Telling The Story

Last night was our night to invite friends and tell our story. There were 10 of us, including the 8 members of Immanuel. Not a ragin success by the world's standards, but I'm getting increasingly comfortable not judging by those. This is going to be small and it is going to take awhile. We said all along that we wanted to grow a church from relationships, and relationships take time. We're also discovering that there is a world of difference between a friend who loves and supports you and comes to your home and one who wants to come to your church. Which can be good. It shows those friends take what we believe seriously enough to question it. Not that they can't question it with us. Anyway, a bit from the story I shared last night:

For God was so in love with the world that He sent His only Son, Jesus, so that whoever believed in Him would not die, but live. This state that we put ourselves in is killing us. That was what I realized. I had too many mornings where I woke up and looked in the mirror and hated the guy I was. This guy without purpose. This guy without direction. This guy whose only desire was for his own desires. I suffered from selfishness and self-righteousness and just....self..ness. I was so committed to being liked, to being cool, to fitting in, to being above it all, to using people as connections more than friends that it was destroying me. I wanted to be better than the person I was. I wanted to stop being the person I was. I needed to start over. I recognized all the things about me that were awful, I realized the hole I was in, and I was looking for a new way to be, for some higher truth, for some light to guide me.

My fear was that if I turned to God, as I..d been raised to do, I..d only face condemnation. But I had this story. This story that had been available to me my whole life, sitting on tables in my house. So I started turning the story over to see what I could find.

What I discovered was that Jesus liked to tell stories. Stories about fields and farmers and seeds that were really about the Kingdom of God and how He had come to bring it into the world in a new and powerful way. What I discovered was the story of how and why Jesus came into the world, not to condemn the world but to save it. Sure, He treats my sin seriously, or wouldn..t have had to die for it. But He doesn..t expose my sin so that I can carry it around with me, but so that He can take it away. Through His death, He makes the sacrifice for my sin. Through His resurrection He offers the possibility of new life. Through my repentance and baptism, I die to my old self and begin that new life in Him.