EditIt took Hollywood by surprise.. The small movie, produced in 2006 for $100,000, made three million dollars in the first two weekends. Facing the Giants was called the "Little Movie that Could," and it violated most of the rules for a blockbuster movie, It didn't have sex scenes. It wasn't violent. It wasn't marketed for children, though children could see it. And, it targeted a small segment of the population... Christians. The reviews from secular publications were not positive. And yet, it ended up grossing over ten million dollars domestically. It opened the door for other films to be made that shared the magic of story from a Christian point of view.
My bookshelves are full. When I became a Christian, in my early thirties, I looked at my shelves of romance and action books, and I knew that this was not what God would want me reading. It was a bit tough to let go of the characters in books, as they had become my friends in many ways. But they were the kind of friends that I knew would influence me poorly. And so, I trashed nearly all of them. I threw them away.
The power of story has always deeply influenced me. Stories influence my thoughts and emotions. They influence decisions. They inspire. And so, when I threw away the books full of things I knew God would not want me to keep putting into my mind and heart, I needed a replacement. I needed to have access to books that would inspire my new life as a Christian, that would teach and guide, that would flood me with all the things of God in the way that I had been flooded with the things that were not of God before I followed Jesus.
I filled my life with the novels by Karen Kingsbury, Tim LaHaye, Davis Bunn, Robin Jones Gunn, Terri Blackstock, and others. I filled my mind with the stories of others finding and living for Jesus, through all the ups and downs in their lives. As I did so, I found friends again, in the fictional characters. I found a place where I could go to when my life was struggling or my faith was tested.
Stories are vitally important or God wouldn't have used them. The Bible is full of stories about the lives of His people. Jesus taught through the use of parables, stories that have lessons for His followers. Story was used for generations, oral narrations gave history and lessons and meaning to people in all cultures. How can we overcome when life is oppressing us, when we are tired and tested, when we need to see God working? By the blood of the Lamb (our only way to salvation) and the word of our testimony.
What does our testimony do? If we love Jesus and serve Him, our testimony tells of Him. It tells of what he did in certain situations in our lives. It inspires others to know that they are not alone, that not only is God with them in their challenges, but that others have also walked a similar path, and God was with them. I love to tell what God did when, after years and years of prayers and struggling, we watched God not only bring my step-daughter out of a rough environment, but bring healing to her soul. When I see a parent that is worried for the safety of their child, I can understand that parent.
We overcome through the use of story because story reminds us that the world isn't just about us, but rather that it is a story about Him. That story is still ongoing, at work in our lives every day.
I recently read the story The Impossible by Joyce Smith. The book tells the true story of her son falling through the ice and being underwater for over fifteen minutes. He was without a heartbeat for 45 minutes. He was dead. Joyce walked into that Emergency Room and began to pray. Her son's heart began to beat.
The story continues with the struggle of the boy's healing, the fears and doubts of the family, the decision of the family to refuse to allow death to be spoken around the boy. It is the story of a family that watched God heal their son, the son that should have died, the son that should have been a vegetable. A little over two weeks after the accident, the boy walked out of the hospital, completely healed. He had no brain damage. He was healed.
These are the reasons we need story. I have heard about, read, and studied for years the power of speaking life. This story, of a family and church choosing to apply the principle and stick with it was more impacting to my spiritual walk than all the study I have done previously. Story... a testimony... changed how I choose to speak about my situations and struggles.
The power of story needs to be understood by every Christian. Not all stories have the endings we associate with happy. For instance, the book Coming Home by Karen Kingsbury deals with the death of not just one loved one, but nearly every member of a family in a tragic accident. I cried and was deeply grieved by the loss in this book, as the characters had become known to me through the years of reading about them in the series. And yet, the hope given in the book was astounding, even in the face of grief.
I thought about the father in the story, knowing his daughter was dying, and choosing to trust God anyway. I thought about it when I read it, and it came back to me when my own daughter was in the ICU last October. God spared my child. But I knew God reminded me of that story as a way for me to see clearly that, in the midst of fear and pain, I could still choose to trust Him, no matter what happened. My fear was great, as I didn't want to lose my precious daughter, but He met me in those moments, and reminded me of a book I had read a couple of years earlier.
How amazing is our God? How great is His love for us? He gave us the gift of story!
We all have our different ways of absorbing story. Some of us like the straight-out stories told in books or movies. Some of us feel story in music. Some us like to listen to others, because the story of their lives in interesting. Some of prefer our stories to be in forms that are more visual, such as graphic novels or works of art. Either way, story changes our world, and Christians need this now more than ever.
The stories we see on the nightly news or that are focused on in the media are often not glorifying to God. The stories that are most popular today reflect the cultural norms and values, not the ones God shows. While we should desire to be informed, we also need to be transformed. The negativity and even outright hostility of the things of God in our secular world can leave us feeling as if we are losing the battle in a war that the Bible states we win. We can lose hope. We have to purposely put God-glorifying story into our lives.
I am always thrilled when the Gospel is told in a culturally relevant way. Sometimes that takes thinking outside the box and presenting the truth of Jesus to people in a way that uses the current culture. That is precisely what Jesus did in His parables. He used what the culture of the time knew and understood. The Prodigal Son is a story that most of us have found ways to relate to because, throughout time, prodigals still exist. And yet, most of us don't give the oldest child a double inheritance or go to the backyard and kill the fatted calf when we decide to hold a celebration. We don't understand just how insulting it was in that culture for a child to ask for his inheritance before the death of a parent. Those that heard the Parable at the time would have understood, and it wouldn't have had to be explained. Today, we have to explain just how significant these details are to people for them to understand. Telling the story of a prodigal from today's perspective, with applicable current cultural norms, can be a reason someone's world is changed.
Please, Christians, tell your story, and be creative when doing so. Tell how Jesus has changed your life. Tell how He has brought you out of your slavery. Were you trapped in the chains of addiction? Were you locked in the bars of abuse? Were you a prodigal that God brought back? If God saved you through His Son Jesus, you have a story that glorifies Him.
Use words. Write music. Paint a picture. Be visual. Film a movie.
If that seems too big, then remember your life is a story. Tell it in the mediums we all use every day. Tell what God is doing or has done on Facebook. Post the pictures of what God is doing in your life on Instagram. Let your story be one that the Lord sees and uses, even though it is flawed and even though it is full of mistakes. You never know how your story, your testimony, will help someone else to overcome. The pictures tell more than a thousand words. The songs, the ones that give glory to Jesus, are the soundtrack of our story.
Don't discount what your testimony can do in your own life. Sometimes remembering what God has done in my life and in the lives of loved ones reminds me that He is not done, and that if He saw me through before, He will again. The Bible is full of times God told His people to remember. He had monuments built so that people would remember. He established holidays and feasts so people would remember. In those feasts and at those monuments, the stories of God's redemption is retold, over and over, becoming part of the fabric of the lives of His people. His chapters become written on our hearts as we retell and remember His great redemptive works.
I will continue to promote the beauty of story in the lives of Christians. I will continue to encourage others to engage in story and allow the beauty of what God is doing in the world to flood your being. I honestly believe that sharing our stories, humbly, with all glory given to Jesus, is one of the best weapons for overcoming. A story can change perspective. It can inspire. It can move hearts. It can transform lives. It can plant seeds for salvation. Stories teach the most long-lasting lessons. Story uses emotion and imagery and words to teach, touching each part of the brain so that we don't easily forget.
Christians needs story.
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