Why is your story so important?
Hope is where faith starts. Hope is the generator that energizes your faith.
In Psalm 78 we read about the history of Israel. God commanded them to do certain things. Not just the Law but maybe something more important for the long run or their future. The Law focused on today. What must I do right now that keeps me from sinning against God? But how will we keep serving God and not forget what He wants?
In this Psalm, God commands them to tell their children all the things that He did when He brought them out of Egypt. You remember the ten plaques and how God opened the Red Sea and gave them bread and water and let them daily with a Pillar of Fire and a Cloud. Why was God asking them to do it?
God established a testimony about Himself before He gave them the Law to observe. They knew what God could do before they knew what God wanted them to do. The word testimony simply means: DO IT AGAIN.
When we share our testimony we are saying, God, do it again. When others hear our testimony, they ask: God do it again. What God did for you might be what He needs to do for others.
Most important was the fact that when they told their children what God did for them, it was an opportunity for the children to have hope in God.
Psalm 78:3-5 Things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and he wonders that he has done.
He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.
Let’s read a few more verses in this Psalm. Something happens that we must be aware of. One of the tribes, Ephraim did not do what God asked them to do. They did not tell their children about God and what He had done for them. They had no reference of God’s ability.
Psalm 78:9-11 The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle. They did not keep God’s covenant but refused to walk according to his law. They forgot his works and the wonders that he had shown them.
How many stories do we read about God fighting for them? Almost every battle the Israelites’ fought, God was fighting for them. The fathers of Ephraim stopped telling their children the testimonies and when the day of battle came, they fled because they had no hope. The fathers did not install hope in them by sharing what God did for them. What are you telling your children? The news flash or the God flash. The first one will create fear, the last one will create hope and faith.
Your story matters. It is your proof that God is real. It is your testimony of what God can do. When we share it with others, they get hope that God will do it for them as well.
Psalm 34:10 Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
Isaiah 26: 3-4 Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace—because they trust in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord God you have an everlasting rock.
