I spent the last five days at a student conference where the theme was, “Breaking Ground.” The speakers focused on the parable of the sower in Luke 8. One thing was said that really resonated with me. See if it resonates with you as well.

He said that often our stories get written around our failures or traumas, rather than around God’s story of love and redemption. I related deeply to that. For decades, my failure in a certain area of my life served as the backdrop of my entire story of God’s work in my life. The thread of that failure remained integral to my view of my story. And for many years, it tainted my version. I knew that the Lord had done amazing things in and through my life, BUT… It didn’t matter what it was he had done, the failure remained woven into it, as if there should be a footnote or asterisk to draw attention to it, and somehow lessen his work that preceded, occurred in the midst of, and proceeded the failure.

The speaker emphasized that God’s story is always a redemptive one, so even if we have failed, the Lord continues to seek our full redemption, enfolding our failures into that story. I figured that out a ways back, but I was glad to hear it again, for the continued encouragement and for the sake of the students in the room. The devil’s mission is to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). One way he does this is to take our trauma and failures and try to get us to insert them into our stories as intractable and unredeemable events. 

Our culture, both Christian and non-Christian, is good at creating shame and guilt around our failures, and creating hopelessness around our traumas. I have known many people over the course of my life who are stuck in their shame and/or trauma. One former student who has been out of school for decades is still exhibiting much of the same thought patterns that they had as a student, centered on childhood trauma.

Both of my parents died within five years of each other while I was a college/grad student. It was a traumatic time in my life. Forty plus years later, not so much. I occasionally wish they were still alive, but there is little emotional currency that accompanies these thoughts. Their suffering and deaths remain an integral part of my story, but the focus is how the Lord used them to draw my parents to him and how he used them in my own life and ministry in the years since. Painful as that time was in my life, God’s redemptive work comprises the greater part of my story.

Isn’t that what our God is about—to bring redemption? We typically think the redemption relates to our sins, which is true, but it goes deeper and wider than that. While our enemy wants to kill, steal, and destroy, the Lord wants to bring us abundant life, fill us with joy, and strengthen us so that we can repel the enemy’s attacks. And redemption is not just related to the eternal, but also the here and now. In fact, Eternity for the believer begins with the decision to begin following Jesus.

I led a workshop for the conference dealing with anxiety, in which I pointed out the current state of young people and anxiety. The high levels of stress are not really different between those who follow Jesus and those who don’t. The vast majority of them are anxious. The focus of my workshop was to point out that Jesus is to make a difference in our lives, not merely with regard to our eternal destination but also with how we handle the stresses of life. If Jesus makes no difference, why would people seek to follow him? If it is only to gain a ticket into heaven, then most would rather wait until they think the chances of dying are greater. And few college students consider death at their age much of a possibility. 

Our call is to be ambassadors for Christ (II Corinthians 5:20), to carry the message of our God and King that he wants to bring full redemption to people’s lives. That is more effectively communicated by the way we live our lives and telling our stories of God’s redemptive work in them than by merely reciting Scriptures about being sinners and the needing a Savior. 

Several of the workshops focused on telling our stories as a means to bear witness to the power of God to redeem us, not only from sin, but from the various traumas and failures in our lives. This is what I would challenge you to do. Reflect on the story of God’s redemptive work in your life. And if, to date, it does not appear to be redemptive, ask the Lord to make it so. As Paul writes to the Roman believers, “And we know that in all things God works for the good [not that all things are good] of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) He can take anything in our lives, no matter the depth of failure or trauma, and work it for our and, perhaps more importantly, for the good of others.

This is the ultimate power of our God—to take what was meant to kill, steal and destroy and bring good out of it for us and others. Thus, what we may think or have thought is a tragic story becomes rather a story of redemption, a story to share with others so they might find redemption in their own stories.

© Jim Musser 2021 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.