But Joseph refused. “Look,” he told her, “my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God.”
Genesis 39:8-9 (NLT)
When I was a kid, I really liked reading the “Choose your own adventure” books. At the end of those books, you had the opportunity to choose from a few alternate endings to the story. The story changed depending on the ending you chose.
All of us are writing a story with our lives, and the story we choose to write will determine how the story ends and how people will tell our story someday.
As a pastor, one of the privileges that I have is officiating funerals. Whenever I am preparing for a funeral, I make sure to meet with the family to find out as much as I can about the deceased. The best way to do that is to ask the people who knew them the best to tell me about them. It’s always interesting to hear the stories that people share.
All of us have and are writing a story with our lives. Yesterday I shared a question (Am I being honest with myself, really?) that author Andy Stanley says is a key to making good decisions. Today, I want to share a second question, “What story do I want to tell?” Stanley calls that the legacy question. What story do I want my life to tell, and, maybe more importantly, what story do I want others to tell about me.
The decisions we make and the directions we take all contribute to the story of our lives. We don’t tend to think about it that way. Decisions are for today and stories are for tomorrow. But your life is really a compilation of the decisions you make day after day.
Someone in the Bible who had to think about the story of his life was a young man named Joseph. You can read his story in Genesis 37-50. Joseph was the son of a wealthy man and he was hated by his brothers out of jealousy. In fact, they hated him so much they sold him as a slave and he ended up the property of an Egyptian named Potiphar.
Joseph had a lot of reasons to be bitter and give up in his life. But in challenging times of his life, Joseph kept thinking about his story. In Genesis 39, he has been continuously propositioned by Potiphar’s wife and she isn’t being subtle. Joseph is alone with her and has the opportunity to sleep with her and get away with it. But he chooses to run from temptation instead of giving in to it. Why? Because he knew what he wanted his story to be. He didn’t want to be, “Joseph who slept with the boss’ wife.” He wanted to be, “Joseph who did the right thing, even when no one saw what he was doing.”
When we are making decisions about the route we want to take in life, we need to ask, “What story do I want to tell?” The decisions you make today determine the story you can tell tomorrow.
What story do you want your life to tell? What do you hope people will say about you twenty years from now?