QUOTES & NOTES:

Sharon wrote the book, When You Don’t Like Your Story, because so many people don’t like their story. She wanted to help people see that the parts you don’t like the most are usually the parts of the story God wants to use the most. Sharon wants to help you move through the hard places and be able to use it for good. 

“What if your worst chapters could become your greatest victories?”

As long as we don’t share our stories and keep it to ourselves, the devil will always use it against us. 

In the 5 stages of grief, for the Christian, there is another stage. And that is called resurrection. We don’t just accept what happened to us or the mistakes we’ve made and move on. There is more! There is resurrection in it! Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. And now the devil can’t use it against you any longer. 

You stop being a victim when you share what you’ve gone through and you start using it for victory. 

2 Corinthians 1:4: "who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." ... When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us."

God comforts us in our all of our afflictions so we can in turn help comfort someone else. He doesn’t bring us through the trials and troubles in our life just to make us comfortable. He comforts us to make us comfort-able.  

Many feel betrayed by someone or even betrayed by God, but rescue often comes through the struggle. 

To get from the place of hurt to a place of healing or a place from “why me” to “what now?” is to see that “why” starts in Genesis 3. Eve believed the lie over God’s truth. And this is where everything that was right was now wrong and sin entered the world. The world broke at that moment. And since that time we’ve had to deal with the evil of this broken world. 

God gave us something very dangerous when he created us. He gave us free will. 

“The devil will try to fill in the gaps of what you don’t understand and poke holes in what you do.” He’s going to put thoughts in our mind about why bad things happen. 

Stop saying, “why me?” and start saying “what now?” When we can say we aren’t going to get stuck here, we are going to look for the gold in these dark places. 

Make sure to be looking through the right lens. 

One thing Sharon’s pastor always says is, “If you want to know what God is saying, look at what God has said. If you want to see what God is doing, look at what God has done.”

What was happening in the life of Joseph, where he probably felt very stuck in a bad story, was God taking him from one step to the next and was learning lessons along the way. 

Keep moving forward:

Forgive those who have hurt us.

Come out from the cloud of shame. 

Sometimes we think our pain has become our identity and who we are. We can allow the hurts and pain in our lives to become our identity so much that we say we want to get well, but we don’t really. Because what would we do without that pain? 

The very first step in healing from a difficult story is to say that you want to get well! Your story is not finished yet and we have the opportunity to give the story a better ending. 

Unforgiveness has the same picture as that person tied to your back. When you forgive someone you are cutting the person loose and you are saying you’re cutting yourself free!

More than anything, see that what you've gone through, God will use that. What does Romans 8:28 really mean? Take the mistakes and the hurt done to us, forgive those that have hurt us and come out from the cloud of shame, you’ll have that incredible redemptive story!