Story is everything when we share our faith. After all, what is the gospel but the story of God’s will, way, and work of providing salvation and justice for all of humanity through the gift of God’s son, Jesus Christ?
Here are 10 ways that story plays into faith sharing:
Story makes things personal. It makes a personal God and a personal relationship with God comprehendible.
Story provides meaning. What else makes sense of this world and our place in this world but the story of God, self, others, and the world?
Story connects to community. It helps people connect to a people, a history, or a greater context.
Story connects people with people. While story connects people to a broader people, it also connects individuals to others with like affinities.
Story evokes the imagination. While history (in the classic sense) can feel stale to many, story can open up new possibilities. Story can help people visualize how their lives might be different.
Story provides purpose. Connection to a people, particularly the people of God, links not-yet believers to a grand mission in which to engage and to live out.
Story provides explanation. For many, story helps them make sense of their inner selves in light of the outer world.
Story produces forward thinking. Story has a way of making people who engage the story focus in on its ending. Story helps people make sense of the redemptive plan of God.
Story imparts compassion. On a personal level, understanding one another in light of others’ experiences and situations builds within each of us compassion to see with new, soft eyes of grace.
Story constructs a unique expression. Each of us has our own way of responding to the will, way, and work of God. Story helps not-yet believers find their place in God’s epic story.
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Before I suggest how story fits in sharing our faith I think it’s important to think about the goal of our faith. Take a look at 1 Peter 1:8-9. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
The goal of our faith is the salvation of our souls—not just mine but yours too. We’re all in the same boat when it comes to where we start on the path to redemption. And it’s in that redemption, through Christ, that God is making all things new—restoring the imago Dei, or image of God, in the things that have been created for God’s glory.
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. Romans 3:23-24.
Donald Miller has a great understanding of story and how it helps us reach our goals—ours being the salvation of our souls, through the work of Christ. Miller writes in his blog why many goals don’t get met. “It’s because their goals aren’t embedded in the context of a narrative.”
In his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, you would see that he has reorganized his life into stories rather than goals. He mentions that he likes goals and sets them but notes this: “Without an overarching plot, goals don’t make sense and are hard to achieve. A story gives a goal a narrative context that forces you to engage and follow through.”
For example, I could set a goal to go without coffee and soda for a year. It’s a good goal. My blood sugar would love me for it, but knowing me, I would fail superbly. But if I put my goal into the context of a story, I might be able to do it. Let’s say giving up caffeine consumption for a year would save me around $500 a year—$500 is about half the money it takes to give $50 a month to the International Justice Mission (lawyers and caregivers who fight for the cause of the oppressed) for a yearly commitment to being a freedom partner. Let’s say I found a friend who also had this same passion. We decide, together, to save every penny we would spend on beverages for this cause in 2011 to raise the $1,000 to be partners in rescuing the oppressed. In this context, I wouldn’t fail—because the story gives life and meaning to the goal.
God knew we needed a story. God knew the importance of inspiring the writers of the Bible to preserve the details—we needed to know. Why? Because we needed to know reason we need redemption in the first place; we needed to know the depth of God’s love and sacrifice so we could then live in response to it. It changes the way we look at our goals.
When Jesus responded to the learners’ question about the most important way to live, he ranked loving God with our entire beings and loving our neighbors together as number one. He set a goal. He was telling his disciples the way to follow him. But he also gave them a great story to live in—sharing in his glorious riches through trials and temptations. He gave them the big picture.
Sharing our personal stories with others is the natural extension of the story Jesus told with his life. It’s easier to tell others how much God loves them when we give them the context of how God has loved us. The journey we’ve experienced with God foreshadows what could happen in someone else’s life. The story gives meaning to the sharing of our faith.
