The Story of God in the Heart of the Home

When God made the world and all that is in it, he spoke.

When God stretched out the heavens to distances beyond our knowing, he spoke. When he slung the stars and planets into the night sky, he did it with words. The world began with words. “And God said…” led to the seas teaming with life and great herds roaming the plains. God is a God of words, the God of the Bible is a God who speaks. He has a voice that causes a children to be born and forests to shed their leaves. We can look through telescopes and microscopes and join with King David in the 29th Psalm as he says, “The voice of YHWH is powerful. The voice of YHWH is majestic…”

God speaks. He has a voice, and he uses His voice to do wonderful things.

But God doesn’t just say “Let there be…,” he is a story-teller, a master story-teller. His words are alive and active and they take the shape of a Grand Narrative that sweeps across human history and severs open the inner chambers of the human heart. By his word the great Story-Teller brings life and light into his spoken world!

Let’s pray together, God of life, God of Light, may the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, our Rock, and Redeemer. Amen.

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I am so grateful to be here with you this evening. My wife and I were walking around Savannah a couple years ago and I actually took a picture of this church, admiring it’s beauty, and desiring that God would use you to be a faithful witness to his grand story in this storied town. So it is a huge privilege for me to be with you now, talking about that very story. Please bear with my accent, I was born and raised up north – in Beaufort, SC, and now reside even further north in Charleston.

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The title of my talk this evening is The Story of God in the Heart of the Home. I’m going to ramble on and on about family discipleship and how intentionally harnessing the power of story can be a potent formative strategy for us and our children - and our grandchildren. The great story, the true story of the whole world, that God began “in the beginning” is still playing out to this day, and, ultimately, this talk is designed to encourage you in your efforts to pass that story on to the next generation.

So here’s the format for this talk: I want to make a case for story in general as a way of knowing and loving God, then I’ll consider how our actions and lives are themselves storied, but I’m going to bookend this whole talk with a bit about retelling God’s story in the home. Sound good? Great!

There’s this great truism floating around that goes something like this: If you want a child to know the truth, tell them the truth, but if you want a child to love the truth then tell them a story.

In Psalm 78 we read that stories of the wondrous deeds of God have been passed down from previous generations. And the people of God declare: “We will not hide them from our children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of YHWH, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.” Indeed in the famous Deuteronomy 6 passage God tells his people that he is the one true God that they are to love with all their heart, soul, and might. They are to teach God’s good commands to their children. Verse seven says, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” If you have children around you, you pretty much always need to be sharing the goodness of God with them.

But how? See children need to both know, and love God and his good way. Remember the saying I mentioned a minute ago. If you want a child to know the truth, tell them the truth, but if you want a child to love the truth then tell them a story. You’ve likely heard the passage I mentioned from Dt. 6, but do you know that the passage continues by saying this: “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that Yahweh our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And Yahweh showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And Yahweh commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.’

You teach your child God’s loving laws - don’t worship other gods, obey your parents, don’t steal, etc. They need to know these laws and obey them. But God wants that obedience to be born out of love. So you tell your sons and daughters the story of his love for them. Why does God want us to do this, Dad? “Because long ago, he delivered us out of bondage. While we were slaves to death and darkness, he came for us. He rescued us. With a mighty hand he brought us out of darkness and into his marvelous light! For our good, that we might live.” The strategy for discipleship in the Bible is grounded in story-telling. We need the lists. We need the simple catechism questions. We need to know what it is God wants us to know. But love can’t be conjured from bullet points or flash cards. We need something with immense power, something that can awaken us and woo us, something that injects beauty and goodness into our bloodstream. Something that captivates our imagination and cultivates our affections. We need a story. A great story.

You see, God is a story-teller, and he has made us, all of us, in his image. We were made for story. Think about your life. How can you think about it without thinking of a story - a still unfolding story! If I asked what you did yesterday, you know what you’d do? Tell me a story. It might not be interesting, or particularly beautiful storytelling, but it would be a story. You see, we process our lives and the world we live in through story. Our deepest beliefs are passed on through the stories we tell. We recount our fondest memories in stories, our most treasured moments are memorialized in story. Stories can change us, shape us, and steer us.

