Your Story, His Glory

Your life isn’t just about drifting from one chapter to another. It’s a story. Each day unfolds like the pages in a book.

Some chapters of this story are difficult to digest — they involve villains, heartbreak and seemingly hopeless situations. But others are filled with heroes, joy and powerful moments of redemption. (Every good story has a little drama, right?)

The ups and downs of life are part of what makes it so beautiful. We can appreciate peaceful moments more after times of anxiety or tension. Seasons of need sow roots of appreciation for seasons of plenty. The bad times make the good times that much better.

For me, my decade-long struggle with alcoholism felt like a horror story. Not understanding my battle with addiction, I honestly thought my story would end before it really got started. Now that I’m five years into sobriety (thank you, Lord), I can see how God was using my pain for his purpose. As crazy as it sounds, I am grateful for those difficult years.

Looking back, I think I struggled to make progress for so long because I wanted to write my own story. And that’s what many of us do. We pick up the pen ourselves, shortening the timeline and aiming for the ending we think we should have.

Matthew West used to think he was in control of his story too. As a preacher’s kid, he grew up on the front row of his parents’ church in the suburbs of Chicago. He thought he was saved because he was in the “family business,” so his story was already written.

In the years that followed, Matthew learned what it meant to have his own faith. He experienced God in different ways at different life stages. As God took him deeper on his walk, he began to realize that each life chapter comes with its own dilemmas that God is ready to help us through. These lessons shaped his music and are a big reason why so many of his songs are inspired by real stories from others.

“No matter what you’ve done in your life, no matter how many mistakes you’ve made or how much guilt and shame you’ve felt in your life, there’s a God who looks at you and he sees his child,” Matthew says. “He loves you so much that he was willing to pay the price for your worst mistake and he sent his only son Jesus to die on a cross to pay that price so we wouldn’t have to.”

One of my favorite songs by Matthew is My Story Your Glory, which includes the following lyrics:

“The story of me was a story of shame

Wrong turns written on every page

So many parts that were so messed up

But I love the part where You showed up

Rewriting my past, rewriting my hurt

Line by line, word by word

And now my story is livin' proof

There's not a chapter that you can't use”

It says in Psalm 139:16 that “your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

God knows your whole story, even if you can only see one chapter at a time – or in some seasons, one page at a time. All he wants is your trust. As you grow in your walk with God, it’s easier to see him at work writing your story and to move forward in peace and confidence knowing who is in control. As you do, it becomes second nature to share your story with others and tell of all that God is doing in your life. When we surrender control to the author, his love and goodness overflows to every area of our lives and impacts the world around us for good.

As Matthew said, “Don’t try to live your story your way. Place the pen back in the rightful author’s hands and watch and be amazed at what kind of story he can write with your life.”