It happened again, just like it always does when I read a book by Kyle Idleman. His newest book, Don’t Give Up, has grabbed my attention in a deeply personal way, yet again.
Kyle Idleman has an uncanny way of writing a book that reads like your life. He has a way of putting into words exactly what is going on in your marriage, your family, your job… in your mind. And he dispels the myths with the Word of God.
Speaking of Abraham Kyle writes: “He’s holding on to God’s promise, and he keeps right on believing even when the story doesn’t make sense”.
I haven’t even read a full two pages since I put the book down last night, and I must stop for an hour to digest that one little line; “When the story doesn’t make sense”.
Earlier, in the book Don’t Give Up, Kyle asks the reader a question. He asks if we have faith. He wrote, “Don’t just tell me you have faith. Tell me a story”. Because, he said in the book, faith always has a story.
I’m stuck here, really. I’m seriously talking to myself…out loud… ”You want me to tell you a story? A story of faith? Oh, I have a few but the one that comes to mind most, is the one I’m living now. Even when the story doesn’t make sense.”
Are you living a story that doesn’t make sense? Are you believing God to do something mighty but you’re not even sure what that would look like? You’re not even sure how to pray? Because from EVERY human possibility, it looks impossible. Every way you play it out, it doesn’t make sense. There is no way to rewrite the story you are living. There is no way to spin it to make it fit, to make it okay, to make it right.
It looks hopeless.
It looks like it’s too late.
There’s nothing humanly possible to be done. And even if there was, you wouldn’t know it if you saw it because it truly is that unfathomable.
Maybe this book isn’t for me, you might be saying. Maybe that message, the one about not giving up, is for other people. Normal people with normal lives, normal marriages, normal families.
When the story doesn’t make sense.
I kept hearing these words today while I was working…” But then God.”
And then I came home and began to read Don’t Give Up. That’s when I put these two statements together: He’s (Abraham) holding on to God’s promise, and he keeps right on believing even when the story doesn’t make sense” But then God.
Right there is where I choose to park. Right in between the two lines that state the story doesn’t make sense, and the line on the other side…but then God. Right smack in the middle.
And maybe that’s all any of us can do when we are living a story that doesn’t make sense.
That takes faith. Even if you don’t know what you are believing God for.
When the story doesn’t make sense, but then God.
Leave a Reply