Yesterday I started a conversation about Storying and would like to elaborate on it a little more today. If you click this link (https://www.facebook.com/1002015376532187/videos/1002220959844962/) you will go to my first telling of the Creation to Church story (C2C) which is produced by Storying Training for Trainers (ST4T.org). I share this link not for self-aggrandizement, because there are A LOT of mistakes and awkward pauses in this telling of the story, but rather I share it as a way of introduction to this blog post.
The world is comprised of a big story which we call the Meta-Narrative. The Meta-Narrative is really God’s story as He interacts in the world. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. We learn about this story in the Bible. The C2C story gives in approximately six minutes this Meta-Narrative of God. It shares God’s initiation into the story with creation and then reveals man’s disobedience to God’s gift of life. The story would be a tragedy if it ended at this point, but the story continues with God’s interaction with His creation and ultimately His sending a Savior to make it possible for humanity to be reconciled to Him. This Savior is Jesus Christ, God’s Son. The story, however, does not end with Jesus. It goes on and shows what our role is in this world as we wait for the end of the story to commence. The story’s end begins with the return of Jesus. In a very short fashion, what I have just provided is a very brief overview of the Meta-Narrative.
The use of stories is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to help engage other people into this Meta-Narrative with their narrative. We are created to join God’s story and to tell other people about His story. We are to help those individuals who believe in Jesus and receive His gift of salvation to grow in their relationship with Him. We are to equip them to be reproducing believers of God’s great love.
In this personal narrative God has a plan and a work for you to accomplish for Him. As life goes on and we enter into new seasons of our lives the work may change and shift, but we are still called to join our narrative into God’s Meta-Narrative. This truth forces me to ask the question of myself and to you as to our intentionality of engaging God in the narrative. In other words, are we series about our involvement in serving God for His great glory. Henry Blackaby describes this process as God always being at work and then inviting us to join Him in His work. When we have received this invitation, we then have a crisis of belief in which we determine if we really trust God and believe what He has told us. If we do, we then join God in His mission of reconciliation of a world to Himself. When we join God, we then experience Him which is why Blackaby titled his work Experiencing God.
Let me challenge you to let your story, your narrative, join with God’s story, His Meta-Narrative and watch lives become changed as a result of entering into the bigger story.
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