Can I tell you a short story about a short story that changed my life forever? When I was young I was a bit of a mess. It was June of 1999. I was 20-years-old. I had previously dropped out of college to join a band. I had long hair and a cheap guitar, but I felt like a rock star. Now, to my shock and utter surprise, after years of sitting around my friends parent’s garage doodling on our instruments (with the occasional gig) we didn’t make it, and the band broke up. Tragedy. Believe it or not, my parents were not surprised by this turn of events. So with no cash and no future I had to move back in with my dearly loved long-suffering mother and father. I’ll never forget, It was the eve of my 21st birthday and my grandparents had come to celebrate. Around mid-morning my grandfather and I were sitting in my parent’s kitchen. I don’t remember what I was doing, maybe looking at a guitar magazine, lamenting lost glory. But my grandfather, who we ironically called Grumpy, though he was a man of mirth, was sitting quietly in the corner smoking his pipe, like he always did. After a while he broke the silence saying, “So, it’s the day before your 21st birthday?” “Yessir,” I said. “You know what I was doing the day before my 20th birthday?” “No sir.” He drew from his pipe and let out puff of smoke that filled the room with the smell of cherry tobacco, burning diesel fuel, charred explosives, and the salty air of the South Pacific. “My aircraft carrier had just been sunk by the Japanese and I was desperately treading the choppy waters of the Coral Sea, wreckage all ‘round, warbirds swarming overhead, face-down men floating by, and I asked God, ‘Please let me make it to my 20th birthday.’” Maybe you can imagine how I felt in that moment? I instantly had the sensation that I was in the presence of a benevolent giant, a jolly man shrouded in an heavenly aromatic haze. In my mythic imaginings I can almost hear him say, “Come in – come in! and know me better, man!”

A grandfather, looking at his loser grandson, his own blood flowing through the boy’s veins, lovingly drops a well-placed story into the exact right moment, and another young man, 57 years later, is plucked up out of chaos. That was a Saturday. I joined the Navy the following Tuesday.

Stories have a way of getting in our bones and transforming our very being. There’s something beautiful that reemerges in my own heart every time I recount that story.

So, we’re designed for story. Designed by God for story. We receive them and we tell them as a way of making our way through life, just all the humans before us have done, and all the humans after us will do. And wonder of all wonders, don’t overlook this, the God who designed us to see and savor through stories has revealed himself to us in a grand story we call the Bible. God works, moves, and acts in history, we can look around this room and see even now his marvelous creation, but isn’t it interesting that he seems to elevate his Word, his story as a primary means of knowing him? He did great wonders when he rescued his people from Egypt, wonders that one generation saw with their own eyes. But it’s the retelling of that story that becomes the primary means of spiritual formation among his people. Think about that. One generation saw it, and countless generations have been formed by the story retold!

Consider the liturgies of the Church. The Eucharist is a play, it’s a reenactment of a meal, a meal that was itself telling a bigger story, but in our reenactment every week we are being genuinely formed as we really and truly encounter God. But it’s also a real meal itself! As the Israelites celebrated passover through a storied meal, so Jesus gave his Church the eucharistic meal as a means of telling the story of his great sacrifice and his new covenant, and as we tell that story and partake in that meal, we encounter his real presence. Consider the liturgical calendar. What is it if it is not seasons of retelling the wondrous deeds of God we encounter in the word of God? The liturgies of the Church are theological robust formational storytelling. We were made to see and savor God through his story. A Story that is primarily about his saving Son.

Ok, we’ve seen that our deepest means of knowing and loving God are at least rooted in story, his story. But, you may ask, what about our good works? What about caring for the poor, loving our neighbor, defending the innocent, etc. Isn’t that where we encounter God? Aren’t we loving Jesus when we love the least? You may say, I like this story thing, but we’ve got to get our hands dirty and get to loving our neighbors. Ok, Amen. But here’s what I’d like you to consider. God’s story isn’t over. We’re in it right now.

Biblical scholars will sometimes call the story of God a Theodrama, my own doctoral advisor wrote a book called The Drama of Scripture. Think of the story of God, as a Theodrama that unfolds in, let’s say 6 acts. Suppose Acts 1-3 are found in what we call the Old Testament. Creation, the call of Abraham, the Exodus, the Conquest, the rise of King David, the stories of rebel kings and rowdy prophets, the Exile. Now let’s say Act 4 is what we find in the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, here we see in the incarnation, the life and teachings of Jesus, is death, resurrection and ascension. We read about the first generation of the Church on mission in the world, and we encounter the Apostolic fathers and their teaching. And let’s say Act 6 is what we encounter in the eschatological writings. Those portions of Scripture that tell us what is coming at the end of the age, how the story of God “ends.” So Acts 1-3 are the Old Testament, Act 4 is most of the New Testament, and Act 6 tells us how the drama come to it’s telos. Did you notice the missing Act? Where is Act 5? Surely you’ve guessed it. It’s right now. Act 5, brace yourselves, is between Act 4 and Acts 6.

Now stick with me. In this theodrama every Act has a cast of characters, and for every group who has lived in a particular Act has had the previous Acts script (of course accept for Act one folks). Think about this, every generation has had improv their parts in this grand Theodrama. And all those generations who have the scripts for previous Acts have had to improv in a way that was faithful to the story revealed in those scripts.

