What’s Your Story?

Last week we looked at how Jesus is our Contemporary. Jesus speaks to us in our lives, the ones we are living. He speaks to us by the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. He speaks to us through our culture. He speaks to us through other people. He speaks to us through the Scriptures. Jesus speaks to us. If Jesus speaks to us, he also wants to speak through us.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1.8

A witness speaks on behalf of someone. You can be a witness for the prosecution. You can witness a great ballgame. You can witness to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. We are witnesses for Jesus Christ. We speak on his behalf. We recommend Him to all kinds of people.

But what should that witness look and sound like? What is the substance of our witness?
Our witness is mostly story. It is our story of what God has done in our lives through the grace and presence of Jesus Christ the Lord. We speak to what God has done on our behalf. Now, this witness will contain elements of scriptural truth, reasoning, even tradition and doctrine. But mostly our witness is our story. This is biblical witness – to tell the world what a living, personal God has done for you and others. If you read the Book of Acts you read about Paul’s conversion on three separate occasions – the first is the record of when and where it happened and the second two times are when Paul is witnessing to others. He simply told others how he met Jesus and how that forever changed him. Here is Paul writing to the Hebrews about life-changing faith:

“And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets – who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice . . .shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign enemies to flight. . .” Hebrews 11.32-34

And so on. What is Paul doing but telling the stories of faith recorded in the Scriptures? He is deliberately connecting those stories to his story. There is power in stories of faith. Through stories people hear how God is not just God of the past but of the present. He is living and active. God can speak to people through doctrine and argument, logic and reason, mathematics and biology. But the way God usually speaks to people is through Story.

“And Jesus told them many things in stories, saying: Listen. A farmer went out to sow his seeds. . .” Matthew 13.3


The fact that God speaks truth in stories is certainly a profound opportunity for the Gospel to connect with fresh power in our times and in this postmodern culture. Much has been made of research and trends suggesting that recent generations are not as swayed by classical Christian apologetics and doctrine as perhaps previous generations. The way to reach people today is through the witness of personal stories of salvation and new life!

There is a program on called Who Do You Think You Are? It features celebrities who through the show’s resources trace back their family history and find out things that they didn’t know or nobody knew about their story. They discover stories about their family’s slave past, or their role in the Civil War, or stories of the Holocaust or a link to royalty. It is a compelling narrative. It teaches something fundamental about who we are – we are, in part, the people whose stories have contributed to our story. I am my grandfather and father, my mother and sisters and brother, my little league coach, my camp counselor, my high school English teacher. They all wrote chapters in my book.

Everybody has a story. But not every story is a faith story. Jesus gives an example of a man who was not living a faithful story. He was prosperous but he was foolish and so he said to himself:

“Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
Luke 12.19

But in God’s eyes the man was a fool. He was living the wrong story. He was not dealing with reality. He, in fact, did not have much time left. His story, in this world, was soon ended.

Our stories will have a profound effect on our world view and vice versa. I think how we view the world, that is, what we consider to be real, “determines the orientation of everything else we think and do,” Dallas Willard writes. So like the farmer in Jesus’ story, there are many people who have to change their story, their worldview, or both. There are many people you and I know who are not living good stories. And I don’t mean exciting or dramatic stories as our culture defines it. I mean there are a lot of people that are not living stories full of faith. They are living stories not worthy of them as children of God.

Donald Miller muses on this and asks the question, “If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end of the movie when the guy drove off the lot. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie. . .The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo. . .

“But we spend our years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

No one would accuse Yukio Shige of not having meaning and purpose to his story. Shige, a retired detective in Japan, spends his time walking the the Tojinbo cliffs on the coast of the Sea of Japan, an area known for a great number of suicide attempts. If Shige spots someone who is considering jumping, he offers them a gentle “hello” and engages them in conversation. He says things like, “You’ve had a hard time up til now, haven’t you?” He touches them on the shoulder. He invites them for a cup of coffee back at his office. Back there he offers to make them a traditional rice dish with relish called mochi.

“When people come here and eat mochi, they remember their childhood – father, mother, siblings, hometown. They remember they’re not alone,” Shige says.

The ringtone on Shige’s cell phone is “Amazing Grace.” The man is literally saving lives by the story he is by grace now living. We may not have that dramatic an impact with our stories, but people may need to borrow our stories for awhile just to have a little faith. They need the encouraging word, the word of hope that we can give. Our stories may remind them that they’re not alone.

When I share my story I talk about my troubled relationship with my father that ended in grace. I talk about my grandfather who showed how good a man can be. I talk about Bruce, my Little League coach and Sunday school teacher who opened up the scriptures to me. Sometimes I talk about an English teacher or a pastor who saw gifts in me that I didn’t initially see. These people all helped make me who I am, at least the good stuff, and these people were all used by Lord to do his work. They are characters in a story that is not even really about me. The story might have my name attached to it, but the story is a Jesus story. It’s one he’s telling through me, in my life. It’s about him and his kingdom. My story is being caught up in the Big Story.

You’ve got a faith story to tell too. And there are people that need to hear it. They need to start living a better story and they may have to borrow a bit of yours to get started.

On our Communication Card we have these Next Steps:

Make a List of the Influential People In My Life – thank God, thank them.

Pray to Invite Jesus into my life as Savior and Lord – time to live a better story

Tell my Story to someone - write it down first if it helps, but above all, share it.

Invite a friend to worship with me – a first step maybe in a new chapter of someone’s life


Jesus wants to speak through us to people He loves and died for which he died.