Human Epistles
From the Series—My Story
March 14, 2003This evotional begins a two-part series titled My Story.
Hans Christian Andersen once said, “ A human life is a story told by God .” Your life is not a meaningless collection of random experiences. Your life is not accidental or coincidental . Your life is a story told by God.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship .” It’s the Greek word poiema which is where we get “poem.” God is the poet . You’re His poetry .
Psalm 139:16 says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Long before you were born, God was working on your manuscript. God is the author. You’re His book.
II Corinthians 3:3 says, “You are a letter from Christ.” There are twenty-two epistles or letters in the New Testament. In a sense, you’re the twenty-third epistle . God doesn’t just reveal himself through epistles written on parchment. He reveals himself through human epistles .
A few weeks ago, six NCCers were baptized. I had the privilege of hearing each person share their unique story. Each story revealed another dimension of God’s grace . Gandhi said, “Every person is a partial revelation of the truth.” That’s a paraphrase of the Apostle Paul. God has revealed himself through Scripture which is inspired and infallible . But God also reveals himself through fallible human beings.
In his book, Generation X , Douglas Copeland tells the story of thirteen Gen Xers in search of meaning. One of the characters says, “ Either our lives become stories or there’s just no way to get through them .” Richmond Mayo-Smith says, “The underlying cause of our difficulties may be that we are living the wrong story .” A lot of people feel like they have “ no story “ or they are living the “ wrong story .” The Bible says that you are God’s story --His poem , His book , His letter .
Testimony
Something powerful happens when we share our story. It’s more than an emotional or intellectual connection. Revelation 12 describes our cosmic conflict with Satan--"the accuser of the brethren.” Verse 11 says, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony .”
The goal of this evotional is simple: write your testimony . I don’t care if it’s two paragraphs or two pages. I don’t care if you did it last week or you’ve never done it before. Patricia Hampl says, “To write about one’s life is to live it twice , and the second living is both spiritual and historical .”
We underestimate the power of stories. Stories have the power to reveal , heal , and remind .
Page 347
When you meet someone for the first time it’s like picking up a book, flipping to page 347 , and starting to read. Some of what you read doesn’t make sense because you didn’t read page 22 or page 212 or page 346 . Stories reveal who we really are.
When I graduated from High School I went to the University of Chicago. I played basketball and majored in pre-law. It was a great situation on paper, but I realized toward the end of my freshman year that majors tend to lead toward careers and careers tend to be what you do with the rest of your life. And I realized that I’d never asked God the pivotal question: what do you want me to do with my life ?
I spent the summer between my freshman and sophomore year praying about it. To make a long story short, our family was on vacation in Alexandria, Minnesota in August of 1989. I got up early one morning and went on a prayer walk down a dirt road. I took a short-cut through a cow pasture and in the middle of that cow pasture I heard what I would describe as “ the inaudible, but unmistakable voice of God .” The Spirit of God spoke to my spirit and I knew that I knew that God wanted me to devote my life to ministry.
If you want to know Mark Batterson you need to know that story. That one story reveals the essence of who I am . I’m convinced that most of us have a dozen stories that really reveal who we are. While they take up a proportionately small part of our chronological lives, they define who we are. Those twelve stories will reveal more about who we are than a decade of shallow or superficial conversations.
Philippians 1:9 says, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more.” How? “In knowledge and depth of insight .” If you want to love me, you need to know me. And the way you get to know me is by listening to my stories.
Plain Vanilla
Some people feel like they don’t have a “testimony” to share because their story isn’t “dramatic” enough. Nothing is more dramatic than a person’s eternal destiny being altered --no matter what circumstances surround it. Don’t fall into what Doug Lipman calls “ the fallacy of plain vanilla .” He says, “Well-meaning people are often deceived by the fallacy of ‘plain vanilla.’ Please remember: vanilla is a flavor .”
Mark Mittelberg says, “It’s typically the ‘ordinary’ story that ends up relating best to ordinary people .” You need to share your story because your story is a partial revelation of the truth.
The Talking Cure
One of my master’s programs in graduate school was counseling psychology. When I started counseling people I wanted to be this all-knowing oracle that could solve people’s problems. I quickly discovered that I very rarely knew what they should do. And I felt useless. Then I discovered that counseling isn’t about saying profound things as much as it is listening profoundly . I discovered that whether I said anything or not, people felt better when they shared their story. In fact, my most successful counseling sessions were the ones when I said the fewest words. I just let people “ talk it out .”
There is something cathartic and therapeutic about sharing our story--especially a painful story or a failure story. Clarissa Estes says, “ Stories are medicine .” Here’s what happens when you tell a story. What happened no longer controls you ! You control it. It’s tough to describe but I’ve seen it happen time and again. I think some of our suffering is due to silence . Gaston Bachelard asks and answers a profound question. “ What is the source of our first suffering ? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak . It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us .”
Confession is good for the soul . When we tell our stories we begin a healing process in our lives! James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed .”