Jesus left his earthly story here with us when he gave us the gift of the Spirit. The story of redemption is alive and being played out in our journey. Sharing our stories not only plays a part in sharing our faith; it is how we impart the gospel to others. The Israelites looked back to the Exodus. We look back to the resurrection of Jesus and are able to say he has rescued us from sin and so many other things. Those “things” are our stories—the context of our being rescued—and those stories are compelling and rich and personal. At the same time, those personal stories are collective in the body and useful for the edification and encouragement of the people.
Most people want to be free. Most people want to be forgiven. Most people want to know what it feels like to experience unconditional love. Hearing how you’ve experienced all of these things may just be the bridge to their own stirring and curiosity for God. And in the midst of the telling, we find the gentle and prevenient grace of God doing the important work of love in our hearts.
Helpful Resources:
Story, Signs, and Sacred Rhythms
by Chris Folmsbee
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“You have yet to understand that the shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story.”* -Anthony de Mello
Without story it is impossible to share our faith. Furthermore, it is not possible to even have a faith to share without a story. As Christians, our story begins with these words: “In the beginning God created.” This story unfolds through the creation narratives, the exodus, the priestly accounts, the exile, the coming of Messiah, the gospels, and the church and ends with a glimpse into our future, thus becoming a story that gloriously has no ending. This overarching story of God at work in the world, of humanity’s role in that story, and of Jesus Christ, who is God for us, is a story that is actually alive and still unfolding. It is a true story that gives human beings real life and meaning.
Theologian Harvey Cox, in his book The Seduction of the Spirit wrote, “All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by… Religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.”*
For us to even have Christian faith means that we have found our story as persons embedded in God’s story. There is a proverb from an anonymous Siberian elder that declares, “If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.”1
Sharing our faith should not be reduced to a formula focusing on rational arguments and systematic reasoning. Author Madeleine L’Engle weighs in on the role of story and faith. “The language of logical arguments, of proofs, is the language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling, moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the freed language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith.”*
The story of my salvation and faith journey is still being formed. I find my story intertwined with the story found in Scripture. I know that my very life is miraculous. I’m alive. I was created in God’s image. I find myself in the creation story. I also know that I am broken and the image of God in me has been altered by sinfulness. I find my story in God’s movement toward restoration.
At times, it feels like my life resembles the exodus and God’s Spirit is leading me out of bondage. I find the possibility of salvation through the priestly story found in the Old Testament and fulfilled through Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. At other times, my faith story reminds me of the story of exile, and I feel distant from God, longing for restoration.
I am passionate about sharing my faith. I love to stir people’s imaginations to grasp the beginning of our story when God created all human beings in the image of God. Let’s start there. Let’s help the young people in our churches understand that they, along with their friends and all humanity, were created imago Dei. I found that you don’t have to convince people that they are broken and sinful.
Danish author Isak Dinesen declared, “To be a person is to have a story to tell.”* Our story is a wonderful story. It’s a story of creation and beauty. It’s a story of despair because of our brokenness and feeble but tragic attempts to circumvent God’s story. It’s a story that reveals a God who becomes most known to us through Jesus Christ, who makes restoration and new creation possible.
In the gospel of John, chapter one, are these profound words, which tell an amazing story: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
These words make sense because of story—a story that took centuries to develop. Right now, our Youthfront staff is reading the book What Is the Point of Being a Christian?, by Timothy Radcliffe. Last week we read, “It needed thousands of years before there was a language in which God’s word could be spoken in the form of Jesus. We needed all those experiences of liberation and exile, of the building and demolition of kingdoms. We needed innumerable prophets and scribes, poets and parents, struggling to find words before Jesus could be born as the Word.”2
Yes, a good story takes time to unfold. I believe the Christian story is true, and I find my story—the story of my life—in the story of God at work in the world. I can’t help but share it.
1 All quotes marked with * from www.storyteller.net - Quotes about Story and Storytelling, compiled by Patti J. Christensen
2 Radcliffe, Timothy. What is the Point of Being a Christian?, Burns & Oates, New York, 2005, pg. 79
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