His Story (not history)

Posted by Traci at 2:40 AM

So here's what I'm about.  Everything I think and say and do and don't do and don't say (or at least try not to say).  I'm about three stories - His story meaning God's story; my story meaning well duh; your story meaning what does God want for you. 

Most of the time I fail epically in telling these stories, but occasionally my message is clear. That's what I want to do here - be clear (for once).

What's God's story?  A bazillion years ago God breathed life into man.  He made us.  He made you.  He knows your frame, your name, what you're afraid of, what you're good at.  Because He created you.  But there was a problem.  The creator God is holy, pure, peace, light, everything that is love and perfection and goodness.  And we are sooo not.  Do you know why we're not?  Because God gave one man, Adam, a choice.  

Adam had a literally perfect life.  He talked with God in a way no one has ever been able to do again.  He and God were lifemates, talked and hung out together every flippin day.  Can you imagine that??  The creator of the Milky Way and you just talking, just chillin'.  But God gave Adam a choice - continue in that awesome friendship or go his own way.  And Adam chose poorly.  Very poorly.  He chose his selfish desires and passed that selfishness to us all.  So now you and I and everyone else has this huge blemish on us.  And we can feel it.  That sick, yucky feeling you get after you've spent time indulging your selfishness.  The opposite of peace, whatever it's called.  I've experienced that way too much.  

So there's big blemished, pimply us and perfect, clean God.  And the two don't mix.  At all.  Take a brand new, straight-out-of-the-supercold-refrigerator water bottle (you know the kind that sweats a little just because it's so cold) and throw a little cat poop in there.  Still want a big gulp.  It's just a little poop.  No??  Multiple that times a gazillion.  God won't allow our yuckiness to mix with his perfectness.  He can't.  In our current state we can't get back the friendship God and Adam had.  And guess who was bummed about it?  Us?  Yep, for sure.  Our bodies ache for peace, for joy (defined as happiness even in a third world country prison), for just meaning!  For a future, a forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, even after we die future.  But we aren't the only ones that were bummed.  God was.  Totally.  He wanted that friendship back more than you can imagine. 

And so, just like any good Father, he came up with a plan to fix things.  To get things back to good.  Real good.  Now you'll remember the problem was Adam's bad choice.  God gave Adam a rule and he broke it.  Actually God gives us 10 rules.  We all know them in our heart and spirit even if we don't know them in our mind.  When you lie to someone you feel bad.  Nobody has to say "hey, you should feel bad".  You just do.  You might pretend like you don't but you do.  It's the same way with all the rules God gave us to protect us from each other.

If my son is playing with a friend and hits him then he has to go to timeout for awhile.  Then when his all-of-three-minute punishment is done he gets to come back and hang out with us again.  He did a bad thing and had to be punished.  God's solution was similar.  In order for us to be able to hang out with God again, someone had to be punished for our bad choices.  And so, inexplicably, God chose a completely innocent, never made a bad choice person to punish - Jesus.  Instead of punishing you and me, God punished Jesus.  For six hours.  Every person you've ever hurt, every lie you've ever told, every jealous thought I've ever had, everything, everything, everything bad we've ever done.  Jesus was punished for it during those six hours.  And the punishment killed him.  

But guess what??  He came back to life.  Not only was he the only person to never make a bad choice, he was also God's son.  And because he was God, Jesus (unlike us) could beat death!  He was punished so that we wouldn't have to be.  And now, finally, our friendship with God is fixed.  We can come hang out with him again.  If we choose to.  But just like Adam, we have a choice.  That choice is my story and your story.  Coming up next...