Words. They are important to me. I’m the person who needs full stops and commas in all the right places when sending a ‘quick text.’ I drive my family mad. My husband has now banned me from standing at the back of him when he’s writing an email. Apparently, I’m annoying when I pull stupid faces and make silly noises as he’s typing.

And breathe…

I read a Tweet today. It was by Bob Goff and he said, “God isn’t an editor, He’s a creator. He’s not looking for the typos in our lives; He sees the beauty in them.”

As I read it, I wondered if that’s how I was living out my faith? Was I looking for the beauty in the ashes? Or was I focusing on my grammar mistakes and typos that seem to run thoughout my story?

Do I only step out in faith and be obedient to God when every word and line in my life seems edited and perfect?

And then I realised something…   

God isn’t looking for the mistakes we make. He doesn’t want to edit out all our short-comings and failures, He wants us to learn from them.  We see our mistakes as typos in this script called “life” that seem to litter our faith like wedding confetti on a Church lawn. But the truth is, God really does see the beauty in them.

Hebrews 12:2 reminds us that, Jesus is, ‘the author and the finisher of our faith.’ In other words, Jesus will craft each paragraph, each sentence and each word of our lives to fit into His greater plan because He’s the author and the finisher.

Jesus can take even the most jumbled up letters of your life and turn them into a beautifully crafted story that brings Him all the Glory.

And while we’re busy comparing and worrying whether we have our prayers and faith grammaticly correct, God’s gently persuading us to show our un-edited lives to people who need to know that He loves them. He wants to shine His perfect love through our unperfected story, page by beautiful page.   

What moves Him is that you still trust Him, even in the messiness and typos of your everyday life. Meaningless, religious jargon that only reaches as far as the ceiling, doesn’t move God to compassion.

We need to see the value in our messed up stories and present our authentic, imperfect selves to God. We need to spend less time hustling for our worthiness and trying to win over people with our edited, polished faith and just be real.

It’s a challenge, I know. In this social media world that is forever telling you that your life story hasn’t been edited enough to be published, and that you’re typos need to be erased before you can even think about being a good witness to other people.

Let these words sink into your soul;

JESUS is the AUTHOR and FINISHER of our faith.

God is a creator, not an editor. He delights in reading and creating the story He’s writing about you, chapter by glorious un-edited chapter. He doesn’t wince when there’s a typo or grammar error as He pens the words of your life, He just leaves them in because they are all part of your story.

Good to know, isn’t it?

Wendy xo