Let Them Hear His Story

***This post was written by Robbie Ashlock.***

“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.  You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”       -2 Corinthians 3:2-3

We are a love letter.  Written by the very hand of our Creator.  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart…” –Jeremiah 1:5.  Our lives are the evidence of God’s love and grace.  We may not always see it or understand it, but everything that you and I go through is a message of love written by God.  

His grace and mercy show up in the midst of every hardship.  His strength and peace are at the heart of every struggle.  Painstakingly shaped and crafted by the Master Builder.  Every joy, every beautiful moment, is a majestic sonnet of love composed for His glory. A word that comes to mind for me right now, because I just heard it in a post by Jon Acuff, is pivot. It reminds me of our everyday need to turn our lives back to Christ and His love for us.  We must constantly fix our eyes on our true source of life and hope.    

Our lives are the evidence of His love.  Not written in a book but written in our hearts.  And in the hearts of those we come in contact with.  We are more than simply the hands and feet of God.  We are His love story written for His glory, but the story doesn’t end there.

The world needs to hear our story.  “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” –Matthew 28:18-20  

God not only saved us through the precious blood of Jesus Christ writing an indescribable story for our lives.  He has also commissioned us to write that story into the hearts and lives of others.  We are to go into the entire world sharing our story of what God has done, and what He longs to do in their lives.  Through the story of our lives we keep Jesus in front of them; that they might see and know that He is God.  Just as Craig Groeschel says so well, “Be faithful in the small things. It is often the small things that no one sees that bring the big results everyone wants.”

We may not think much of it at that time, but our lives lived out for His glory and centered in His love make a difference. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” -Ephesians 5:1-2.  It is said that, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, but God does not simply want our flattery.  He desires for us to resemble Him.  We are His reflection.  We are the image of the Living God.  We are imitators of Christ not just for our own sake, but also for the sake of the world.  We are a proclamation of His glory.  We live to point others to Jesus Christ.  We fix our eyes on Him and run after Him will all that we have.  We exist to know Him, and to make Him known.  

As a living letter our lives are to reflect Jesus Christ, and to do this we must live with intentionality.  We must be deliberate and full of purpose.  Our thoughts, our beliefs, our desires, our hopes, our love, and our actions must consistently move us in the same direction.  They must move us to the foot of the cross where mercy began to write the greatest story ever told.  What is God writing into your life and into the lives of those around you?  May it be one of the most beautiful stories ever told.  Our ministry of love does not begin somewhere “out there.” It begins here and now with our obedience to God and love for others.

Keep the Son in your eyes, Pastor Robbie

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