Date:  Oct. 26th, 08

Speaker:  Kevin Snyder

Title:  "The Story We Find Ourselves In"

Friend Day

 Introduction

 

“The story we believe and live in today has a lot to do with the world we create for our children, our grandchildren, and our descendants ….” (Brian McLaren)

 

Each of us find ourselves in a story.

There is our individual little stories.

• For me I find myself in the story of 3 brothers who emigrated from Netherlands to Pennsylvania. They immigrated to Ontario in 1800. 2 became wealthy and the third is where my lineage is formed.  My great grandpa & grandma were Abraham & Sarah….you know of biblical proportions, just kidding…that was their names.
•  My story is that my grandfather moved to the west.  My Dad was one of the youngest of family of 15.  He married Laura Bessey.  They had one son, 4 miscarriages, and then me.
• I grew up on that original homestead in AB.
• Married Joyce and have 2 great kids – Jenessa (who we would like to find a husband for) & Jordan)

 

That is a part of the story that I find myself in.

 

But all of us together as humanity find ourselves in even a bigger story. 

 

• A story that seeks to answer the questions:
• “Who am I?”
• “What is my purpose?
• What’s wrong with this world?  Why is there such suffering?
• Is there any hope?

Now granted… there are many competing stories that are told us. A dominant story in our society is ….

There is the story that we got here by chance, we write our own script, and we don’t know how it will end.  It is a story that leaves us often without answers - feeling purposeless, meaningless, helpless, and hopeless.

 

But today I want to share with you from a biblical viewpoint the story we find ourselves in.

This is like the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of story of you, me, history, from a biblical perspective. This is our story as told through a Christian perspective of the Bible.

 

So this is the story of God, me & you in 30 mins or less.

 

Our story basically has 4 main chapters.

 

1.  Chapter 1: You were CREATED FOR GOOD. (Gen 1 – 3)

Our story starts with a good and loving God who created it all for good.

In Genesis we read:  God made the heavens and the earth, all living creatures, and on all of it he put a stamp “It was very good.”

• God made us, you and me, for relationship with him. 
• And God made us as well for relationship with each other…where we would experience harmony and love and peace.
• And he made this world a garden to be enjoyed and filled it with beauty.

It was utopia.

It was what our heart secretly longs for – we had purpose, meaning, connection.

It was so good it makes one wonder why we ever left.  But we did.

  

Leads to chapter 2 of the story we find ourselves in

2.  Chapter 2:  DAMAGED BY EVIL

Graphic: person writing a terrible mess of scribble and dark in a notebook

Do you remember in school or perhaps playing a game where you were given the opportunity to finish the story?  And often we would give the story a twist to make it more interesting and exciting.  And often they became either quite gruesome, non-sensical or tragic.

 

Well, in the story of all of our lives there came a point where we felt we knew better than God and wanted to try our hand at writing our own story.  Perhaps we felt God’s story wasn’t good enough, or was kind of boring, and so we set out to do it my way.

 

And we, in essence, grabbed the pen from the author, and took to writing our own story.  We felt we could write a story just as good without him.

And so we took that pen and wrote a story….but like the game that story often took a gruesome or tragic twist. 

 

In our own story…

• We took all the beauty of chapter one and distorted and substituted everything for beauty.
• Our story turned love to lust.
• Self-control into self-gratification
• Respect to jealousy
• Peace to war
• Humility into pride

 

On Individual Level:

Our story became one of tragedy and brokenness. Our story became one of a fractured relationship with God. 

And the themes of our story became….

On an Individual Level

 

a. Searching for a Destination

Our stories became ones of thinking we would find satisfaction when we got to some destination.  When we got in the “in crowd”, when we got our career, when we got our house, when we got things, when we had a family, when we reached some magical location.

 

Last week there was a young woman in our congregation who shared her story.  She told of how she felt she would be happy when she got married, got her career, got her family. And when she arrived there she still felt this gnawing in her soul. Her experience resonated with the person who wrote: We have a God-shaped vacuum in our souls that only God can fill.”

 

b. Regret

Our stories became stories of things we did, and said, and didn’t do, that we wish we could erase and rewrite. Pages we would like to tear out.

Most of our stories have elements of regret in them.  Parts we wish wouldn’t have happened.  Choices we made.  Actions we did. Words we said.

I bear in my life the scars of two foolish decisions that I make. 2 things that at times I have wept and wanted to tear out of my story

a. I thought I was stronger than a machine and put my fingers in a machine & lost 3 fingers

b. 14 years ago – decision to drive on when I was tired – accident that resulted in my wife’s back being broken and her spending 6 months in recovery.

