The Stories That We Could Tell

A few weeks ago I learned of an incredible story about how one person's love provided God an opportunity to transform another's life. It was amazing and I wanted to share it, so I wrote up the story and sent it to the individual who had made it happen to see if I could publish it here. I was crushed when the answer came back a firm "No".

Though it was disappointing, they were absolutely right. The story was too personal, to intimate, involving another's sin and the resulting hurt. The victory was in how the hurt was overcome, but to share it meant too much would be revealed. Those who knew were very encouraged, but had to remain quiet.

That story made me think a lot about how God works so many times in silence. Lives are transformed, relationships rescued, salvation happens a very few know. I think that too few of those stories that can be told, are told, but so many simply cannot be shared:

• To share the victory over addiction, you must expose the addict.
• To share the marriage saved from infidelity, you must reveal the adulterer.
• To share the share the victory over abuse, you must expose the abused (and often the abuser).

To share the powerful ways that God works to save people from sin, their own and others, reveals the sin. That is simply not appropriate many times. Yet it is God at His best, fixing the hardest things the man has tried to cure and failed. I want to shout from the mountain, "HEY! Look what God did!" but in doing so, I expose the sin, the hurt, the trauma that was healing and being forgotten.

It seems that God is satisfied with the Glory gained from those in the inner circle of the situation, those "in the know". He doesn't need our widespread praise and mountaintop proclamations. Actually, I suspect that he isn't much interested in the praise of those intimately involved as much as he is in the saving of the one who was wounded. He knows only he is good. He knows only he can fix it. He knows it was his doing and that man could not. He rejoices, not in our praises of his works, but in the life renewed and in how it draws those involved a little closer.

Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Luke 15:3-7

I wonder, as I look around my church and just in life, what ways is God at work in these lives? What stories of repentance, transformation and salvation could be told? I imagine there are many, and even in ignorance, I am encouraged.

BTW - If you have a story you can tell, why not go on over to Mike Boyink's Stories About God and tell it? Too few of these stories get told to wider audience when they can, and Mike's web site is one way to do so.