But I need lots of reminders, and I’m guessing you do to. That’s why - whether I’m sharing words on a page or a platform or from behind this podcast microphone, it’s my goal to always invite you to open God’s word with me, drink in the richness of the story, and then live like the story is true.
You can contact me here. (I'd love to hear from you!)
Shaped by God's Promises: Lessons from Sarah on Fear and Faith
{buy now}
But I need lots of reminders, and I’m guessing you do to. That’s why - whether I’m sharing words on a page or a platform or from behind this podcast microphone, it’s my goal to always invite you to open God’s word with me, drink in the richness of the story, and then live like the story is true.
You can contact me here. (I'd love to hear from you!)
Shaped by God's Promises: Lessons from Sarah on Fear and Faith
{buy now}
What sort of story are you telling with your life? We're all telling one story or another, but we're not all telling the true story. For some of us, our story is marked with fear or anxiety or doubt or apathy. But the Bible tells a truer, richer, more freeing story, and it invites us to live like that story is true. I started falling in love with this story, this truer, overarching story that the Bible tells when I was just a little girl. My dad has these pictures that I drew sitting in church listening to the sermons and trying to make sense of it all, and in my basement I still have some of the Bible story books that my parents read to me when I was small and when I opened those pages I remember how I was just drawn to those stories. And still today, when I open my Bible and read the stories that I have been reading for decades, i find them satisfying and clarifying. They speak to my heart. But I need lots of reminders, and I'm guessing that you do too. So that's why, whether I'm sharing words on a page or on a platform or from behind this podcast microphone, it's my call to always be inviting you to open God's Word with me and drink in the richness of the story and then live like the story is true. So I want to take just a few minutes and welcome you and tell you what to expect in this first season of live like it's true. So I'm an author and a speaker and I have seasons when I'm working on a new book or seasons when I'm out on the road doing a lot of speaking. So I'd like to break this podcast up by seasons, you know those in-between seasons when I have some time to work on it. So I'm expecting maybe two to three seasons a year. We'll see how it goes. But each of the seasons will be grouped by a section of true stories from the Bible. And in this introductory episode I'd just like to share a little of my heart and my goals for the podcast and let you know what to expect in each of the episodes. So I think we all enter life kind of looking down, navel gazing and not even realizing that there is this bigger overarching story about God.
Speaker 1:One time when my son was about five years old, we were driving in the car and the radio was on. The news was on and he said oh, mom, turn it up, i want to hear this part. I thought that's interesting. I never knew that he was listening to the sports from the backseat in the car, but I turned it up and the announcer is reporting on all of the major league wins and losses from the day before. And at the end he said with this great sigh of exasperation they never tell the score of the gutter pros. So the gutter pro gutter pros is a local gutter cleaning service And they had sponsored my son's little league team that year. So you know he would proudly wear his black gutter pro t-shirt to every little league game and he would swing the bat and run the bases And he fully expected to hear his team's score announced on the radio.
Speaker 1:Now it's natural and kind of funny for a five year old to think that his little league team is going to make the headlines. We all start out in life thinking of our little tiny paragraph of a life being the main story. But my son is 21 now. He he's a grown up and it wouldn't be so funny if he was still making his story The main story. Right, the main storyline is all about God. He is our creator. He created this world and he sustains it, and the whole world exists to proclaim his glory, and if we miss that, we're just going to be frustrated and disillusioned. We're going to be like that five year old saying I can't believe that they didn't put my score on the headlines. God wants us to know the bigger story that we are part of. He wants us to see ourselves in that story and to give the context for our lives, and he wants for us to know him personally.
Speaker 1:We lost my aunt Joy this past year And after her funeral my extended family came over and we all sat around our living room and just shared memories about her life, and joy was a special person And you know, we could have gone around the room and each listed a fact about her life, but it was far more satisfying for us to tell stories like the things that we remembered about her, that were funny or endearing, and that's because we knew her personally and we loved her. God could have given us a theology book explaining his character and abstract terms, but instead he gave us a book that was filled with stories, and I think it's partly because God wants for us to know him personally, not just know about him. Now, usually when we Western thinkers are trying to think or communicate about something as important as God, like what could be more important than God? right, we feel like we should talk about abstract ideas or construct arguments using logic. We might use an analogy or an illustration or something to try to explain God, but those are just our supporting ideas. They're not the main points. Right, we tend to think of stories as less sophisticated, but in the Middle East, it's just the opposite.
Speaker 1:Kenneth Bailey was a theology professor and a linguist, and he wrote that in the Middle East, from the beggar to the king, the primary method of creating meaning is through creative metaphor and story. So God chose to reveal himself through the Hebrew nation, and they were people who thought in stories. I think it's really super interesting that the Hebrew language only has about 8,000 words compared to English, which has over 100,000 words. Lois Tuberberg points out that in the Hebrew language, they have fewer words with more concrete ideas to express abstract things, so like, for instance, hebrew doesn't have the word stubborn. They don't have that word in their language, so instead they speak of being stiff-necked and instead of. They don't have a word for stingy either, so they speak of having a bad eye that can't even see the person next to you who is in need. So the Bible uses all of these colorful, concrete words and they hold a lot of meaning. Each of the words is very impactful And those words are used to tell concrete stories which introduce us to God and allow us to know Him personally. In our New Testament we get to meet Jesus, who is the exact representation of God. So when we watch what Jesus does and how He interacts with people like us, we get to know God personally.
