Looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith.
(Hebrews 12:2b)
I have always wanted to be a novelist. The only problem with that is that you have to be good at writing. So, that’s probably why I have never written a best-seller. That’s not to say I haven’t tried. Along the way, I have learned at least one thing about writing: you must be willing to make some brutal edits.
Mark Twain is credited with this quote:
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Samuel Clemens
It’s easy for a writer to fall in love with a passage or line of thought and either overdress it or refuse to rip it out if it does not belong in the story. As personal as writing can be, you must be objective and sometimes brutal when it comes to your writing. Your reading audience doesn’t care how much time or passion you have put into a passage. If it’s no good or not necessary, it has to be edited even if it means editing something out.
When it comes to our walk with God, we have a faithful Editor to our life’s story. His name is Jesus Christ. He is both truth and love. The harsh reality about truth is that it does not care about our feelings. It is absolute. Something is either true, or it is not. Because it is so resolute, truth alone can be harsh and unyielding. It is why Scripture tells us that truth must be bound together in our heart with mercy: “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart” (Proverbs 3:3).
Praise God that our Lord is a “a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth” (Psalm 86:15). Where His truth is honest and objective, His mercy is equally tender and compassionate. Because my Lord loves me and because He sees my life through a clear lens, He can make edits in my life’s story that I might not be so willing to make. Those edits might seem harsh at the time, but I have to remember that as the Author and Finisher of my faith, my Lord knows what He’s doing even when the plot in my life’s story takes an unexpected turn.
As the Author of my faith, Jesus is the originator and the focus of my life’s story, and as the Finisher of my faith, He is the ultimate object of my story. He will be there waiting for me at the end of my life where my faith will become sight and I shall see Him as He is. How we get to the end of our story is completely in His hands.
In John 21:18, Jesus told Peter that one day he would be crucified for his faith. Peter, being Peter, then looked at John and asked: “and what shall this man do” (John 21:21)? Jesus, speaking truth to Peter’s question, answered bluntly: “what is that to thee?” Then He added an admonition: “Follow thou Me” (John 21:22b).
The way He writes my story isn’t going to be the same as He writes yours. There is no need to fret, no need to be jealous. Our stories are going to be different because we’re different and that’s okay. The ending is going to be glorious!
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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Grace in Waves 