If Your Story Feels Like The End, That Is Not God's Story

​Sometimes we lose a job and get to feeling like this is the end.

Sometimes we get a divorce and get to feeling like this is the end.

Sometimes we have a health scare and get to feeling like this is the end.

Sometimes when we overcome an addiction we get to feeling something may have ended but there's no way anything more meaningful can begin.

A lot of things can happen in life leaving us feeling like this is the end.

There's a story in the bible, a man named Moses got upset when he saw how one of his people, the Israelites, was being treated by an Egyptian. Trying to gain favor with his people, Moses killed the Egyptian.

Moses' plan didn't go as expected. The Israelites actually turned on him for what he'd done. So Moses fled to a place called Midian, where he lived for 40 years.

I have to imagine in Midian Moses got to feeling like this is the end. I have to imagine in Midian Moses spent a lot of time replaying the past; if I had only done this, then that would have turned out better. I have to imagine in Midian Moses was spending a lot of time giving up and imagining a way forward.

I have to imagine this because in the aftermath of poor decisions in my life, in the aftermath of undesirable circumstances or events, in the aftermath of trauma and adversity, in the aftermath of many challenges in my life, I have often sensed the end.

But you know, one day, after 40 years of Moses feeling like this is the end, God showed up in a burning bush. And God called out from the bush, "Moses! Moses!".

I think God knows that we are sometimes so convinced it's the end that he shouts our name twice to assure us that he's about to introduce us to a beginning.

And God said to Moses, "“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

And Moses says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

You just know Moses had spent 40 years convincing himself how unworthy he was of rising up to what God was asking him to do. You just know Moses had spent 40 years living in his mistakes and not for a second mapping out his redemption.

But here's the thing, the thing Moses came to understand and this thing I have come to understand, when we are living in our mistakes and not mapping out our redemption, we are leaving God out of our story.

Because that IS the God story - God IS the map from mistake to redemption, from oppression to freedom, from trauma to resilience.

God is a God who shows up just when we think the story is ending and assures us that no, that is only the middle of the book. I'm about to show you the REAL ending to that story.

Moses was living in the land of Midian fully believing his best was behind him. Just like many of us are doing in the land of this Monday.

But with God, the God of redemption, the God of the cross who proved even a grave is only the middle of the story, with that God our story is never over.

You are not at the end today, my friends.

There's a burning bush waiting to remind you of that.

Listen to it.