Pastor's Pen

You Will Tell Your Story

Psalm 40:1 - 3

One of the specialties of God is turning what looks useless, forsaken, forgotten, or impossible to become objects of His praise.

From Genesis to Revelation, we see God turning things, people, and situations that look hopeless into glorious spectacles.

Our world as we know it today was inhabitable, dark, hopeless, and unlivable until God spoke life into it and make it a place where His image and likeness can thrive.

The cosmos as we know it has story. The story of when it was in darkness until it’s light came.

Every life has a story. Some good, some bad, and some ugly. 

The Dictionary defines story as: “An account of past events in someone’s life or in the evolution of something.”

Some stories have joyous ending while others do not. The beginning or end of the story is not as important as the purpose and the influence on the hearers.

The book of Hebrews in the eleventh chapter tells different end of the faith of our fathers in this faith. Verses 7 – 35 talks about wonder working faith, while verses 36 – 40 talks about sustains faith.

In this series we will examine the story of people whose’s life can bring encouragement to us as we walk with God.

It doesn’t matter where you are coming from, God has the power to change your story; from gloom to glory. From sadness to joyfulness.

Listening to Kirk Franklin during one of his shows, he said he was adopted by a 64-year-old lady at age 4. Fourth grade education, raised on government cheese, raised on food stamps, paid his piano lessons on money earned from selling items to recyclers, his mother didn’t want him, the man who he thought was his father was not his father, his mother came stealthily to reveal herself to him after 53 years of his life. His biological father lived 10 minutes away from him and they didn’t know each other. But God took him from rock bottom to fame.

Sometimes in life God allows us to get to rock bottom so that we will know that He is the rock at the bottom.

God specializes in making obscure people His poster child of His greatness. What we see in people is their success or challenges but not their story.

It it highly presumptive to condemn or praise people until you hear their story. People’s story gives perspective or credence to their successes or their struggles.

Not everybody lived to tell the story of God’s intervention in their lives. 

But I speak and prophecy over us today, that we shall all live to tell our story. The story of how God intervened and brought us out of demonic captivity into His glorious liberty and exaltation.

Lives with Changed Story

1. From Prison to Palace – Genesis 45:1 - 7

There was a dreamer boy named Joseph the son of Jacob. His father loved him more than his other children (male and female) and he loved his father too! He will always report the malfeasance of his big brothers to their father so that his father will not suffer economic loss. But His brothers hated him for being a snitch and a dreamer.

In cruel envy, they planned to kill him, but God intervened and spared his life from destruction but instead allowed a lesser evil that will facilitate the fulfillment of his dream. 

What you are passing through right now is lesser than what the enemy planned for you. The enemy wanted you dead so that your dreams will die. God allowed what you are crying about now as the pathway to make your story convincing and glorious.

I pray over someone listening to me right now: the good Lord will deliver you from death. 

Remember: it is the survivor that will tell the story. That’s why you must not die.

If you can just stay alive, the possibility of fulfillment is high.

Think about the betrayal Joseph faced from his brother. The agony of watching his brothers negotiate his worth as an object in the marketplace. 

Think about his tears and broken heartedness. He told the butler in the prison: “For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews.” (Genesis 40:15).

Sometimes you feel that you have been maltreated. Wait until you hear other’s stories.

Joseph, a 17-year-old kid, wearing the best clothes that his father made for him stripped by those he thought he could rely on. Sold as a commodity. The fear of God out of the hearts of his brothers. It was a sad day for Joseph. He experienced a forceful separation from his father and baby brother.

The Bible says that his brothers not knowing that they were standing before the one they thought was dead: “we saw the distress and anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us [to let him go], yet we would not listen [to his cry]” (Genesis 42:21 Amp)

Anyone engaged in any form of evil deed has lost the fear of God if eh/she had it.

One day, God will make you stand in glory before those who facilitated your anguish.

That day is when that scripture, Psalm 23:5, “you prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies” be fulfilled in your life in Jesus name.

2. Rejected but became Savior – Judges 11:1 – 7

Maybe you can relate with our next character, Jephthah.

