SPEAKER_02: A couple of weeks ago, I was driving my son to his baseball game on Saturday morning, and as we were driving, we passed a woman walking on the sidewalk, and she was wearing a t-shirt that said in big letters on the back living proof of a loving God.
SPEAKER_02: Living proof of a loving God.
SPEAKER_02: And I saw that and it captured me.
SPEAKER_02: And I think it was because this was clearly not a woman who had a beach house in Cayucas or something like that.
SPEAKER_02: By all outward appearances, she had not had an easy life.
SPEAKER_02: And yet she woke up that morning, and that was the shirt that she chose to put on.
SPEAKER_02: And I just I saw that and I wanted to know her story.
SPEAKER_02: Who was she?
SPEAKER_02: What had she seen?
SPEAKER_02: What caused her to consider herself someone loved by God?
SPEAKER_02: Where had he brought beauty out of the ashes in her life?
SPEAKER_02: This summer we've been exploring the power of words.
SPEAKER_02: And the topic that Travis gave me is the power of testimony.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm gonna be honest, when Travis texted me with that topic, I was unenthusiastic.
SPEAKER_02: Um, more specifically, I texted him back, I said, I feel very unqualified and unequipped for that topic.
SPEAKER_02: And that's because if you're not familiar with in Christian circles, the word testimony often has a specific meaning.
SPEAKER_02: It's like the story of how Jesus saved you.
SPEAKER_02: And I've heard some amazing testimonies, including here in this church.
SPEAKER_02: I've heard stories of people caught in cycles of addiction, crying out to Jesus from the bathroom floor and him rescuing them, pulling them out.
SPEAKER_02: I've heard of dreams and visions.
SPEAKER_02: I've heard stories that make you praise God and just marvel at his mercy for those who are far from him.
SPEAKER_02: But those are not my story.
SPEAKER_02: My story is not dramatic.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, apart from the absolute truth that every one of us is a sinner in desperate need of God, my story is not one of like a 180-degree turnaround or something like that.
SPEAKER_02: I I was born in the church.
SPEAKER_02: I honestly don't know a time when I didn't know God.
SPEAKER_02: Um I never rebelled, I never wandered from the faith, really, haven't had many doubts.
SPEAKER_02: And so, like honestly, many of you probably hope that your kids have my story.
SPEAKER_02: Um that's why I I felt very unqualified to tackle this topic, and that's why I told Travis, and he responded, I know.
SPEAKER_02: That's what qualifies you.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, challenge accepted.
SPEAKER_02: Um, so today I am going to try and justify his faith in me, and we'll see.
SPEAKER_02: When faced with a topic that I felt unprepared for, I did what I usually do.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, okay, let me see what the Bible says about this.
SPEAKER_02: So I turned to the back of my Bible, and then uh I looked up words like testimony and testify and tell, and I found those places, and I found where like I know that God repeatedly is telling his people to remember the stories of his salvation, to tell them.
SPEAKER_02: And so I looked all that up and and I came away actually surprised.
SPEAKER_02: Now, what I was looking for was there.
SPEAKER_02: It absolutely, God uh is really important that we tell each other our stories.
SPEAKER_02: And that is a major emphasis in scripture, but rising along rising up right alongside it, in many of the same places, I found another emphasis: the command to teach the future generations the laws and commandments of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Indeed, all throughout Scripture, I found that this dual emphasis of teach and tell to be the twin pillars of what it means to proclaim the faith that we've been handed.
SPEAKER_02: The power of our testimony is not just story, but story and doctrine together, the head and the heart that declares God's power and glory to a watching world.
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, that's what I found.
SPEAKER_02: So that's what I'm gonna bring you today.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, first, I want to show you that this dual emphasis is found in Scripture.
SPEAKER_02: Then I'm gonna kind of explore why do I think it's so important that we keep them together and not lose one for the other?
SPEAKER_02: And finally, we're gonna explore what this looks like for us here at Radiant.
SPEAKER_02: But before we begin, let's pray.
SPEAKER_02: Lord God, as we dig into your word, as we come before you this morning, would you speak to us?
SPEAKER_02: Lord, I ask that you would speak your words through me.
SPEAKER_02: God, that we would each hear what you have to say to us.
SPEAKER_02: Lead us and guide us, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We want to proclaim who you are faithfully in the world.