 

I hear regularly the stories of people who regret…

• a relationship they got involved in,
• some words they said to a loved one,
• a decision they made, a habit they started,
• a marriage they gave up on….

 

The stories we all have written have pages of regret.

 

c.  Powerlessness

One person said:

“My problem is not knowing how I ought to live.  My problem is lacking the power to live as I ought”

 

I can relate to that.

My story has pages of powerlessness….of being unable to discipline myself, to overcome habits, to change behaviours and character items.

 

Romans 7:15,18 &19 reflects a theme in all of our stories

“I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do  I do not do, but what I hate to do…For I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”

 

d. Anxiety

Anxiety = our finite attempt to control the universe, what we can’t control. It is our attempt to play God…to step into his shoes.

When we took the pen we felt we could run things, only to be reminded that we have no control over anything.  And so our story is one littered with anxiety, fear. 

Anxiety over the future.

Fear of what might happen. 

We are anxious over the financial markets, our environment, our health, the world our kids will live in…..

Perhaps on every page we would find the theme of anxiety and fear….

 

On a Relational Level…

Our stories contain themes of

• Relational fracture and hurt.

Genesis chronicles the fracture of relationships first between Adam & Eve, and then Cain & Abel, and then across every relationship.

Our story became one of marriage breakdown, family conflict, abuse & brokenness. Hurt & unforgiveness.

 

In each of our stories is a story of hurt, broken relationships, family dysfunction, marital fracture.  Woven into all of our stories are these threads of tragedy.

  

Hidden below the surface of nearly all our lives are relationship stories sprinkled with tragedy.

  

On a World Level

• Our story is one of conflict & frustration

I don’t need to spend time telling you our world is a long ways from the garden God intended.  One only need to read the newspapers of environmental crisis, economic crisis, political crisis…

 

Summary

Chapter 2 is a story on a personal, relational, and world level of tragedy….of being damaged by evil. Each of us can relate to the themes of that chapter….because we all have written them in

 

And for many, this is as far as they have got in the story.

Their’s is a story that never gets out of chapter 2.

It is another

…frantic search to fill the void

…another regretful choice…

…another disappointing relationship…

…another anxious attempt to control their “world”

…another futile attempt to pull oneself up, to change

…another relational hurt and fracture

 

And friends, maybe this is the only part of story you have found yourself in. 

  

The good news is that the biblical story doesn’t end there.

Nor does it end with “Just work harder. Do what you are told.  Try harder.” It isn’t another self-help book. 

 

No, the 3rd chapter of the story we find ourselves in is entitled….

 

3.  Chapter 3: RESTORED FOR THE BETTER”

• If chapter. 1 could be capsulated in the word “beauty”
• And chapter 2 in the word ”tragedy”
• Then, chapter 3 could be captured in the word “grace”

 

 

• Chapter 3 of the story is that God in his mercy and grace has not turned his back on this earth.  He has not washed his hands of it.
• Chapter 3 tells of a God who loves us and would do anything to restore us for better.
• Chapter 3 is the story of a loving God who read chapter 2 in our lives and said: “No matter how far you’ve gone, how far you have drifted, how messed up your story has become…I love you and if you just give me back the pen I can take the tragedy, and brokenness and reweave a story of restoration and healing.

 

We hear that in …

2 Corinthians 5: 17 says: “Therefore , if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

 

Picture it this way:

This new notebook is made out of recycled paper.

Imagine with me for a moment.

What was written on the pages of the old paper?

Imagine it was chapter 2 of our lives.  The chapter detailing all choices, our actions, our sin. 

And imagine that Jesus took that book and through his cleansing work on the cross he washed off all that old ink.  It’s gone.  He recycled it and now he gives it back and says let’s write chapters 3 & 4.  And you take that book and you look through the pages, and you can’t find any of it.  It’s gone.  And all you can say is “Thank you.”

And all you can do is hand him the pen and say, “Help me write a new story.”

 

You see, Jesus is in the recycling business.  He recycles people.  He cleanses us of our past, and he comes alongside to help us to write a new story…a story of restored beauty.

 

And so the 3rd chapter is about a gracious God who offers mercy and grace to forgive us and to restore us for better.

It is the picture of God taking and tearing out the pages of our messes and bringing out a brand new notebook and saying, “Let me write a new story for the rest of your life.”

  

And the hope isn’t just linked to us personally being restored.  But Christ’s action was meant to reverse the flow of tragedy in our relationships and our world as well.

