End of the year is usually a time of reflection. All of us have different views and approaches to this time of the year. While some are excited that it has finally come to an end, especially a year like this one, others still mourn its passing. One thing I like to do is go back to my journals to see what I wrote in the past. Why do I do this? It allows me to glimpse how my mind worked then and also bring comfort sometimes, in the sense of “I made it through that? I can definitely make it through this”. One of these that I came across recently was a journal entry from four years ago.
When I woke up this morning, I had zero intention of speaking before people. After a year of many surprises (some I didn’t necessarily care for at the time), I was looking forward to just sitting and enjoying today’s service. Then in the midst of testimonies (which by the way I was listening to and thinking ‘God has been good to these people’) the music team went up and started singing a song that has come to mean so much to me this year.
As I sang along ‘I stand amazed in your presence..there is nothing you cannot do…’ it really hit me that as I stood there, I did stand amazed at what God has done this past year. I felt challenged to share the brief of it because I was convinced someone needed to hear of God’s faithfulness. So I did!!
Legs shaking(which many of my friends never believe happens every single time I have to speak in front of more than 3 people), I stood there amazed at what God has done in the year I agreed to obey Him.
Am I more successful? Not in most people’s books. Was 2016 a perfect year? Most definitely not!
And yet He took me from a place where I seemed to be doing well, placed me in a different country with no TOR except a promise that He would go before me and would be with me. Today, looking back on 2016, I realised that He kept His promise. Not necessarily in the ways I wanted or expected Him to, not in ways I was comfortable with..but He did.
After church someone shared with me how I told them the same statement God told me earlier in 2016, that ‘God can afford you’ and how this made it possible for them to go ahead and live out what they knew God was calling them into in peace.
Why did I stand up to speak in the thanksgiving service today, why share my story? Why should you share your story (which may not even seem like one worth telling in the first place)? Because someone somewhere will listen to your story and know there is hope for them. Because your story is proof or even confirmation to someone else that God is still at work caring about the little details of our lives.
I know not your story, but I would like to challenge and encourage you today to share it. Because by sharing you communicate hope, freedom, grace and healing to total strangers or even friends and family.
Purpose to share your story because believe it or not it really isn’t your story. It is God’s. And your life just happens to be the vessel blessed to carry it in this season.
Belinda K 