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Now, this past year, we've been journeying through the book of Exodus as a church, and when I began to think of this topic, I immediately began to remember how Moses called on the people to remember what God has done.
SPEAKER_02: That's all throughout the books of the law.
SPEAKER_02: And in Deuteronomy 6, which is Moses' final instructions to the people of Israel before he dies, they're just about to enter the promised land.
SPEAKER_02: He gives them the most famous commandment in the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_02: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
SPEAKER_02: And these words I command you today shall be on your heart.
SPEAKER_02: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and you when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise.
SPEAKER_02: These laws and commandments, teach them, speak them over and over every day, all around you.
SPEAKER_02: Speak what I have taught you, and teach others.
SPEAKER_02: But then in the same chapter, towards the end, he says, When your son asks you in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?
SPEAKER_02: What do they mean?
SPEAKER_02: Why do we do it?
SPEAKER_02: Then you shall say to your son, We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes.
SPEAKER_02: And he brought us out of there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day.
SPEAKER_02: Notice how the teaching and the story they go hand in hand.
SPEAKER_02: You are to teach your children God's words.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because he rescued us and saved us, and he is our God.
SPEAKER_02: This continues on.
SPEAKER_02: Look at the Psalms.
SPEAKER_02: The Psalms are full of both teaching and telling.
SPEAKER_02: There are plenty of psalms that tell personal stories of God's redemption.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 73 tells how the psalmist almost stumbled into cynicism, but God saved him from it.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 40 is a proclamation of the way God personally delivered him.
SPEAKER_02: I waited patiently for the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: He inclined me and heard my cry.
SPEAKER_02: There are psalms like 105 and 106, which retell the story of God's salvation in Israel.
SPEAKER_02: And there's others that direct the listeners to tell the generations, tell what God has done, tell the story.
SPEAKER_02: But then there are also psalms that praise the goodness of learning his commandments, like Psalm 119.
SPEAKER_02: And Psalm 1, which tells us that blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
SPEAKER_02: Then there are other psalms that make direct teaching statements, theological statements about who God is for the purpose of instruction and worship.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 103.
SPEAKER_02: Both are catalysts to praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: And this isn't just in the Old Testament either.
SPEAKER_02: In the New Testament, too, it continues this dual approach to declaring the gospel and the good news of God.
SPEAKER_02: On the one hand, you have the books of the Gospels and Acts, which where the apostles tell the stories of Jesus so that we can meet him personally and see how he transformed the lives of those who encountered him.
SPEAKER_02: The apostle John says that he wrote his gospel so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
SPEAKER_02: And Luke says something similar.
SPEAKER_02: They thought that their testimony to what Jesus did and how their own lives were changed by this would be powerful evidence for our own belief.
SPEAKER_02: Yet at the same time, John, who wrote the story, John, also wrote letters like 1 John, where he writes, This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
SPEAKER_02: He's not just using his testimony to tell a story, but to teach, to show us, here's what is true about Jesus, here's what it is like.
SPEAKER_02: And look at the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_02: He is known for his sermons and his letters that are full of rich, complex theology about who Jesus is, what his death and resurrection accomplished, and what our lives should look like in response to that.
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of theology in there.
SPEAKER_02: And yet we see in Acts that he was very quick to tell his own story of how he opposed God and that Jesus literally knocked him from his horse and blinded him and saved him.
SPEAKER_02: This story was a powerful part of who he was.
SPEAKER_02: And this dual emphasis on teaching about God on one hand and telling the story of his action on the other is the true power of testimony.
SPEAKER_02: And my last piece of evidence for that is the Bible itself.
SPEAKER_02: God chose to reveal himself to the world through his written word.
SPEAKER_02: And what did he choose to do?
SPEAKER_02: Did he give us a bunch of rules and statements about who he is?
SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, actually, partly.
SPEAKER_02: Roughly a third of the Bible is non-narrative prose, it's laws and proverbs and wisdom, literature, theology, and commandments.
SPEAKER_02: But another third is narrative, stories, and another third of it is poetry.
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, God himself thinks there is something uniquely powerful about this double-barreled approach to revealing himself.
SPEAKER_02: Now, why is that?
SPEAKER_02: What is so powerful about doctrine and story working together?
