Why Only God Stories?

During a snowstorm on February 8, 2015, I posted a picture on Facebook of a decorative box purchased from Hobby Lobby. The caption: We’re spending these icy days filling this box with our little family’s only God stories so we can tell our children about God’s faithfulness as they grow up!

As I write this post in 2023, that little box sits on the TV stand in our living room.

At the time of that post, our firstborn was only five months old. I had also been pouring over the Old Testament stories of the Israelites. I read those stories of God’s children through the lens of a new mother, so I was drawn to themes and patterns surrounding the back-and-forth faithfulness of the Israelites. What caused them to turn away? What could have prevented them from doing so?

The Israelites of the Old Testament had a pattern of forgetting God’s faithfulness despite experiencing his power in incredible ways. Their failure to remember always led to their failure to follow. It can be easy to assume their forgetfulness could never happen to us. Instead, I desired to do everything in my power to remember God’s faithfulness–not just for the Israelites, but his faithfulness in my life!

Then came Joshua 4.

⁴ So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, ⁵ and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, ⁶ to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ ⁷ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

Joshua 4:4-7

Did you catch it? God had commanded them to pick up these stones to serve as a sign among them. He commanded this so that the Israelites and their children would remember the faithfulness and power of God that took place at the Jordan.

Enter our box.

February 2015 marked the month our family refused to forget God’s faithfulness in our lives. From that day, we began documenting our personal Only God Stories to share with our children and, eventually, their children.

We have filled our box with stories that are only possible with God.

Stories of financial provision that defied all odds! Stories of loss that God used for our good and His glory. Stories of “coincidences” that can only be explained by divine intervention.

Not every story has been easy. Not every story had a happy ending. However, every story has been used for good.

In Genesis, Joseph says,

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Genesis 50:20

Joseph was able to look through the evil done to him and find the good God did with it. While not all of our stories have been easy, or even happy, looking at them through a Romans 8:28 lens allows us to see the good.

As for our family, we choose to see the good. As for our family, we choose to remember and never forget.

We have many Only God Stories that fill our box, but it is not because we are any more special than the next family. In fact, the most powerful stories in the Bible tend to happen to the least deserving. The unfaithful Israelites, murderers, thieves, and the list could keep going.

The reason our box is filled is not because we are special, but because we have taken the time to remember them.

This is why we are here and this is why we created Only God Stories.

What about you? What are your Only God Stories? We would love to hear your story and maybe even give you a platform to share it!