You see this is God’s story, he’s the director, and he’s written himself into the play. Back when there wasn’t much of a manuscript, the Director came on stage and said, you stand here and say this, and you stand over here and do this. Think of the Exodus. What Scriptures did that generation have to work with? None. I mean, Moses wrote the Torah, which are the first 5 books of the Bible. God was constantly on stage. Now, look let me reiterate that God is the Director, but he’s also the hero of the story, so he’s never truly offstage as it were, but we can read parts of the story where human characters improving their parts seem to be center stage. Are they faithful? Well, sometimes. How do we know their being faithful to the story God is telling? Because in every Act God reveals himself, and directs his people. So let me close out this Theodrama scenario by say that, we are in Act 5 (in our little thought experiment). We’ve been told how the story started, and how it has progressed up out our Act, with is the penultimate Act. We don’t have a script for this Act. Do you have a script? Did you wake up this morning with your every word and action for today written on a piece of paper? We are improving. We’ve been told how the story started, and how it has progressed up out our Act, we’ve also been told how the story will end, so we know where it goes. Now we receive the previous scripts, I don’t let’s call them the Scriptures, and in the power of the Spirit, the Spirit of the Director, we are called to improv our parts as faithful to the story as we can.

So, you see now, how vital and authoritative the Scriptures are to measuring our faithfulness in our improved life. Our lives, our work, our rolled up sleeves and dirty hands, our love is our part in the story. So is our thinking, praying, worshipping, everything we do is part of a Theodrama. We step on stage for a moment (never as the Hero), we improv our parts, and we exit until Act 6.

Folks, understanding the story is essential to living a good and faithful life! We simply cannot ignore the Scriptures and expect to improv well. Now we could sit here an think about this for hours. We could talk about how emulating godly people will help us live faithfully, about how the liturgy, as I previously mentioned, functions as an actual script in our assemblies, but we simply can’t get around the fact that we are a grand theodrama and God, the director and hero, has called each of us to mediate on the provided Sciptures day and night, so that we can improvise our lines and actions in such a way that is faithful to his revealed vision. And, having mentioned the Spirt already, I should reiterate that the Scriptures are Spirit breathed, and it is only by that Spirit that we can even dream of intentionally participate in God’s unfolding story.

Ok, we started by noting that storytelling, story retelling is an essential means of discipleship, we talked about how story itself is woven into the fabric of our existence, indeed story is the stitching that holds us humans together. We were designed by a storyteller, made in his image to live storied lives. It is throw story that our affections and allegiances are cultivated. And now we’ve seen how much we need God’s story in our bones. Awareness of God’s story is vital for improving our parts well.

So where are we going to receive instruction for living in this theodrama? Where are the acting classes? With whom do we get to go over the scripts? Who prepares us to step on stage, say our part well, and walk off to the glory of God? Maybe here is a better question: is discipling our kids well part of our own character arch, and are we living out that part faithfully ourselves? Not only do we need to know the story of God in order to live the story of God, we are responsible for helping our children and grandchildren to know the story of God and live their parts well.

In seminary, years ago, I met a fellow named Shay Gregorie. An Anglican priest now and one of my best friends. But bakc in the early days of our friendship we’d have long discussions about the Bible, theology, and the great stories that had shaped us and were shaping our families. It didn’t take long before we developed a lasting friendship around formational storytelling.

We’re both fathers in the thick of family life, and that means that we’re also in the thick of discipleship. Sharing strategies and resources was and is a pillar of our friendship. Because we met in seminary and our friendship was forged in a somewhat academic setting, we were gifted a time to really dig deep into God’s great story together. But with that came a greater responsibility to retell the story, and help families understand the Scriptures and improv faithfully. Indeed, this is a major part of your own pastors vocation. Now, Shay and I did something a little unusual, as we were looking for resources for our family discipleship, we struggled to find books that really focused one helping our kids understand the Bible as a story, and themselves as storied creatures. So naturally we started our own publishing house. Honestly, we definitely improved that. When it comes to actual publishing we only pretend to know what in the world we’re doing, but our passion is to see families, fathers and mother, grand father and grandmothers, retelling the story of God to their children.

We wrote a series of books we call the Story of God trilogy. These are the books we wanted in our homes. We wanted books that allowed children and families to encounter the story of God in one sitting. Something coherent and compelling. Something that cultivated a biblical imagination and helped the reader or hearer to really know the beats of the Theodrama, a basic, but robust understanding of God’s story. But also a retelling of the story that revealed who God was. I remember when I was first learning to preach, my pastor told me, you can’t explain anything well until you can explain it to a child. Man, setting out to tell the whole story of the Bible in one sitting was definitely challenging. Now we’ve done it three times, tracing three theological themes through the story.

So, I thought if I made it this far with enough time to spare that I might read you one of the books. Would you guys be ok with that? I mean, we can’t have a long talk about retelling the story of God without hearing a retelling of the story of God. I’ll read from the book, feel free to follow along on the screen. Now listen, I also did something a little fun (you gotta be fun and adventurous when you’re storytelling for children), I had a score made for this book, so I’m going to play that musical score in the back ground while I read. Now I’ve actually never done this, but that’s ok, if I crash and burn that’s just another story we can tell and laugh about later.

Read the book.

Ok, well I know we might have some time for Q&A. I’d love to chat more about big picture ideas around storytelling and also practical ways of incorporating discipleship strategies in the home.