SPEAKER_02: I would argue that they are so powerful together because they mutually reinforce one another.
SPEAKER_02: Each covers the other's shortcomings, and each helps lead us deeper into the other.
SPEAKER_02: Let me show you what I mean.
SPEAKER_02: First of all, stories are powerful.
SPEAKER_02: We know that you've probably been deeply impacted by somebody else's story.
SPEAKER_02: Every culture, every people has stories that guide them.
SPEAKER_02: And on a simpler, more surface level, uh look at look at the marketers, the advertisers, the ones who want to get mut your money out of your wallet.
SPEAKER_02: What do you know?
SPEAKER_02: Have you noticed that every brand has on their website or even on their product themselves a sec a section that says our story?
SPEAKER_02: They want to bring you in.
SPEAKER_02: My single favorite example of this uh is an advertisement out of Argentina.
SPEAKER_02: So I just want to show this to you because it's my favorite one.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lie.
SPEAKER_02: What does the story of that marriage have to do with Coca-Cola?
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
SPEAKER_02: All right, like it but it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_02: Like they they roped us in with a story of the of this family, and then like, and they just slapped a Coca-Cola sticker on the end.
SPEAKER_02: And it works.
SPEAKER_02: Like they wouldn't do it if they didn't.
SPEAKER_02: Like, like it or not, your feelings about Coca-Cola are probably a little more positive after having watched that than they were before.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry I did that to you.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we live in an age and in a culture that for the especially for the last 300 years, we love to think that we make our decisions and guide our life by reason.
SPEAKER_02: But it's just not true.
SPEAKER_02: Author Jonathan Haidt uses a metaphor of the writer and the elephant, where the writer is our conscious reasoning, our sense of I'm in control, our rational deliberation.
SPEAKER_02: And the elephant is our intuition, our emotions, and our affections.
SPEAKER_02: The writer thinks he's in charge and can direct the elephant.
SPEAKER_02: But who really is providing the power and the ultimate determination of where we're going?
SPEAKER_02: If that elephant decides it wants to go somewhere, what is the writer gonna do about it?
SPEAKER_02: Stories shape the elephant.
SPEAKER_02: Our emotions, our intuitions, our loves.
SPEAKER_02: And this happens because stories are specific and concrete and personal.
SPEAKER_02: You probably recognize some things in that commercial, like that connects, right?
SPEAKER_02: They give us clear vision for what is possible and what things could look like.
SPEAKER_02: They place us into it and engage our imagination.
SPEAKER_02: C.S.
SPEAKER_02: Lewis said that stories help ideas steal past the watchful dragons of our conscious minds and they change our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a good thing, by the way.
SPEAKER_02: This isn't bad.
SPEAKER_02: God made us this way.
SPEAKER_02: We are not brains in a meat suit, okay?
SPEAKER_02: We are souls living embodied lives meant to live in God's world.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible shows us that the whole universe is a story.
SPEAKER_02: Story is the heart of creation.
SPEAKER_02: It is good that we feel stories with such power.
SPEAKER_02: But it's also true that stories can lie, stories can be hijacked.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we saw that with the Coca-Cola commercial.
SPEAKER_02: But it's also true that when we tell stories, they're shaped and pointing toward what we think is true.
SPEAKER_02: When that may or may not be the case.
SPEAKER_02: Whether unintentionally or intentionally, stories can communicate what is not true.
SPEAKER_02: And the more we hear and listen to stories, the more we're shaped by them.
SPEAKER_02: Be very careful what you're feeding your elephant.
SPEAKER_02: I remember when my son was little, he loved Thomas the Tank Engine.
SPEAKER_02: And we would show him episodes, and that would be on all the time.
SPEAKER_02: And as I saw them back to back, uh I started to feel a little uneasy.
SPEAKER_02: Because I saw that it was clear that the Isle of Sodor has a very specific picture of what it means to have worth and dignity.
SPEAKER_02: All Thomas wants in the world is to be a really useful engine.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you aren't useful and productive, you're worthless.
SPEAKER_02: And that's not true.
SPEAKER_02: That's not what God says.
SPEAKER_02: Similarly, I don't think our culture's obsession with rebelling against authority is biblical.
SPEAKER_02: God actually has a high view of authority.