Eph 2: 14 says:

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two thus making peace, and in in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility.”

 

• In him is the hope of reconciliation.
• In him is the hope of restoration on a societal level.

 

And that leads to the 4th chapter.

4. The 4th chapter is a story of purpose.

It’s a story of mission. It’s entitled…

Chapter 4:  SENT TO HEAL

 

In chapter 3 he is active in restoring us by his grace and redeeming love.  We are the recipients of his gracious restoring action.

 

But in chapter 4 he invites us on to the playing field. He invites us to join in this mission of healing and restoration.  He invites us to join him in writing a new story in the lives of individuals, and families, and communities, and our world.

He invites us as individuals into a community actively engaged in this mission of recycling people.

 

You see, the church Jesus established is to be like a recycling plant.  It is a place where we can be healed, and forgiven, and reconciled and given a new start. It’s community sent out to be actively engaged in a ch2 world of tragedy with a message and ministry of healing, and grace, and hope, and restoration.  It is a community actively engaged in the life-transforming activity of spiritual recycling.

 

Our mission is to bring healing into the tragedy of our world.

 

And so if there is a word to capture  this 4th chapter it is PURPOSE.

Graphic:

 

All of us long to make a difference.

• To leave this world a better place than we found it.
• We long to have something bigger to live for than just acquiring things. Having fun. Getting to the top.

William James said: “The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.”

 

A few weeks ago I shared with the congregation a message entitled “Grander Vision Living.”

It was a message that called us to live a life with people a priority.

Told story:

Speaker: All these toys on stage – toy car, dollhouse, boat, toy money, a stage, CD, & so on.  And he had these little blue stickers….and as he walked on the stage he put these sticker on all these things.  And he told them “You probably can’t see but on these stickers is a word ”Temporary”

 

All of these things are temporary.

And then he called a person on to the platform and he put a different color sticker on them and this sticker said “permanent”

The only thing that will last eternally is people.  And so to live with a mission or purpose is to put people first.

We are sent to bring the healing restoring ministry of Jesus into the world of tragedy. 

It means …

• Feeding the hungry
• Giving water to the thirsty
• Visiting the sick
• Freeing the captive
• Loving the unlovable
• Being peacemakers
• Accepting the broken
• Seeking the lost
• Repairing the broken
• Proclaiming hope and grace and forgiveness
• It means leaving the fragrance of Jesus wherever we go.

 Friends, that’s what chapter 4 is all about.  It’s about us being engaged in the mission of Jesus of restoring for better.

 

Summary

We are people who are radically loved by God (created for good), who have experienced tragedy (been damaged by evil) , but who are discovering the restoring grace of J.C. in our lives (being restored for better) and are seeking to be a community that portrays and extends that hope, and healing into the community and around the world (sent to heal).

 

Conclusion

That, my friends, is the story we find ourselves in, in a nutshell.

 

And the question is:

What chapter are you in?

• I remember the day when I realized I was in chapter 2- damaged by evil.  When I realized that the story I was writing for my life was going to be a tragedy.  A day when I realized that I wasn’t the best author of my life, God was.  He had a much better storyline for my life than what I had.

 

• And over the years I have heard many, many people who have told me a similar story.  A story that they wish could be erased and re-written.  And they have come to hear and accept chapter 3.  The story of Jesus grace and forgiveness and being restored for the better. 

 

And, the essence or action of that chapter is where we give back the pen to God.  We admit that our attempts to determine our storyline have led to tragedy.  And we hand it back and pray:

 “Lord, I believe you have a better storyline for my life than what I am writing. I’m writing a tragedy.  I give the pen back to you.  I ask that you might forgive me for the mess I’ve made and that you might rewrite the script of my life, and restore me for better, and engage me in the mission of bringing healing & beauty  into the tragedy of our world.’

Reread again:

Give you a chance to make that your prayer….

Moment to think and reflect on that statement.

 

This morning in bulletin – given some comment cards.

• If you want to talk to me or someone more about what I’ve shared
• Connect
• Information
• Comment – saying – something about your experience good or bad like to hear that….not our purpose to make it a bad experience so any input that can help make it better is great.

 

As we wrap up today I want to say to you who came as friends

Thank you for coming

• We invite you to join us in this story.  We invite you back.   
• We want to invite you to come and join us regularly as we seek to allow Christ to rewrite the tragic stories of our lives into something better
• And we want to invite you to join us as we seek to become a community that in that process seeks to bring healing to our community and world. 

 

And so we invite you to keep coming as we experience God’s grace, and grow to live his purpose for our lives.

 

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