Christian Living

Who Is Writing Your Story?

by J.W. Phillips
01/08/25
Not For Sale

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Who Is Writing Your Story?

Many people are frustrated because life isn’t turning out the way they had hoped. It has been observed that each man’s life is a diary in which he meant to write one story but was forced to write another.

Perhaps you can identify with this assessment, because you, too, remember certain aspirations from earlier years—worthy aspirations, noble aspirations, aspirations that never left your heart but have never been fulfilled. As for now—pain is there, desire is there, but the achievement of this aspiration is not.

Dr. J. Wallace Hamilton wrote a chapter entitled “Shattered Dreams” that tells of an auction sale that took place many years ago in Washington D.C. How the people laughed whenever old inventions declared obsolete were put up for sale!

There was an illuminated cat designed to scare the mice away, and another gadget that enabled a mother to churn the butter and rock the baby all in one motion.

There was also a device to prevent snoring: a trumpet reaching from mouth to ear, sufficient to sound a loud blast and thus arrest the cacophony of obstructed breathing.

One man, intent on securing a more comfortable rest for himself, invented a tube that could reach from his mouth to his feet in such a way his breath could keep his feet warm.

Of particular interest to the crowd that day was an adjustable pulpit that could be raised or lowered by pushing a button. The auctioneer told of how a preacher in Ohio, preaching on the subject, “Where Will you Spend Eternity?” accidentally hit the wrong button—and down he went!

The people at this auction had a good time that day, but, sadly, each of the items up for bid represented somebody’s dream. Many of these inventors had invested long hours with the hope that fame and fortune would eventually result.

Some of these inventors became examples of Alexander Maclaren’s words: “Men travel from a tinted morning into the sober light of common day; and with failing faculties and shattered illusions and dissipated hopes, and powers bending under the long monotony of middle life, most of them live.”¹ In painful defeat!

Ethyl Waters, the well-known gospel singer and former movie actress of the 1950s, once said, “God don’t sponsor no flops.”

There is a measure of truth in this observation, certainly; yet most of those who have experienced God’s success profited at some point by failure. Projecting a life of unending success is the product of a misguided imagination. Scripture doesn’t script our lives this way.

Success without failure is shallow, omitting character from its definition almost entirely. F.B. Meyer writes:

The supreme test of character is disappointment and apparent failure. When the flowing stream is with us and our plans are ripening into fruition, it is easy to be at our best. But what we really are does not appear under such conditions.²

Therefore, for our own good, God will allow the tide to go against us, for friends to forsake us, for success to seem lost and gone forever.

In reflecting further on Ethyl Waters’ comment, we would have to say there are some successes God didn’t sponsor, either!

The Old Testament book of Joshua talks about “good success,” which does seem to suggest there are successes that are not good (Joshua 1:8).

With caustic overtones, W.R. Inge once defined success by saying, “Give the world all it wants and about ten percent more than it expects.”³

But whenever we allow the world to set the standard for success, what emerges is something, in method or outcome, not all that good.

The success the world idolizes isn’t revered by God, for sooner or later God will resist the success that lets men strut.

Alert to this fact, G.D. Watson wrote, “… in order that God may get all the glory, he must blister the fair face of seeming success, make us die to ourselves in our work, and then he can accomplish results greater than we dream.”⁴

There is a better way. A God-directed imagination would have scripted our life differently.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart.”

In the Hebrew, the word for “delight” means to be moldable, to be pliable. It characterizes the tender and teachable heart that says, “Lord, I belong to you, so spend my life any way that you want.” Into such a heart, God will release his desires.

George MacDonald wrote, “When a man dreams his own dream, he is at the mercy of his dream, for it may or it may never come to fruition. When the Lord gives him a dream, however, he provides all the means and resources to fulfill it.”⁵

To be clear, this verse in Psalms isn't talking about the fulfilment of a dream, it's talking about the dream itself. You want now what God wants. Your compassed changed. Your antenna changed. You are on a different road now.

Philippians 2:13 completes this picture when it says, “It is God who works in you to will”—that's the desire Psalms 37:4 talked about— “and to do his good pleasure.” That's the fulfilment of this desire.

No shattered dreams. No laughable flops. No shallow successes, but the good success God promised.

Notes:
1. Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Kindle locations: 3220-3221.
2. F.B. Meyer, Samuel the Prophet, (Fort Washington, PA., Christian Literature Crusade, 1978), p.85.
3. James Stewart, Herald of God, (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1973), pp.29, 30.
4. G.D. Watson, The Secret of Spiritual Power, (Boston: Christian Witness Co., 1894), pp.8, 9.
5. George MacDonald, The Best of George MacDonald, (Colorado Springs, CO., Cook Communications Ministries, 2006) p.176.