Writing The Best Story For Your Life
Big Idea: Tension Drives Our Story. Redemption Gives Us Hope.
Week 8 Main Scripture:
Haggai 2:20-23
Sermon Highlights
Every Life is a Story. Every Story is Composed of Chapters.
Each life tells a story, unfolding in chapters that reflect unique moments in our journey. These chapters, whether marked by triumph or challenge, help shape who we are today. We often want to forget painful parts, yet it’s often those very chapters of shame and heartbreak that lead us to profound transformation.
When we’ve healed the broken parts of our story and integrated them with the rest of our lives, they become opportunities to connect with other people in their difficult chapters.
Chapters provide numerous functions: they break a story into digestible components, they provide transitions between moments in time, locations, or points of view, and they provide a story with structure. Some chapters are short; others are long. Some chapters end in cliffhangers, while others wrap up neatly.
While every story has a final chapter, the chapter you’re in today is not the final chapter. We are always moving from something and into something else. When we look back on the good chapters that intertwined with the challenging chapters of the past, we can be assured that there will be good chapters in our future.
Tension Drives Our Story; Redemption Gives Us Hope.
As we navigate our story, tension drives our growth, while redemption gives us hope. Just like a narrative arc that moves from introduction to resolution, God uses tension to move us toward His purpose.
In the book of Haggai, Israel’s call to rebuild the temple (Haggai 1:1) shows how tension can inspire action, with faith prompting obedience even amid fears (Haggai 1:12-14). When we obey in faith rather than reacting in fear, God meets us and increases our faith. When we show up, God shows up.
Remember, it’s called taking a “step of faith”, not taking a “step of certainty”.
God’s Presence in Every Chapter
God remains with us, even in moments of fear or disobedience. Through Haggai, God reassures his people with promises of his presence, strength, and peace (Haggai 2:4, 2:9).
God tells his people that the temple they are building will be greater than the one in the past (Haggai 2:9). Sometimes, when we look at the past, we tend to gloss over the bad parts and magnify and long for the good parts. But while we are called to remember the past, we can’t go back.
Similarly, we sometimes dream about the greatness of the future, and we make plans, but we fail to put those plans into action.
God wants to call us forward. He calls us to be people of action and faith in the present.
Restoring the temple was not just about rebuilding a structure but renewing a relationship with God and restoring the place where the presence of God dwells. And where God’s presence is, there’s peace.
Moving Beyond Comparison
We’re often tempted to compare our stories with the highlights of others without knowing their full journey and backstory. Zerubbabel, a descendant of David, Josiah, and Zedekiah, was used by God in Haggai’s time to demonstrate how God redeems our heritage for his purposes (Haggai 2:20-23). Peter echoes this in 1 Peter 2:9, calling us a chosen people meant to declare God’s praises because he called us out of darkness.
Living with Honesty and Hope
A relationship is the intersection of stories. And from the intersection of our stories comes a new story and a new chapter. The hard parts of our stories are like scars that remind us of brokenness and difficult times. But they also remind us of healing and hope.
“Our scars have the potential to tell a good story. No, I’m not fond of having been violated, but my scars have opened the door not only for me to understand more of what Jesus suffered on that Friday of humiliation, but also it’s given me a connection and engagement with something of the lives of others.” – Dr. Dan Allender
People respect our successes, but they don’t connect to us through our successes. It’s our honest stories of pain and hardship that connect us to other people.
Embrace each chapter, allow tension to refine you, and trust that God’s redemptive power will shape your journey with hope.
Looking to learn more about the book of Haggai? Go deeper here.
