Finish the Book: Trusting God as The ULTIMATE Creative Author

So my brother and I were on our way to church last Sunday and He wanted my opinion on a clip from Transformation Church. He told me about some people who had some really negative reviews about it. I told him I hadn’t seen the whole production...so I didn't really know what to say. We then got into a conversation about how people judge things prematurely and without context….and then get offended by it. I mean...people do it with the Bible all the time. Truth is… Hell seems really offensive to people who don’t know the full story...but…how you get mad and you ain’t read the whole thing? You gotta finish the book!

I said it comically and we laughed about it…but since having that convo, it struck me that….we don’t just do that with social media clips. We do that with life. We experience one 15-second clip of our lives and then make these broad, qualifying statements about the entirety of our lives…..without ever finishing the book!

God is the ultimate creative author and He’s written such a beautiful novel featuring each of our lives. We like to say that our lives are blank pages, ready for a pen, but when we surrender our lives back to God...the way I see it...our blank pages are instantly filled with God’s originally intended story. To that end, our stories are not being written. It’s been written. We’re simply reading the chapters as they unfold. 

While we don’t have all the details, the Bible, in a way, serves as the "Cliff Notes" version of our story. 

Now, if you remember Cliff Notes and Sparks Notes they don’t tell you word for word the actual story, but they give you the summary of the story. They even pull out themes that you may have overlooked if you actually read the full book. They give you just enough detail to…at least pass a quiz or write a paper about a book you didn’t actually read...hypothetically speaking, of course.🙃

The point is it gives you the high level important stuff. 

Like Cliff Notes & Spark Notes, the Bible doesn’t give us every detail of every page of every chapter of our lives, but each scripture and the stories they reflect give us truths about what we can expect. 

The truth of the matter is that some of us are in the crappy chapters of our lives. Respectfully…Ha! ….and maybe the word isn’t “crappy" maybe its more of “uncomfortable.” It's the part where the main character gets into the thick of some conflict...the part where everything is really rough, but if we refer to our cliff notes….the Bible….we know that at some point all things have to work together. We know that many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God will deliver us out of them all….we know the story will become beautiful at some point. How do we know this? Because He said it in the book…Romans 8:28, Psalms 34:9, Ecclesiastes 3:11…all of that is in the Cliff Notes and, at some point will be reflected in your actual story. You just have to finish the book. 

We see this type of rollercoaster effect all throughout the Bible from Adam to Abraham to Moses to Lazarus to Jesus. We see how people’s stories suck at one point….but eventually get better. 

I think David is a great example. The Bible calls David a “man after God's own heart,” but in Psalms 22 David said he felt forsaken by God….by Psalms 37 he was saying “I've been young…I’ve been old but I’ve NEVER seen the righteous forsaken."

Now, David? How you just backpedal like that? That’s not what you were saying 10 chapters ago! 

Well, he hadn’t finished the book... 

Even if this particular chapter is trash, God promises to make everything beautiful in His time. If you feel abandoned, sad, forgotten…all those hard feelings….just keep READING!! Keep referring to your cliff notes! 

It gets better! 

You might not know how…exactly….but you know the author of the book….and He’s not Lemony Snicket. (Now for those who weren’t avid readers of "Series of Unfortunate Events" just know that Lemony Snicket is an author who is notorious for having a sad story from the first page to the very last page of every single book…hence, the title “Series of Unfortunate Events") 

When it comes to writing, God isn’t Lemony Snicket. God’s endings aren't terrible. They don’t rip your heart out and leave you in a puddle of tears.…they're actually quite beautiful! Don’t get lost in this chapter of the book. God is not done until the story is good. Trust that THIS…yes all of THISSSSSS….is what it looks like for all things to be working together for your good. 

Don’t forfeit your finale. 

Trust the Author! 

Trust Him as the ULTIMATE creative author! 

Don’t stop…you ain finish the book!!