SPEAKER_02: But when my daughters are watching Wicked, and we get to the climax, and Alphabet starts singing about becoming unlimited, dang it, I want to defy gravity too.
SPEAKER_02: I'm right there, right there with it.
SPEAKER_02: Stories are immensely powerful.
SPEAKER_02: And so we we desperately need guardrails because the Bible teaches us that our heart on its own is deceitful, it's desperately wicked, and that it's deep enough that we can't even fully know it.
SPEAKER_02: Stories shape us.
SPEAKER_02: But the Bible tells us do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
SPEAKER_02: Paul tells us to test everything, hold fast that which is good.
SPEAKER_02: And the Psalms tell us to meditate on God's law day and night.
SPEAKER_02: We need instruction.
SPEAKER_02: We need to learn and meditate on and teach good theology, the true doctrines of God.
SPEAKER_02: Doctrine and theology help us to grow and mature so that we're ready for spiritual meat, not just milk.
SPEAKER_02: And so we're not tossed around on the waves of doubt and culture and passions.
SPEAKER_02: And I know that some of you are here thinking, you hear the word doctrine, and you think of empty, repeated words.
SPEAKER_02: You hear theology, and you think of dry, dusty books and church people arguing about things that don't even matter.
SPEAKER_02: Full heads and cold hearts.
SPEAKER_02: So I want to attempt briefly to give you a vision for it.
SPEAKER_02: Recently, I read C.S.
SPEAKER_02: Lewis's book, Mere Christianity, and I was captured by the way he talked about it.
SPEAKER_02: He tells about a time he gave a talk to the Royal Air Force, and an officer pulled him aside afterwards and said, I've no use for all that theology stuff, but I'm a religious man too.
SPEAKER_02: I know there's a God.
SPEAKER_02: I felt him out alone in the desert at night.
SPEAKER_02: The tremendous mystery.
SPEAKER_02: And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him.
SPEAKER_02: To anyone who's met the real thing, they all seem so petty and unreal.
SPEAKER_02: Is that you?
SPEAKER_02: Have you encountered God in a real way in your life?
SPEAKER_02: You felt his presence and his love, and when you hear people throwing around words like sanctification or inaugurated eschatology or penal substitutionary atonement, you're like, that is just a giant exercise in missing the point.
SPEAKER_02: Here's how Lewis responded.
SPEAKER_02: He says, in a sense, I quite agreed with that man.
SPEAKER_02: I think he probably had a real experience of God in the desert.
SPEAKER_02: And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, he really was turning from something real to something less.
SPEAKER_02: Lewis went on to compare this to standing on a beach, looking out, seeing the horizon, watching the waves crashing out, smelling the sea air, and then turning from that and looking at a map.
SPEAKER_02: You are turning from something real to something less real.
SPEAKER_02: The map is just a bunch of colored paper.
SPEAKER_02: But, he says, you have to realize that the map is based on what thousands of people have found by sailing the real ocean.
SPEAKER_02: It has masses of experience behind it, just as real as yours.
SPEAKER_02: And while your experience is just a single glimpse, the map integrates it all together.
SPEAKER_02: And secondly, if you want to do more than just walk on the beach, you need the map.
SPEAKER_02: If you want to sail to England, you can't do that without a map.
SPEAKER_02: You see, as powerful as stories are, and particularly personal stories and personal experiences, as powerful and true as they are, they're limited.
SPEAKER_02: They are a particular snapshot that's open to personal interpretation.
SPEAKER_02: And theology is like the Map.
SPEAKER_02: Doctrines are less exciting and less real than mountaintop experiences.
SPEAKER_02: They are not God.
SPEAKER_02: They are like, but they are like a kind of map based on the experiences of thousands of people digging into Scripture, into God's words, who really were in touch with God more than you and me.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: And if you want to go any further, you must use the map.
SPEAKER_02: You see, what happened to that man in the desert, it may have been real and exciting, but nothing comes of it.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't go anywhere.
SPEAKER_02: You will not get from New York to London by just looking at the waves.
SPEAKER_02: And you will not get eternal life by just experiencing God in nature.
SPEAKER_02: Teaching provides a map.
SPEAKER_02: Teaching gives principles and patterns and paths that we can follow.
SPEAKER_02: They lead somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: They are a foundation we can build on.
