If someone asked you out of the blue, ‘What is your story?’, what would you say?
Would you answer chronologically and begin with your birth, talk about where you were raised?
Would you define yourself according to your career, your qualifications, and achievements?
Or would you adapt your answer based on who was asking?

Do you have a God-story? Is it for Him or against Him?
How high up in your unprepared life story would God make His appearance?

Years ago, I learned how to put my own God-story together so I could tell other people about Jesus. There had to be an introduction before-Christ-sin-story, a ‘how I met Jesus’ story, and a conclusion about how He changed my life thereafter.

But I was nine years old when I accepted Jesus as my Saviour. The most dramatic change in my life after salvation was my mom cutting up our Liewe Heksie-vinyls and the adults no longer drinking wine.

In my early twenties, when I really had to live out my Christianity in the unprotected real world as a newspaper journalist, I wondered how relevant my testimony would be to the people I encountered. What type of credibility would I convey to people for whom things might have gone terribly wrong while my own life had gone relatively smoothly?

The Holy Spirit reminded me that my testimony was that God had fulfilled His promises of a good and prosperous life because I had been obedient and because my parents had raised me in His ways.

But, as for many longtime Christians, my real story is that God was faithful when I was not.

When I got a bit ‘wild’ in my mid-twenties, he protected me despite my stupid mistakes and bad decisions. The lessons made me less judgmental towards others and gave me deep empathy, grace, and compassion for people. He used the failure and shame of a toxic relationship to help me recognise and appreciate the value of the man I eventually married.

God was faithful when the chaos of family life, demanding working circumstances and illness in the family consumed me and days went by that I did not pray or think of Him.

He was faithful when I started to forget His Word, my language got rougher, and the fruits of the Spirit wasn’t so evident in my life.

I once again realised a halfway, lukewarm, grey God-story would benefit nobody. For the half a step I then took in His direction, He erased the rest of the gap between us in an instant.

In recent years I have spent more time in God’s Word than ever before. I went to a lot of trouble to surround myself with solid Christian people, got involved at a church and started investing in people.

So, when the largest storm of my life broke out over my head in 2021, there was peace that transcended understanding.

My person-story and my God-story is more the same story these days, and finally my first instinct is to pray before I think. And all of it is God. Nothing is in my own strength or at all in my control. It is simultaneously terrifying and deeply comforting that even my choice to be close to Him completely lies in His hands.

So, what is your story?
You decide.

God is there anyway to be the focus of your story, but His grace lies in the freedom He gives you to choose Him.

It doesn’t matter if you aren’t in a good space in your life, He will take you as you are. It also doesn’t matter if it is going really well with you and you think you don’t need Him, you do.

Don’t wait until you think you can earn His grace or understand His depth. You will never be able to do that on your own.

So just surrender.
God will do the rest.

Athane Scholtz
George, South Africa
Originally published in Afrikaans for A Vivid Life inspirational blog in April 2022
https://avividlife.co.za/wat-is-jou-storie/