In 1993, my wife and I tried to plant a church on Chicago’s Northshore. We told everybody what we were “going to do” so it was pretty embarrassing when we didn’t do it. It was a season of disillusionment because we thought we were doing what God wanted us to do, but every door we tried to open seemed to close. I can now see how God used that failure to transition us to DC, but it took years for me to be able to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it or think about it.
That’s just the way it is. An internal alarm goes off when conversation even comes close to those “sensitive” topics. We avoid them like the plague. But we need to talk about them. Jack McGuire says self-redemption occurs when we “ share stories of difficult, embarrassing, or guilt-ridden experiences .” If you’re going through a difficult experience--a divorce, a secret sin, a professional failure--the last thing you want to do is talk about it. But you need to talk about it because stories are medicine .
Not only can your story heal you. Your story can heal others. I love “ success stories “ but every once in a while I need to hear a “ good old-fashioned failure “ so that I know I’m not alone!
Legend
We have a tendency to forget what we should remember and remember what we should forget . That’s why we need to tell stories.
Jerry Jenkins says, “Tell you marital story . Tell it to your kids, your friends, your brothers, your sisters, but especially to each other. The more your story is implanted in your brain, the more it serves as a hedge against the myriad forces that seek to destroy your marriage . Make your story so familiar that it becomes part of the fabric of your being. It should be a legend that is shared through the generations as you grow a family tree that defies all odds and boasts marriage after marriage of stability, strength, and longevity.”
Daniel Taylor says, “Families are united more by mutual stories --of love and pain and adventure--than by biology. ‘Do you remember when…’ bonds people together far more than shared chromosomes. Stories are thicker than blood .”
Marc Gafni says, “Every parent owes their child one great quote and one great story .” I think the sentiment is right, but one quote and one story is only the starting point. I keep a journal for my kids . Each year I write them a letter. When my kids turn eighteen they’ll get eighteen letters . Those letters record the special events and defining moments of their lives. They tell stories that serve as reminders.
Sometimes we’re so busy and so distracted that we don’t cherish those moments that make up life. Kathleen Adams says, “A bedtime story in Grandma’s lap, the birth of a child, an exquisite leaf, a parent’s funeral, catching crawdads in the creek, a breathtaking sunset, your first pony ride. These tiny moments of intimacy, beauty, despair, exhilaration-- these are the moments to capture and hold forever in your heart .”
One night this week I heard our one-year old, Josiah, crying in his crib. Then I heard Summer, our five year-old who shares a room with Josiah, start singing Jesus Loves Me in her high-pitched voice. I just stood and listened and tried to “capture the moment.”
Army of the Obscure
The newest member of NCC is Jack Bussey. He was born February 25th. His full name is Hamilton John Arnett Bussey. Jack’s dad, Brian, emailed me “the story behind the name.” The first Hamilton John Arnett was a preacher in Georgia several generations ago. His biography was published the year he died in 1935. Brian’s dad got a copy of the biography on his eighth birthday . Brian got a copy on his eighth birthday . And Brian will take Jack to visit his great-great-grandfather’s grave in Georgia when he turns eight and give him a copy of his biography. What a heritage !
Brendan Gill says, “Despite our best efforts, most of us fail to find any useful clues to self-knowledge in the scanty family information handed down to us . Of a long-dead great-grandfather we learn only that his favorite song was The Camptown Races or of an equally long-dead great-grandmother only that she had blue eyes and a sharp tongue.” Gill says, “As time passes, this mighty army of the obscure is reduced to names and dates carved in stone in some rarely visited courtyard .”
We need to tell and retell stories because they keep memories alive . They remind us of what God doesn’t want us to forget.
My Story
One of my heroes is a woman named Corrie Ten Boom. During the Nazi occupation of Holland in World War II, the Ten Boom family hid Jews in their house. But on February 28, 1944, their home was raided and Corrie was sent to a concentration camp. Her father and sister died in the camps, but though an amazing series of circumstances she survived. In 1975 her life story was made into a movie called The Hiding Place .
When Corrie Ten Boom spoke to audiences about her experiences she wouldn’t make eye contact. It looked like she was reading her notes, but she would often work on a piece of needlepoint . After telling her story of hiding Jews and the cruelty in the camps and the death of her father and sister and her miraculous release, she would hold up the backside of the needlepoint. It was just a jumble of colors and threads with no discernible pattern . She’d say, “That’s how we see our lives--sometimes it makes no sense .” Then she’d turn the needlepoint over to reveal the finished side . Corrie would conclude by saying, “This is how God views your life and someday we will have the privilege of viewing it from His point of view.”
Here’s the rest of the story. When I was five years-old, our family went to see The Hiding Place and afterwards I asked Jesus into my heart. I’ve thought about this many times. Corrie could have questioned why she had to suffer in a Nazi concentration camp. It didn’t make sense. It was unfair. But somehow God used the suffering of a woman named Corrie Ten Boom living in Holland in 1944 to lead a five year-old boy named Mark Batterson living in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1975 to Christ.