My high school physics teacher was always better off topic. Don’t get me wrong. His physics mattered and had a real energy. Yet the man’s exceptional capacity to tell a good story about his college pranks and his eccentric professors had a greater pull on us. We ambushed him with questions about yesteryears, praying the topic of inertia would lie motionless in the background for the entire time.
English class was my favourite class. There, stories paraded center stage. I read my weight in books a few times over during my school years. Now, I’m a librarian and writer. Reading, you could say, is my bread and butter.
But last week I discovered a downfall of reading. Let me explain.
Last week, my church did a Bible Study called “Dangerous Prayers” on the YouVersion Bible App. It challenged us to pray dangerously and expect for God to move. “Search me. Bend me. Break me. Send me. Thy will be done.”
As I read along, sitting comfortably in my reclining chair, with my coffee and comfy socks on, I felt the window curtains blow back as Heaven’s Searchlight lasered in on my heart.
I had a choice.
I could sit there, sip, and think, “My, what a good truth. I would never have thought of that. This writer really knows how to craft a devotional.” I could bring my five star review to the spiritual book club. I could keep reading at an arm’s distance.
Or I could tell a better story with my life.
I could quit taking people’s word for it and start living to tell a story of my own. I believe God is calling me to more storytelling and less reading other people’s work. I want people to derail my normal jibber jabber to get to the good stuff about Jesus.
In fact, Jesus is our model storyteller.
All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day. – Matthew 13:34 (The Message)
Jesus took the truth of Heaven and told it in the lifestyle of earth. He lived his everyday, 9-5 Nazareth life in such a way that the hidden things of Heaven came to light. His life was the story of God’s Love in a human body.
He passed on the marvellous stories he heard from His Father. He said and did everything His Father told Him about.
How inspired would my story be if I listened to Jesus, who listens to the Father, who listens to the Spirit inside me? I think the reclining reading chair couldn’t hold me back from a life so full, so brave and adventurous, that I’d have a few real-life whoppers to tell.
Connect your little story to the Big Story going on in God’s Saga and watch sin lie motionless in the background. Your life’s story will matter and have the unstoppable energy of the Holy Spirit pulling others to Jesus. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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