SPEAKER_02: Teaching isn't everything, though.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you may have been able to tell from my personality, between the telling and teaching, I fall off on the teaching side, okay?
SPEAKER_02: That's my bias.
SPEAKER_02: And I think the jump from head to heart is not nearly as far as some people suppose.
SPEAKER_02: But even I have to admit that there is a jump.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: That cultures who prioritize doctrine and theology above everything else often struggle with emotions and with engaging the affections, which are a very real part of how God made us.
SPEAKER_02: You see, teaching and doctrines are abstract and stories are concrete.
SPEAKER_02: Doctrines are not personal in the way that stories are.
SPEAKER_02: Teaching and telling are better together.
SPEAKER_02: So my last slide has another arrow.
SPEAKER_02: We don't want to be a church that just sits on the beach looking at the waves.
SPEAKER_02: We also don't want to be a church that locks ourselves away in the study, pouring over maps and just dreaming.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Let's be a church that grabs the map and sets sail.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Let's meet our God in ever-deepening reality.
SPEAKER_02: Sound good?
SPEAKER_02: Good.
SPEAKER_02: Now, this is a sermon series on the power of words, and the call to us is to be a church that puts these into practice by teaching and telling, all of us.
SPEAKER_02: All right?
SPEAKER_02: We must teach the truth and we must tell our stories.
SPEAKER_02: And we need to do that both inside and outside the church.
SPEAKER_02: First, we need to teach inside the church.
SPEAKER_02: A true love of God should drive us and want to know more about Him.
SPEAKER_02: Let's help each other toward maturity.
SPEAKER_02: So many of us are walking around with a haphazard theology, a hand-drawn map, okay, that's pulled together from scraps of sermons, from pop culture, from our own desires and ideas.
SPEAKER_02: Let's teach and learn so that our beliefs can become organized and coherent, centered on scripture and the Christian faith and able to deal with deep questions.
SPEAKER_02: You see, the modern American church that we're a part of has been in a crisis of deconstruction for several decades.
SPEAKER_02: I would bet that you know someone, maybe a friend of yours, maybe a son or daughter, maybe you yourself who has wrestled with questions and doubts and turned away from the faith.
SPEAKER_02: I remember reading a blog post a couple years ago from a well-known worship leader who had deconstructed, and he wrote something like this He said, I had all kinds of questions about how a good God could send people to hell or let innocent children suffer abuse and violence, and no one in the church was talking about this.
SPEAKER_02: I read that and it made me so sad.
SPEAKER_02: Because it may have been true that nobody in his church was talking about it, but the church has been talking about it for thousands of years.
SPEAKER_02: These are not new objections.
SPEAKER_02: I want to tell you plainly and clearly: if you are here and you have questions or doubts about what Christianity teaches or what we believe, you are not unique and you are not alone.
SPEAKER_02: There are real Christians, far smarter and in touch with God than you or me, who have a who have really wrestled with the same issues you are.
SPEAKER_02: There are absolutely answers, okay?
SPEAKER_02: There are.
SPEAKER_02: You just might need to look beyond your immediate circle to find them.
SPEAKER_02: We as a church, as Radiant Church, we need to open our mouths and teach because we don't live in simple times for simple beliefs.
SPEAKER_02: And we never have.
SPEAKER_02: But the good news is that Christianity is not a simple religion.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: God can handle your questions.
SPEAKER_02: All of them.
SPEAKER_02: Now, we not only need to teach inside the church, we also need to tell inside the church.
SPEAKER_02: Let's tell each other our stories of God's love and faithfulness, because even though we may know something, we'll have a hard time believing it unless we see it lived out.
SPEAKER_02: This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls our social imaginary.
SPEAKER_02: Social imaginary describes how what we believe, what we believe is possible, is limited by what we can imagine.
SPEAKER_02: And what we can imagine is determined by the social environment where we live in.
SPEAKER_02: So watching TV and spending time online and interacting with our coworkers makes it hard to believe that there's anything beyond the now, anything worthwhile beyond your next vacation or the next weekend, or how big or new or fancy your house or your car or your phone is.
SPEAKER_02: If the only stories we ever hear are from these sources, we literally won't be able to believe that things like faithful suffering or miraculous intervention are even possible.
SPEAKER_02: But God is at work.
SPEAKER_02: And we need to hear each other's stories.
