Sound of Surviving Blog

I have a sign hanging in my room with a quote that reads, “I trust the next chapter because I know the author.” It means that God is the author of our lives. But I’ve never truly thought about what it meant, until today. When we choose to follow God, to believe in him, we are also choosing to trust him, to put our hope in him.

Yet still, so often, we wonder if what he’s doing in our lives is truly good, and we may even start to put our faith more in our dreams and plans for our own lives, than in his. So, we get a little angry and even frustrated when our stories, our lives, are not going according to our master plan. The picture-perfect life we dream of falls apart somewhere along the way. Or at least that’s what we think. Those vision board dreams are rearranged and changed about one thousand times before we fall right where we’re meant to be.

We don’t see the bigger picture of our life as we’re living it, though. We can’t see the rainbow forming under the clouds of the thunderstorm. We can’t see how any of these things that are happening to us could be used to place us exactly on the page we’re supposed to be on. Only the author of our lives could see that, and that’s not us, though we think it might be. The true author of our lives, is God.

As much as I’d love to write my own story of my own life, to be the heroine princess in a fairytale, that’s not my story. God, the author of my story, has penned my story before the beginning of time. He’s not writing each sentence line by line, wondering what should happen next. He knows my story, and yours, like the back of his hand. Sure, he might be waiting for us to trust Him with our story, but he knows everything about us, past, present, and future. Our stories are no mystery to him. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139: 13-14)

So even when nothing is going according to plan, or we feel so far behind everyone else, like we’re stuck on that same page, but can’t go on to the next one. At least not until we conquer the giant of grief, or slay the dragon of pain, or put out the fiery flames of addiction and struggles. We often wonder why the author and finisher of our faith, and our lives, would throw in these plot twists. But that’s the thing, they were never plot twists to God. He knows exactly how each battle and hurdle we face is going to turn out. He knows we can’t be victorious on our own. He’s waiting for us to call out to him, to trust him, not just half-heartedly, but completely. That’s when our God does something no author has ever done before…. He steps into the page next to us, and walks alongside us in our story. And as I’m walking through the valley of the shadow of death, He guides me, comforting me with his rod and his staff. That’s when our hero steps in to conquer the unconquerable, stands over the giant, and leads us exactly where we’re meant to be.

My story may not be a fairytale, but I can trust that my author, my Lord and Redeemer, has not reached the end of my story, and I can trust that he will fulfill the plans he has for me, that He, alone, will give me a hope and a future.