Front Row Seat

Day #9

Have you ever had something explained to you in such a realistic way that you felt like you saw it with your own eyes instead of just heard it?

You know, the whole mind's eye thing?

It’s powerful.

My girlfriend told me about a dream she had a while back that was so vivid and clear that I told her eventually I’m going to retell it that I was there too.

Because I can see the whole thing play out so clearly.

Which is weird since it was all a dream inside HER head.

But it was very real to her.

And her story telling ability 

made it super real for me.

I wonder what we forget going on around us because we didn’t take the time to tell what we’d seen with details enough to do it justice so we’d remember.

To make the message so vivid for someone else that they’d 
one day think that maybe THEY were there too.

I wonder if we’ve been told such a thing but weren’t listening fully to allow the details to come alive in us.

So they didn’t stick in our memory.

So we never retold it.

The bible is filled with stories like that.

Stories that had to be verbally retold generation after generation before bibles were a household item.

I don’t know about you, but I can see Daniel in the lion’s den,

Jonah in the belly of that big fish,

and David slaying Goliath with a single stone from his slingshot.

Obviously I wasn’t there.

But those stories have been told to me in ways that make me feel 

as if I’ve watched them from a front row seat.

Close enough to see Daniel sweat,

to smell the stench of the belly of that big fish

and to hear the thud when Goliath hit the ground 

face first with a stone in his forehead.

Those stories cement my faith.

But what if no one retold them?

What if Daniel was too terrified of being thrown into the lion’s den again that he didn’t say a peep about his time spent there?

What if Jonah was convinced no one would believe he’d just been
yacked up by a big fish so he kept his mouth shut?

What if David told his sheep back in the field about Goliath 

but no. one. else?

We have stories like that too.

Stories of our ordinary lives and our extraordinary God.

Stories we don’t tell.

But if the stories of Daniel and Jonah and David cement my faith and they lived ALL THOSE YEARS AGO,

what do you think telling OUR stories of TODAY 

could do to someone else’s faith?

Like in the song “Overcome” by Jeremy Camp.

It says,

“We will overcome

by the blood of the Lamb

and the word of my testimony.”

Or the song by Big Daddy Weave called “My Story.”

The best line is:

“To tell of my story is to tell of Him.”

I think we’ve been placed in these front row seats for a reason.

And it’s not to keep what we see to ourselves.

No, we need to tell people when we’ve been moved to tears,

or our jaws dropped in surprise

or we had to cover our eyes in horror 

at what has just taken place.

We need to stand up and clap in ovation at what God did that we thought could never be done.

Tell it all.