SPEAKER_02: We need to hear stories of God's faithfulness and suffering so we together can have courage to face disability and aging and miscarriage and death and grief.
SPEAKER_02: Our children, our young people are living in a society that tells them to pursue their own pleasure and make no commitments.
SPEAKER_02: And we they need to hear stories of faithful marriages and families in all their messy detail.
SPEAKER_02: I know there's messy details there, but they need to hear those stories to hear that such things are beautiful and possible and worthwhile.
SPEAKER_02: We need to hear stories of contentment and provision and peace in our brothers and sisters to combat the stories of more, more, more and get, get, get that our culture tells us all the time.
SPEAKER_02: I remember I was here, I think I was sitting like right around there, uh, when Mike Young gave a preached a sermon and shared how he had felt God telling him to confess his pornography use to his wife and how hard that was, but how God was faithful to that, to him.
SPEAKER_02: And I heard that and I just I saw what was possible and it led me to go and confess to my wife.
SPEAKER_02: And God's used that to set me free from something I've been in bondage to for a decade.
SPEAKER_02: I've heard Travis and Monica and many others here tell stories of miraculous physical healing in their lives.
SPEAKER_02: Things I never would have thought to pray for before, and it's led me to pray bold prayers, big prayers in my own life with faith.
SPEAKER_02: And if I'm being honest, I haven't received the answers I wanted for those.
SPEAKER_02: I haven't received miraculous healing in my own life, and that's where theology comes in to give me a framework for God's sovereignty and the and patience and faithful suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Teaching and telling, working together.
SPEAKER_02: Let's get good at telling each other our stories so that we can become a people comfortable and skilled and willing to tell those stories outside the church, too.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go to our coworkers and our friends and the people we meet, and let's expand their social imaginaries.
SPEAKER_02: Let's show them from our own lives how Jesus changes destinies, how he rescues us from the bondage of sin, and how his spirit gives freedom and identity in him.
SPEAKER_02: We are all living proof of a loving God, and the world needs to hear it.
SPEAKER_02: That means you, your story matters.
SPEAKER_02: We've all seen some stuff.
SPEAKER_02: The more I've lived, the more I've talked to people, I've seen that there is not one of us.
SPEAKER_02: No matter how put together they look, how well off they seem to be, there's not, there's no one who isn't carrying scars and open wounds inside.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, from living in this broken world and from contributing to it.
SPEAKER_02: Your story is not my story.
SPEAKER_02: Who knows what someone else needs to hear?
SPEAKER_02: What piece of the way that God has rescued you will lead someone else to realize maybe he can do that for me too?
SPEAKER_02: Earlier I told you that my own story is not dramatic.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not.
SPEAKER_02: But that doesn't mean that God didn't intercept my life and bring me to him.
SPEAKER_02: I have my own pains and wanderings and my own desperate need for his grace and salvation.
SPEAKER_02: For me, I grew up in school and I was always known as the smart kid.
SPEAKER_02: I was in every gait class, I had the most academic pentaphon medals.
SPEAKER_02: Uh in our senior yearbook, I was uh I was voted most likely to be the next Bill Gates, which if you look at my bank account now, it's hilarious.
SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, I believed it, and I loved it.
SPEAKER_02: I remember when I was in elementary school reading a book where and it describes this character and says that this character unleashed his mighty brain.
SPEAKER_02: And I remember reading that sentence and being like, Yeah, that's me.
SPEAKER_02: And then in my sophomore year of high school, God brought me into a group of guys that I went out to lunch with them and I heard them arguing about God.
SPEAKER_02: And that blew my mind.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, wait, what?
SPEAKER_02: God is something you can think about.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I grew up in the church, but I I was I had a Sunday school stories and books of the Bible memorized.
SPEAKER_02: It never occurred to me that you could love God with your mind.
SPEAKER_02: And I dove in.
SPEAKER_02: I started reading theology and listening to lectures and debates, and just became fascinated by who God is.
SPEAKER_02: God used all that love of reading and learning that was a very real part of me, and he directed it toward himself, and he became so real to me.
SPEAKER_02: This was a God worth following.
SPEAKER_02: This was a God that I could follow with my life.
SPEAKER_02: It changed my life forever.
SPEAKER_02: And that mattered because I graduated high school and I went off to college to study engineering, and I quickly found out that I had been a big fish in a small pond.
