stay grounded and move in faith, one step at a time, knowing that at each step we will be given what we need. I emphasize the word need because what we need doesn’t always look like what we would like most, or what is most comfortable. In doing so, we let God tell us our own story.
So next time you’re searching the Bible to figure out who you are most like in this moment, ask God to help you to have patience and trust as He reveals the story He’s writing with you as the hero. The Biblical stories are a great source of wisdom and encouragement, but only time tells our story, and we cannot predict or optimize it by being more devout or well-read.
Reforged 