When God
Rewrites Your Story
Six Keys to a Transformed Life
From Namesake
Jessica LaGrone
When God Rewrites Your Story:
Six Keys to a Transformed Life
From Namesake Copyright © 2013 by Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
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ISBN 978-1-4267-6354-0
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Scripture quotations marked CEB are from the Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.
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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Introduction
Have you ever thought of your life as a story? Just like the characters in the Bible, your life tells a story. And just as God was intimately involved in their stories, He wants to be intimately involved in your story, too.
When we read the stories of many people who encountered God in the Bible, we see that God rewrote their stories and changed their lives, giving them new destinies and even new names. God still longs to change our lives today, giving us new destinies and new names, when we take on the name of His Son, Jesus, and choose to follow Him as new creations in Christ. God wants to rewrite our stories, offering each of us an identity that shines with the purpose for which we were created, as we become more and more like Him. The result is a transformed life—one that brings God glory for His name’s sake.
We can learn much about this process of transformation from the stories of biblical characters who came to know God and were never the same. This little book presents a snapshot of six different stories: Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Naomi, Daniel, Peter, and an unnamed woman. Each story highlights a key insight we can gain related to the transformation that God wants to bring in our own lives. These six keys to a transformed life are intended to help you catch a glimpse of the new story God desires to write for you. It is my prayer that as you read these stories, you will come to know God in a deeper and more personal way and give Him permission to rewrite your own life story.
1
Believe God and Wait on Him
Abraham and Sarah
If we want to experience the transformation that God desires to bring in our lives, an important first step is to believe God. Not only must we believe in God; we must believe what God says. We must believe God’s promises are true and that He has the power to bring them to pass, even when our circumstances tempt us to believe otherwise. This often involves placing ourselves in God’s hands as we wait on His timing.
A Hopeful Couple
When I think of believing God and waiting on His timing, I think of Abraham and Sarah—known to us first in the Bible as Abram and Sarai. In Hebrew, Abram’s name literally means “Exalted Father.” Though it may seem strange to us that his parents named their newborn “Father,” to them it represented their dreams for their son’s prosperity, which in their day meant growing up to be a father with lots of children.
Abram did grow up, and he married Sarai, whose name means “Princess.” But even after being married so long that their friends had children and even grandchildren, Abram and Sarai remained childless. In a culture that placed such high value on the number of offspring one had, this was a devastating blow.
Then God began to make outlandish and epic promises to Abram and Sarai in their old age, declaring that they would become the parents of many offspring—a great nation (Genesis 12:1-4)—and later “many nations” (Genesis 17:1-4). God even gave Abram a powerful visual to go with this promise, telling him that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars (Genesis 15:5).
The promise of God’s blessings in Abram and Sarai’s lives was so overwhelming that their lives were utterly transformed by God. From the moment God made the promise, everything was different. Even their names had to be changed.
Never the Same
God said to Abraham, “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. . . . As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her” (Genesis 17:5, 15-16).
In light of the big changes God wanted to make in Abram and Sarai’s lives, the changes in their names seem so small. In fact, the difference was just one letter each in Hebrew. But when God makes changes, the tiniest adjustment can communicate big things for us, our futures, and those whose lives we will impact.
Abram and Sarai each received the same letter as an addition to their names. In Hebrew the letter is called “Hey,” similar to our “H.” Abram became Abraham and Sarai was renamed Sarah. The addition of that one letter shifted the meaning of their names to fit God’s plan for their future. Abram, “The Exalted Father,” was now Abraham, “The Father of Many Nations.” And Sarai, “My Little Princess,” was now “A True Princess.”
Hearing their new names spoken by God must have been an awesome moment, one where God painted a clear picture of the future He had in mind for them.
Waiting on God
Abraham and Sarah received awesome promises from God, but what they did not receive was a timeline for when those promises would be fulfilled. They learned quickly that trusting this God and His promises meant a lot of waiting, hoping, and praying.
There were a few years when my life felt like one big waiting room. My heart’s desire was to become a mom, but my body just wasn’t cooperating. After a couple of years in the waiting room of my regular