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Posts Tagged ‘story’

I Can Only Live My Story

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2010| 4 Comments »

Just live my story, that’s all I am asked to do. If I could keep it clear in my head that it’s my own journey that is mine to share, to correct, to adapt, to transform, and unfortunately, to also withhold, warp, or destroy, then I wouldn’t be so judgmental of others.

Romans 14:10, 12
Why do you criticize and pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you look down upon or despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. . . . And so each of us shall give an account of himself [give an answer in reference to judgment] to God. [Amplified]

God has the end of all the stories in hand. I cannot know what is in the heart of another person or their struggles or their understanding in this moment. Each person’s way carries its own challenges. Truly, who am I to say whether this one or that one is doing the best with what has been given to bear. We are all trying to figure it out. We are all trying to make the best of it.

These passages from Romans are actually an invitation to freedom. It is not for me to carry another’s journey. I can walk beside. I can live fully in my own understanding of a life in Christ and it is in that living that others might experience contact with love, hope, joy, etc. But it is not for me to drag the unwilling along my way. Nor is it for me to condemn their way (for the path could change in a moment).

To help another is simply to be present with that “sacred other.” To help another is to give access to my heart and soul. It is only my authentic self that can give life. It is only the Christ within who can touch a life.

Oh Lord God, may my account in that last day be a testimony of discovery: more of Christ and less of me.

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Hearing

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

One thing really gets my goat at home: not being heard. The kids tune me out and apparently, they do the same thing at school (What test? What homework? etc.). My husband is in his own world and even the dogs tune me out. Is it the messenger?

Romans 10:17
So faith comes by hearing [what is told], and what is heard comes by the preaching [of the message that came from the lips] of Christ (the Messiah Himself) [Amplified]

These verses of Romans 10 are often used to support the need for missionaries around the world. After all, they say, someone must go to preach the message, the good news, to all those unbelievers.

But the hearing part is just as essential to the equation. Why don’t people hear? Are they unready to hear? Is the message unclear or poorly presented? Is the message given in love or draped in fear?

Over the years, the messengers (ministers, preachers, missionaries, evangelists) have wrapped the good news into a variety of packages. As a result, we now have the “four spiritual laws,” Evangelism Explosion, Billy Graham Crusade, Seeker-sensitivity, Christian infotainment, Veggie Tales, contemporary, rock, and even hip-hop music, along with movies and multi-media, to name a few. All of these were created to make the “message that came from the lips of Christ” accessible.

But is it really all necessary? Have we possibly diluted the message? Or, have we lost the simplicity of the message?

Jesus came with a story. He spoke it and they listened. We do a greater service to the message of God if we simply tell our story as well. The story of God touching my life cannot be argued. I lived it, I walked it, and it’s mine.

People don’t usually tune out story unless it sounds false.When speaking the story of Christ touching me, it is important to be truthful and transparent. Truth resonates.

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And the Guards were Executed

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Acts 12:18
After Herod had a thorough search made for him [Peter] and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.

These four guys were the extras. You know, as in one of those huge lavish movies, there are tons of extras. They are nameless and virtually faceless. They have some small task and that is all. They get their one minute of screen time and that’s it.

These four guards are no different. This was their time and in the end, they are memorialized … they are to be remembered that they lost their lives in exchange for Peter’s freedom.

If I allowed free reign to my imagination, I could create entire families and scenarios for these guys. They had lives that were lived outside the prison walls of Herod’s fortress. Perhaps one was older, whose children were grown or another was a new recruit, given a special assignment.

What happened when they discovered Peter was missing? There were two on each side of Peter and two outside the locked cell door. The angel of light came, opened Peter’s shackles, told him to rise and dress and they walked out the door What were the guards doing? Surely they were not asleep. Were they mesmerized? Were they put into an unnatural trance? It was not until morning that the alarm sounded. What were they doing? Did they know sooner? Did they know that there death would come the next day?

I can’t help but consider that these guards, like the guards at Golgotha, may have come to a realization. This was a miracle and it was worked on behalf of a follower of Christ. Perhaps they became believers and died, not as executed guards, but as martyrs. Who knows? Perhaps their testimony at the cross examination to the miracle of Peter’s release was Herod’s last opportunity to accept Christ. Herod did not change.

What role will we play when it is our time? Can we trust God with our last moments… with our lives… with our deaths?

These men had a testimony. And their stories probably flew through Herod’s soldiers and servants. These guards were good, reliable men. And all four were witnesses to a miracle. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, their deaths did make a difference.

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Who is at my door?

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Acts 10:17, 20
While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate….”So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I [God] have sent them.”

The servants of the centurion, Cornelius, were the last people that Peter would expect to see at the door of the house where he was staying in Joppa. He hadn’t even processed the meaning of the vision he had with the great sheet coming down out of heaven filled with “unclean” foods for a Jew. In the vision, he heard plainly from the Holy Spirit, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” [vs 15] And not just once did he see and hear, but three times. And right on the heels of the vision, the gentiles come a-calling.

