Faith Stories

What does your "faith story" look like?  

If someone were to write out your entire faith story, the highs and the lows, what would it look like?

Personally, I think I would be a little embarrassed about mine.  

To have someone write out all the times I questioned God, doubted what he was doing, and tried to take care of things myself? I think it would be humiliating.  Yes, I'm  sure (or at least I hope) there are a few things I've gotten right along the way.  But there are SO many times I didn't trust, didn't listen, didn't obey.  I am confident I would never want someone to write it all out.  Thank goodness it is a personal thing between me and God right?

Now think of the faith stories you know.  There are lots of them really.  The Bible is FULL of them.  Story after story of people sharing their faith journey.  The times they got it right and they times they didn't.  Embarrassing and humiliating or not, it's all there for us to learn from, the good and the bad.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I read about Moses.  My bible study is reading "The Resolution for Women" by Priscilla Shirer, and she was talking about how Moses was praised in the book of Hebrew for leading  a life devoted to God and he was credited, even KNOWN, for his faithfulness.  She asked an interesting question, what would Moses think about that?  Would he look back on his life and think, "Man, was I faithful or what!"  My guess is no.  My guess is he would wonder exactly who we were talking about.  Moses, like all of us, made his share of mistakes.  He said "no" plenty of times to God, ignored what God was telling him, and disobeyed what He asked him to do.  Yet we DO look at him as heroic.  He was faithful when an entire generation was not.  His faithfulness was credited to him as righteousness.  1,000 of years later people still talk about him, study him, and try to emulate him and his faith story.

I took huge comfort from this.  I don't have to get it right all the time.  God KNOWS I'm going to get it wrong. ALOT.  And he has already worked out a plan for that.  Maybe my faith story isn't as pretty as I would like it to be.  But it's mine.  It's the story of My walk, with MY savior and that makes it beautiful, even in it's ugliness.