SPEAKER_02: I was bright, sure, but I had limits that I didn't know I had before.
SPEAKER_02: There were levels of math that I didn't understand, and yet my classmates could.
SPEAKER_02: There were calculations and ideas that I just couldn't fit together.
SPEAKER_02: I failed my dynamics class.
SPEAKER_02: I fa I straight up failed a class.
SPEAKER_02: And I can guarantee you that if God had not interrupted me in high school, this would have crushed me.
SPEAKER_02: Everything I knew about myself had been bound up in my intelligence.
SPEAKER_02: So this would have been an existential crisis.
SPEAKER_02: I I mean, I would have made it work.
SPEAKER_02: I would have studied, I would have passed the classes, I would have done it.
SPEAKER_02: But everything from then on would have been carrying just a massive sense of inadequacy, overcompensating.
SPEAKER_02: I would have doubled down on arrogance to like keep everybody away and not getting too close.
SPEAKER_02: But that didn't happen.
SPEAKER_02: Because God had shown me that I was his, that I was secure and he was plenty worth following with whatever piece of intelligence he had chosen to give me.
SPEAKER_02: When I look back at my own story, I see God's subtle and deeply gracious redirecting of my idols.
SPEAKER_02: He saved me from myself before I even knew I needed it.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know who here needs to hear that.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know who's wrapped up in an identity you feel trapped in because without it, who would you be?
SPEAKER_02: I can tell you that God is enough.
SPEAKER_02: He has you.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps there's someone here who grew up with a Sunday school God like I did and needs to hear that God is bigger and deeper and wilder and richer and better than anything you're currently imagining.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is enough for your biggest thoughts and your deepest needs.
SPEAKER_02: What's your story?
SPEAKER_02: I guarantee you that someone here needs to hear it.
SPEAKER_02: When they hear what God has done for you, they can begin to believe that He can do it for them too.
SPEAKER_02: And finally, we not only need to tell outside the church, we also need to teach outside the church as well.
SPEAKER_02: If we want to effectively proclaim good news to those who are captive, we need to be able to explain the gospel and what it means to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And we need to be prepared for real intellectual objections that keep someone from being able to cross into faith.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they think that becoming a Christian means checking their brain at the door and ignoring science.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe their view of God is undesirable because what they were taught as a child in Sunday school.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they struggle with the idea of a good God sending people to hell.
SPEAKER_02: These are real objections and real concerns, and it would be wrong to dismiss them.
SPEAKER_02: While no one gets argued into faith, as a church, we do need to be prepared to teach, ready with grace and humility to explain and persuade and reason.
SPEAKER_02: God's ancient words and his way of being ready to speak with reasons and with stories, to teach and to tell is just as powerful today as it ever has been.
SPEAKER_02: Let's be a people ready to do both.
SPEAKER_02: So, how do we do that?
SPEAKER_02: As we close, I don't want to leave you here with just ideas.
SPEAKER_02: I want to give you a couple ways you can step into this today.
SPEAKER_02: Let's get practical.
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about how we get better at teaching.
SPEAKER_02: First, parents, teach your children the ways of God.
SPEAKER_02: That is not optional.
SPEAKER_02: That is a direct commandment from God.
SPEAKER_02: Our Sunday school classes, they do their best and they're a help, but it is ultimately not their responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: God says it is your job to teach your children his ways.
SPEAKER_02: The good news is that there are plenty of things out there to do.
SPEAKER_02: There are plenty of books that you can read to your kids.
SPEAKER_02: When you learn something about God, tell them.
SPEAKER_02: Share with them what you're seeing as you read the Bible on the way home from church.
SPEAKER_02: Teach them something that stuck out to you from the sermon.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be complicated or difficult, but it does have to be.
SPEAKER_02: Alright?
SPEAKER_02: For everyone, everyone here, let's learn.
SPEAKER_02: The thing about teach and tell is that there are opposites that will help you improve.
SPEAKER_02: The opposite of teach and tell is listen and learn.
SPEAKER_02: If you're here today thinking, I don't know what I would teach or how to explain what I believe, that's okay.
SPEAKER_02: You're in a great place.
SPEAKER_02: The starting point for all of us is humility.
SPEAKER_02: We don't know much.