Due to no fault of his, Jephthah, became the son of Gilead, from a woman he (Gilead) decided not to marry. Gilead knew that the woman was a harlot before sleeping with her. 

Tradition and the law of Moses kicked in to allow the sons of Gilead’s wife to throw him out of his father’s house. But God was not done with him. 

Man threw him out, but God did not. And, if God is not done with you, no man can oust you.

Rather than engage his half brothers in a fight or curry their favor for acceptance, he left in shame of being called a bastard, illegitimate son of Gilead.

Listen and listen carefully, not everybody will accept you. Your efforts at wanting to please those who hates you for acceptance will lead to frustration and depression.

Your rejection maybe your out into your destiny. 

Even Jesus could not do great miracles where He was rejected.

It is very difficult (but not impossible if God caused it for a particular purpose) to prosper where someone is rejected.

A note of warning and balance here. These two characters (Joseph and Jephthah) were treated badly not because of what they’ve done wrongly but because of envy from their brothers.

If you are living right and something untoward happens to you, it is a divine plan to kick you into progress.

If you are garrulous, proud, conceited, and wanted to do whatever you wanted to do without regard to the community, be ready for rejection.

Jephthah went to the land of Tob and he found acceptance with those who the Bible called worthless in the city (v3). Don’t forget that at this time, there was no nation state arrangement. Nation state order started in Westphalia in 1648 after the 30-year war in most of Europe.

Raiding, banditry, and conquering was the order of the day and a means of greatness during this period of human existence.

After some years, those who threw Jephthah out needed him to save them from the people of Ammon. 

Why did they come for him? His story has changed. He had become famous and powerful in the territory. A man of war with an army that could conquer any territory.

When they came for him, he had a story.

Judges 11:7, “So Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me, and expel me from my father’s house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?”

Now Jephthah now has the power to make demands. When your story changes, you will have the power to tell your story and positioned to make demands.

I have been your big brother and you rejected me, now I am going to be the head of the nation. If you accept my conditions, then I will lead you to battle.

A lot of people want to tell their story when they’re still in the mill. Such story will not have traction because it’s not yet complete.

Those who despised you and threw you out are coming to ask you for a favor.

When you are out of the furnace, melted and molded and shining brightly, you will be invited to tell your story. You will not be struggling to tell it; you will be invited on 60 minutes because it will encourage those going through what you came out of. 

Everybody will listen because it’s ripe. Unripe story will be sour.

Those who rejected you are coming back to seek for you.

3. The life of David: Unrecognized by Dad, envied by sibling, but chosen by God – Psalm 40:1 – 3

David in this passage tells the story of how he was in horrible pit and miry clay, but God changed that story to by placing him on a solid rock and making him to dwell with great people.

You need God to pull you out of a pit. Nobody sees you when you are in a pit. 

If God will not help you, you cannot rise from the miry clay. The more you try to get out of the miry clay the deeper you fall.

David was Jesse’s eighth son. We got to know that his father didn’t really care about him when Samuel wanted to know if all of Jesse’s sons had been vetted.

Samuel: “Are here all thy children?”

Jesse said: “there remains yet the youngest, there he is, keeping the sheep.” (1 Samuel 16:11).

But God who does not forget his children brought David from the field and anointed him in the presence of those who did not recognize him.

The anointing brought a new round of trouble.

He became the enemy of the king. He suffered. The anointing protected him and became the king of Israel.

Then David wrote in Psalm 40:2 - 3

2/. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

3/. And has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.

4. Barren But Became Fruitful – 1 Samuel 2: 1 – 5

Hannah the first wife of El-Kanah (Consuming fire, Jealous God), was barren for at least 21 years if we study the story very well. Even though there was clear evidence that her husband loved her, she faced mockery from her junior wife.

The Bible says in 1 Samuel 1:6, “And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb.”

Then one day after going to Shiloh year after year without giving up, her desire met the desire of God (she wanted a son, God wanted a prophet), and she got pregnant, and God shut the mouth of her adversary.

God will end every form of barrenness in your life in Jesus name.

continued on devotion page........

.. "acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness" (Titus 1:1).