Speaker 1:I love the stories of Jesus, and for about the past year or so, i've just been drenching my heart in these stories, partly because I was working on my book Comparison Girl Lessons from Jesus on Me Free Living in a Measure Up World. So these stories are just. I've been treasured them up for at least a year now, and so I decided for this first season that we will look at a collection of astonishing, jaw-dropping stories of Jesus. So what I love about the stories of Jesus is that, in a succinct way, they bundle up these beautiful, rich truths about God. I want you to picture one of the stories of Jesus like this little velvet pouch with a drawstring that has these precious gems about God's character tucked inside of the velvet pouch And when you learn the story, it's sort of like gathering up treasure and storing it up in your heart And then, anytime you want, you can open that pouch up and you can spread out the gems and you can look at them from different angles And the story is what holds them all together in my mind. You know, i can just package them up and store them up in my mind And the treasure, the gems, are so beautiful and so rich that you know we want to go back and examine them over and over. So one of my favorite things in the world is to talk with one of my friends about one of these stories. It's sort of like opening up one of those little velvet pouches and saying, hey, let's look at these gems together, because I think we just get so much more out of it when we're talking together versus just on our own.
Speaker 1:So what I did with season one is I invited several friends who love the Bible just as much as I do to come and talk through these stories with me. I learned so much from these conversations and I am just delighted to share them with you. So in episode one, kelly Needham and I talked about the true story on the roof. It's the story of the four friends who lowered their paralyzed friend through the roof and got him to Jesus. And then, in episode two, mary D'Amuth and I talked about the true story at the well. This is the longest recorded theological conversation that Jesus has with anyone in the Bible And he has it with, first of all, a woman, but also a woman who's not Jewish and who was a social outcast. Oh, i just love that story. There is so much there for us to look at.
Speaker 1:And then Erica Wiggenhorn and I talked about the true story at Simon's Table. It's the story about an awkward ugly crying moment with some terrible hospitality and then Jesus who does what nobody expects at the dinner party. It's an intriguing story with just so much depth. So in each episode my friend and I will talk through one of the stories and we'll think about what was astonishing about this situation, both back then and now. I think sometimes, you know, we get used to the stories or we're unaware of what made the things so unusual or unexpected back in Jesus's day. So you know the tone is conversational and I am definitely learning from each of my guests and I know that you're going to learn so much also.
Speaker 1:But the point is not just to learn about the story. The point is that the story would impact our lives. It's one thing to know the story. It's another thing to live like the story is true. So that's why I named this podcast Live Like It's True. At the end, after we talk through the story, we're going to discuss what does the story mean for us? What difference would it make if we lived like this story wasn't true, and what difference would it make if we lived like it was true? One other goal I have for this podcast is I want for us to be better storytellers. I want for us to know the stories and treasure them up, but be ready to share them with each other or with somebody who's never heard the story before.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I think we work so hard to take the gospel message and distill it down into this tidy little presentation that we can give somebody in one minute or less. But that's sometimes a lot to take in, right, if you have just a couple of minutes. I wonder if it would be more natural for us to just share one of these stories about Jesus If we want to tell others about our faith. I mean, these stories are interesting and they just naturally beg all of the questions that we're trying to answer when we try to fit everything into a little bite-sized gospel tract. And again, there's nothing wrong with the tract, but obviously God wanted us to have more than just a tract-sized document. He gave us stories and I think he meant for us to give the stories away.
Speaker 1:I do think it's very important for us to understand the big overarching story that the Bible tells, but I think it's also important for us to know and treasure up these individual stories of God's word.
Speaker 1:They're like these little bundled up pouches of jewels, but they weren't meant to be tucked away and kept in a safe place.
Speaker 1:No, they're meant to be shared.
Speaker 1:So to help us in our story treasuring and story sharing, i'm going to take a few minutes just to help us gather up some thoughts about either how to approach the stories in the Bible or how to give them away.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about, like, for instance, how the Bible does a lot of show don't tell you know in its communication, or we'll talk about irony in the Bible, or we'll learn what missionaries in other countries are doing and how they're using stories to tell people about God. Each of the episodes will last about 35 or 40 minutes, and at the end, i will encourage you to go and read the story in your Bible, because there is power in the Word of God and I don't want you to miss it. At the end of each episode, after we've talked through one of these amazing, astonishing stories, i'm going to invite you to live like the story is true. I'm so excited to get started with you as we launch this brand new podcast, so please feel free to reach out and let me know what you think, as together we seek to know the story, share the story and live like the story is true.