Psalm 105:1-2 “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.” Today's episode is about how God is calling us to share all that He has done with others. I talk about how important it is to share your story and challenge all who listen to spend some time with God asking how you can answer this call? Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Share Your Story
Psalm 105:1-2 “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.”
Keeping along the theme of praise from yesterday’s episode, today’s verse talks about a different kind for praise. It talks about praising God by telling all of His wonderful acts. The verse begins by saying we should make known among all the nations what He has done. This has come up in several places for me over this past month. I went to a conference on Sept. 10th and the speaker was talking about how important it is for us to share our story. Then the word we were given in prayer group said something similar. Each week in prayer group it seems the Lord is telling us to go out and spread what He is teaching us to others. Then I watched a webinar and they were talking about how important it is to tell our witness. I also started a class last week and in class the instructor talked about how important it is to share our stories with others.
The reason it is so important to share our story with others is because it helps to build others’ faith up when they see God working in your life. God has done incredible things in your life and talking about them is good for you as well as others. The reason I started Witness Wednesdays on this podcast is because I saw and heard how much the people taking the Life in the Spirit seminar enjoyed listening to them. Many of them said although they learned a lot from the teachings, what really touched their hearts were the witnesses. We only see what people want us to see about their lives. If people don’t talk about it me may never see how God is working in their lives. When we talk about the things God has done for us it helps others to see what is possible for God to do in their lives.
If we are not on the lookout for how God is moving and working in our lives, we may miss it. We may chalk it up to coincidence, or think our victory was due to our efforts alone. If we are not telling others of all God has done, we may forget. That might seem hard to believe, how could you ever forget the miraculous things God has done in your life? However, I am sure He has done way more than we can even think of. If you had to sit and make a list of all the things God has given you in your life, could you? If you had to make a list of all the prayers He has answered for you, how long would that list be? If you were asked to make a list of all the time God showed up and rescued you, would you be able to? What about all those times God protected you from something before it happened?
We are all going through out lives and maybe you think your life is pretty boring. Maybe you think you haven’t had your share of tragedy, or you haven’t suffered enough. I knew a woman once who was concerned she had not had enough suffering in her life. If this is you, if you have had a pretty good life so far and you feel as though you haven’t really needed to rely on God and you haven’t really seen God working in your life I would say you might just be looking at it in a different way. If you haven’t had much tragedy in your life, that is a good thing. That means God has been working in your life to keep all that out. He has protected you from the things that sought to get in your way. You may think your life is boring, but what kinds of things do you think God had to give you or do for you to help you live this boring life?
I think we don’t realize how much God is in the little details of our lives. Think about the various things you have prayed. Did you get answers to those prayers? Is the house you are living in the answer to a prayer? Are your children and answer to your prayer? I know it may not always seem like they are an answer to a prayer as parenting is hard and yet, I bet you did pray to have children one day. What about having food on the table and clothes to wash? Are those answers to your prayers? What about where you live, is that an answer to prayers? Did you pray to live close to family, far from family, in a city, in the country, by a lake? I think if many of us think about it we will realize we are living into the exact things we prayed for 5 or 10 years ago.
We have a faithful God and He answers our prayers. If we are living our answered prayers right now, why don’t we talk about it more? Why aren’t we shouting from the roof tops all the things God has done for us? I know it can be hard to know what to say. It can be hard to think of ways God is working in our lives. However, once you try, once you sit down and really think of things that have happened over the years, things will start to come into your mind. You can ask the Holy Spirit as well to bing into your mind all the ways you gave seen God working your life. I think sometimes we think it has to be some miraculous event in order to share it with others. However, God is working in the small ways too. I love to hear stories about how someone needed something small in that very moment and God gave it to them. For instance, I heard a story once about a woman who only had enough money for one sandwich at a fast food place. She bought one chicken sandwich and her and her son took turns taking a bite until the sandwich was gone. That sandwich was not gone until they were both completely full. That is a miracle and yet it is something that can easily be forgotten or overshadowed by all the other things going on in life. If that woman hadn’t shared this story and talked about it, she may have forgotten about it. Sharing our story helps keep the memory alive.
I know you don’t think you have a story. I know it can be scary to share our story, it can be scary to be vulnerable. I also know God is calling us to share our story to build up His Kingdom. God wants us to tell of His wondrous acts. I challenge each one of you to take a few minutes out of your day and write down at least 10 ways God has shown up in your life. These can be anything. Did He bless you with children? Did He bless you with a home? Did He bless you with parents and siblings? Did He bless you with a spouse? What do you have to be thankful to God for? How can you share that list with others? Can you pick just one memory where you know God was there for you and share it with at least three people this week? God is asking us in the verse above to “tell of all His wondrous deeds.” I ask you all to ponder that this week. Take some time and ask God how this applies to you? Ask God how He wants you to answer this call?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to share our story, we want to tell of your wondrous deed and yet we don’t know how, please show us. Please help us recall all the ways you are working in our lives. Please show us how to share this information with others. Lord, we are all different and the way one of us shares might not work for someone else. Please share with each of us individually how you would like us to answer your call. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for you. You are the light of the World and the Word make Flesh. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If technology works out for us today the guest speaker tomorrow will be my dad. My parents have seen a lot of miracles over the years. I have talked about a few during some of the regular episodes, but I am looking forward to letting my dad and mom share some of them. Tomorrow my dad will talk about a few of them. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.