So, who is at my door? Who is the most unexpected guest? Certainly, if a Muslim terrorist came to my door and asked to hear about Jesus, I would be shocked. How could this be? Or what about a primitive from some tribe in a third world country or a homeless man or woman? A gay man or woman? A transvestite? How did they even know to come to me? How did they even hear about Jesus at all? And who am I to do anything else but invite them in?

God touches who God touches and it may surprise us along the way. I don’t think we should assume anything. It is God who changes a heart and it is only after the heart becomes soft that a person’s choices can change.

I think we need to stop creating cookie-cutter Christians and stop looking through the peephole before we open the door. Our job is simple: open the door and tell our story.

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Momentum of Faith

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Acts 5:14-16
Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number… Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed.

This kind of momentum is like a snowball. Once it gets going, there is no stopping it until it reaches the bottom of the hill. And even then, it keeps going as long as their is energy behind it.

This type of momentum is not peculiar to the time of the apostles. There have been equally amazing periods in our own recent history: The revivals sparked by Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley (1700’s), Charles Finney in 1821, Azuza Street (California) in 1906, Asbury College, Kentucky in 1970, the Toronto Blessing of 1994, and the Pensacola Outpouring also known as Brownsville in the late 1990’s, just to name a few.

People flock to these places from all over the world and all over the country, looking for signs and wonders, looking for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and most often looking to be healed (physically & emotionally).

We experience this phenomenon in smaller doses every day: if we’re “on a roll,” we want to keep going.

But how does momentum of this kind start? The apostles only did what they knew to do, what they felt called to do. They were not trying to create a maelstrom. They just wanted everyone to know what had happened… and that Jesus was coming back. They had a natural urgency in their message.

Marketing people try to create urgency in whatever it is they sell: “gotta have it… gotta have it now.”

I think it begins with commitment, passion, and singularity of purpose. And of course, the anointing of God’s Holy Spirit, which cannot be bought, sold, or replicated.

In our times, we call this “viral” marketing. Some people try to create viral strategies through guilt, sending “touching” messages via email and challenging the receiver to “pass it on.” But that’s not how it works. When an authentic message reaches my heart, I don’t need someone to tell me to “pass it on.” I can’t wait!

Christ’s message has been around for 2000 years… the only thing that gives it momentum is the story in which it lives and thrives: my story… your story.

The momentum can start today…

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Witnessing a Miracle

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Acts 3:15
You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. [Peter to the crowd in Solomon’s Colonnade]

There is some responsibility that comes with witnessing a miracle. A miracle is not a particularly private matter. It is most powerful and amazing for the beneficiary of the miracle, of course, but there is also power in the story. The witness must tell what he/she saw, heard, or felt. This testimony spreads the wonder of that miracle.

Miracles are not accidental. They are intentionally divine.

How can we know why a miracle occurs one day and not the next? We cannot. It’s not our job to figure that out. It’s just our job to report.

When the disciples witnessed the living Christ after Calvary, they could not stop themselves from telling the story. They told everyone they encountered and eventually, those stories cost them their lives. After some years, all of those firsthand witnesses were gone and the next generation of followers were telling the story second and third hand and on into the hundreds of thousands of retellings. We will never know how embellished the stories have become … or worse, what fantastic elements of the story have been lost. In any case, the essence remains the same: Christ died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

One of the reasons the Jews continued their traditions of feast days and holy days was to relive, retell, and remember the miraculous stories of their own captivity and salvation.

If we don’t speak the stories, they are lost. We forget. Even a great miracle, over time, can become lost.

In my own life I have survived automobile accidents inexplicably; I have seen dramatic healings; I have received money “in the nick of time” to meet a financial need; I have heard prophetic utterances that revealed truths out of my past that could not have been known otherwise. In most of these cases, I confess, I have stopped telling the stories.

Forgive me Lord. From this day forward, I accept the responsibility of the witness. And when the next miracle blazes across my path again, I will remember. I will tell the story. I will be faithful to your trust.

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Out of This World

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , on September 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

John 18:36
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

If one of us from the 21st century was catapulted back in time, we might encounter some small understanding of the differences between Jesus and the “world” in which he found himself. His appearance in human history was a great turning point. His ministry time was spent trying to explain, through teaching, stories, actions, demonstrations, miracles, and transformations, what his kingdom was like. For some people, it continued to be a “foreign language.”

Becoming a true follower of Christ requires some “out of the box” thinking. I think we have really downplayed his supernatural Self. What would happen if Jesus showed up in our century? How would he convince anyone that he was not of this world… that He was the Son of God… that he was the king of another kingdom?

The first thing he did was live among the people for some thirty years. He learned the “ways of the land.”

In the end, he did a very simple thing: he built relationships and told stories. He accepted people where they were and shared his insights with them. He even healed some of them. And each one, either through a story they heard, a touch, or a healing, each one was sent out to tell what he or she had heard, saw or felt.

We all respond differently to what we experience. Each story, each testimony, each image, and each word we share is part of the tapestry of Christ’s presence on earth. Jesus’s kingdom is all about potential: a mustard seed, a treasure hidden in a field, a mystery, a fisherman’s net, a small child, a banquet. Each one is a word picture for another way of living… another kingdom.

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