My Story or God's?

From Pastor Jay Cashmer's Sermon for 12.8.2025

Last Sunday, I went to my daughter’s church, which was within a neighborhood in Chicago.

I tell you this because I want to give full disclosure that I have completely ripped off the following quote from their pastor, Nick Price. The quote was taken from the Christian writer, Eugene Peterson: 

"When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves."

When I heard this quote, I thought about how exactly right that is. Because we have a tendency to do that, don't we? To think, "My life is my story, and God is just a part of it."

The phrase, 'The Story of My Life' comes to mind. Last week, as I thought about that phrase, I knew that it was one that I've heard before. I put it into my Spotify search bar to see if it was a song. There wasn't just one song with that title, though. There were five different songs using that phrase. (Morgan Wallen's cover of a One Direction song might not count as a 5th, though). My point? It's natural for us to feel that our life is our story. After all, our lives have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We don’t mean for this thought process to happen, but when we see our lives like this, all of a sudden, God becomes the supporting actor. We easily start to think, "I’m the star of the show. It's my story. It's my life. And God? Well, He might be in there a lot, but He’s just a player in my life.

I decided to take this concept and apply it to the people in the Bible that we'll be talking about over the next few weeks: 

John the Baptist's parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, were the first to jump out at me. If anyone could have said, "God, where are you in my story? This isn’t fair," it would be these two. The Bible tells us that they are righteous, devout, and that they dedicated their life to God. They wanted to have a child, as most couples in the first century did, but they were not blessed with a child, and we know that they were asking for one continually because of this: The angel Gabriel said to Zechariah, "Your prayers have been answered." If anyone had the right to say, "God, where are you in my story?" it’s Zechariah and Elizabeth. But it appears as if they didn't. 

We too are called to have this mindset: 

There's one story. It's God's. 

That story is about 6000 years old. It started when God called everything to existence by simply saying, "let there be light." We joined the story on the sixth day when He breathed into a lump of clay and made mankind. He then created community when He gave Eve to Adam, and now, we have this togetherness; we have this task to take care of God’s creation, which he reshaped with the flood. 2000 years before Jesus was born, God got really involved in the story by calling Abraham. For 1500 years, His Word was hitting the world through the prophets. We took a 400 year break with the last profit being Malachi, and next, we see John the Baptist. John the Baptist shows the Word of God breaking into the world for the first time in about 400 years, and no one understood better their role in God’s story than John the Baptist. This is where God's story really took off for the 33 years that Jesus of Nazareth walked this Earth, earning for us salvation. After His ascension to Heaven, the story has now continued for 2000 years, and it’s going to continue until that last day when Jesus returns for us. 

There's only one story. One. And it's God's. And here’s the amazing truth: We have been asked to be a part of it. In fact, in God's story, who is the most important person? Who is it that truly matters?

You are. 

Jesus didn’t die for Jesus. He died for you.

Isn’t that amazing? And doesn’t that put things in perspective?

Now, I don’t want to minimize the challenges that we face in this life. But there are times when we feel consumed by the things that happen to us; things that just make us nauseous or chew us up, 24/7. That's what happens when I make this life my story. But when I see the world as God's story? This perspective gives us the ability, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to say, "Okay. That's something that's happening in this life, but what's really important is that one story that God made possible with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

John the Baptist understood this. He knew that he wasn't here for himself. He was here because of what God wanted him to do: To shine the light on the person of Christ. 

The encouragement that I would like to present to you for this season of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany is to do the same thing that John did: His task was to simply help people to see the person of Jesus; not necessarily the work; he wasn't told to convince people or to tell them why it was important. He was told to proclaim, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."

Here's another quote for you, this time from Pastor Jefferson (and note, the date of the book that this quote was taken from -'The Character of Jesus' - is 1908): 

"I invite you to contemplate with me the character of Jesus. The time is right for a restudy of His character and career." (These are two different things. The character is His person, the career is His work.) "The world is crying out for something; it scarce knows what. Wealth has slipped into a riddle and delusion. The world  is filled with the invention of human skill and genius, but there is a vast emptiness which neither science nor art is able to fill. Loaded with many possessions, we cry, 'What lack I yet?'"

Now, although I don’t know that this is exactly what we cry these days, I'm sure you get the point. This was written in 1908. At that point, we were still 20 years from the accidental discovery of penicillin. If this was true then, then how much more true is it for us today, when at the push of a button, you could order something right now on your phone and have it waiting for you when you get home? We have gotten to this point with human skill and genius over the past 100 years, and yet, there’s still this emptiness. We have so much stuff, but there's still emptiness; we have so much information, at the touch of a button, but we still have more questions than answers.

"What lack I yet?"

Pastor Jefferson asked it over 100 years ago, and his answer is the answer that we need today:

"Perhaps it is time to turn aside from the path we have been traveling and listen for a season to Jesus of Nazareth."

That's what Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are about. This is the season to focus on the person who Jesus is and who he claims to be.

I encourage you to set aside some time during this season to get into an Advent devotional and the Word of God. If you need a suggestion, then I have a really simple one: Dive into the Gospel of John; dive into those 'I am' statements. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you through Jesus' words, as He says, "I am the light of the world, I am the bread of life, I am the living water, I am the resurrection and the life." Take this season to turn to Jesus of Nazareth, be connected to His person, and know this:

It's all about His story. But you are a major part of it.

He died for you; He's inviting not for us to make him a part of our life, but to be a part of His. I pray that you will say 'yes' to Jesus' invitation and live with Him now and in Heaven forever