Surpassing Story Part One

Introduction:

What if I told you that there is one thing that shapes everything about you?

What you desire. What you hope for. The decisions that you make. The people you choose to be around. The person you married. How you relate to you children. The career path you took. The things that drive you. The things that make you crazy. All of it…. Boiled down to one thing!

What is it? … Story.

Main Idea: You have a story and it matters!

1. The Importance of Story

Illustration: Jobs’ “One Question”—“Who is Apple and where do we fit in this world?” — this is essentially story, narrative (where do we come from, who are we, what’s gone wrong, what’s going to fix it, and what is our future)

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” — Steve Jobs

Illustration: our accident on I 95 -- I told the story 10 times—Story is the foundation of our entire judicial system

Have you ever sat a friend down to tell them something that has happened to you? Something meaningful? Like a first kiss or a dramatic event at work? It’s powerful

Neurology and the social sciences are now confirming what our best philosophers, storytellers and artists have always known to be true—as human beings, our brains are hardwired for story.  Stories are the way we make sense of the world and understand our place in it.  Stories define us and shape the way we live.  We are story-formed creatures!

The significance of stories is this. While many stories are often no more than entertainment, narratives are actually so foundational to how we think that they determine how we understand and live life itself. (Tim Keller)

2. The Battle for Story

And so it makes perfect sense that there would be a struggle over which stories dominate.

Illustration: Rwandan Genocide — radio broadcasts.

Read 1 John 1:5-7

1 John 1:5–7 ESV

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

“Walk in the light”--Walking in the light is living in the reality of God’s truth. This doesn't mean intellectually accenting to a set of theological truths. Rather it means being transformed by God’s story. And that means eradicating the countless false stories that drive us each day.

Romans 12:2

"In other words, our mind has what we call a “mindset.” It doesn’t just have a view, it has a viewpoint. It doesn’t just have the power to perceive and detect; it also has a posture, a demeanor, a bearing, an attitude, a bent. (John Piper)

Mind="way of thinking, mind, attitude, as the sum total of the whole mental and moral state of being” (BADG)

"When we own our stories, we avoid being trapped as characters in stories someone else is telling." —Brene Brown

You cannot “get” a story. You have live inside a a story.

3. The Surpassing Story

1 John 1:1-4

1 John 1:1–4 ESV

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

John is getting real, raw. He is saying, “We saw this, we touched it, we witnessed it. It was real!But what John was pointing to was a larger story that has found its realization in time, in their presence

John says that everything they saw, witnessed, heard, touched with hands they have testified to and proclaimed.He calls this is the “eternal life”.

And this “eternal life” is so powerful and transforming that it will in fact produce “fellowship” with other Christians and with God himself. 

What was this? A Story no less. “This is the message …” 

GTB:Christianity is not a vague, abstract set of ideas or an ethical system. It is, above all, the good news of what God has done in our space-and-time history in the real, tangible experience of sending his Son to rescue us from the destruction that our own sins are bringing upon us, apart from him.

Conclusion

Illustration: Lion King—Simba receives a false narrative from Scar

"Simba, what have you done? It was an accident … I didn’t mean for it to happen … but the king is dead and if it weren’t for you he would still be alive. What would your mother think? … What should I do? … Run away and never come back."

Illustration: My false narrative — no one wants you, you’re alone, you must survive on your own