SPEAKER_02: The more aware of that you are, the better a place you're in.
SPEAKER_02: But let's be prepared with reasons for what you believe.
SPEAKER_02: Investigate reality and ask questions.
SPEAKER_02: Don't settle for simple sayings.
SPEAKER_02: God gave you a mind to explore Him with.
SPEAKER_02: Use it.
SPEAKER_02: If you really are wondering how to learn more about God, let me give you a really practical place to start.
SPEAKER_02: Get this book and read it.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: It's called The Knowledge of the Holy by A.
SPEAKER_02: W.
SPEAKER_02: Tozer.
SPEAKER_02: It's a book about the attributes of God, which is uh what God is like.
SPEAKER_02: It's short, it's chapters like three to four pages long, and it's rich, and it's richly devotional.
SPEAKER_02: If you've had the mistaken idea that learning about God gets you stuck up in your head and away from your heart, you need this book, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Read it, pray it, learn from it.
SPEAKER_02: And then, this is important, tell someone about what you learned.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Begin opening your mouth to teach.
SPEAKER_02: Now let's talk about telling your story.
SPEAKER_02: Just like you get something to teach by learning, you begin to tell your story by listening.
SPEAKER_02: Author Martin Shaw talks about how when we listen to stories, good stories of every kind, we begin to see the storied shape of our own lives and the journey that God is leading us on.
SPEAKER_02: Begin to look at your life as a story.
SPEAKER_02: What is God doing?
SPEAKER_02: What has he done?
SPEAKER_02: Where was he active?
SPEAKER_02: Where does he did he seem absent?
SPEAKER_02: Has your perspective on that changed?
SPEAKER_02: Once you begin to see his hand and see the story of his work in your life, tell it.
SPEAKER_02: Open your mouth.
SPEAKER_02: I know that can feel scary.
SPEAKER_02: One way to prepare for that is to work on uh what's called your 15-second testimony.
SPEAKER_02: How can you tell the story of God's hand in your life in just 30 to 40 words?
SPEAKER_02: For example, my 15-second testimony would be something like I was arrogant and puffed up with a high view of my own intelligence.
SPEAKER_02: But God captured my intention in high school with the richness and complexity of himself, so that when later I was shown the profound limits of my intelligence, I was okay, I was secure in him and protected from crisis.
SPEAKER_02: Where's the but God in your story?
SPEAKER_02: That's what the world needs to hear.
SPEAKER_02: And remember how I said that we need each other's stories?
SPEAKER_02: You can help with that too.
SPEAKER_02: Be a person who asks good questions.
SPEAKER_02: Next time you're at a party or a gathering, next time you're having dinner with someone, ask some story questions.
SPEAKER_02: Like, how has God interrupted your life?
SPEAKER_02: When was a time you really needed to depend on God and He came through?
SPEAKER_02: When have you felt farthest from God?
SPEAKER_02: When was a time that God surprised you?
SPEAKER_02: Come up with your own questions.
SPEAKER_02: Your conversations and your fellowship will be so much richer for it.
SPEAKER_02: Worship team, would you guys come on up?
SPEAKER_02: I've given you some ideas on how to begin teaching and telling, but as we close, we're gonna put these two principles into practice right now.
SPEAKER_02: Now, introverts don't get squirmy.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna tell you to turn to the person next to you and tell them something.
SPEAKER_02: I'm an introvert myself, I would never do that to you.
SPEAKER_02: But uh we are going to open our mouths and we're gonna speak together.
SPEAKER_02: Would you all stand with me?
SPEAKER_02: First, we're gonna teach each other.
SPEAKER_02: And we'll do that using the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_02: If you're not familiar with the Apostles' Creed, it's an ancient summary of what we believe, the basics of our faith.
SPEAKER_02: If you want to know more, we did a sermon series uh two summers ago on it.
SPEAKER_02: Parents, if you're looking for a way to start teaching your children, you could do a lot worse than simply memorizing this together and looking for answers to any questions that come up.
SPEAKER_02: Let's read this together.
SPEAKER_02: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
SPEAKER_02: He descended to the dead.
SPEAKER_02: On the third day he rose again.
SPEAKER_01: He descended into heaven, he seated at the right hand of God, and he will come to judge the dead.
SPEAKER_01: I mean the Holy Spirit, the Holy Captain Church.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.