It’s the final week of our series The Story – and we return to Acts to talk about Praying the Story. One of the essential ways God works in prayer is connecting our understanding of his mission (in our heads) with our passionate obedience to his mission (in our hearts). Let’s hear how God called and sent people in his church … and how God is calling and sending each of us into the lives of those closest to us where we live, learn, work and play. May it be that through us they discover and live out their own part in God’s Story!
part 6: telling your story
We’re back! After a few technical difficulties recording – we have Week 6 of our Story series! This is when we start to put the chapters together. If the good news of Jesus is a story that is about reality, and if it is the true story of the whole world – how does it help us make sense of our own stories? Does God really have a part for us to discover and live out? And what does that living – and telling – look like?
act 3: redemption
Act III of the Story story brings the good news to the bad news. If Act II was sin and the fall – creating the problem that we are separated from God and all our efforts in creation are bent and broken – then here’s the good news: In Jesus, God comes to the rescue of his people and his creation. Today we see Jesus standing before Pilate in John 18-19 and discover the heart of his mission. The really great news? You can be included by grace through faith.
act two: the fall (“but … the problem”)
In our third week of this series, we come to Act II of the story: the problem. Genesis 3 is the passage of scripture that anchors our understanding of the one big problem, the conflict at the heart of our life and all creation: sin and all its consequences. How did we go wrong? How broad are the effects? What is our fundamental question before a holy God? And is there any good news in the midst of all this bad?
on story: the why, how, and what
We step into something new: The Story. Human beings live by stories – we read, watch, and listen to them and we tell them and pass them around. More than that, we live from stories – we look to them to make sense of our lives and know where we are on the journey we call life.
Week 1 starts us out in Acts 14. At its core, the gospel (“good news”) of Jesus is a story. It is a story where God is the author and the main character. And it is a story about reality – it claims to be the one true story of the whole world. Each of the next four weeks will take one key movement in this big story, making it clear from the Scriptures and showing its power in our ordinary lives.
By the end of these six weeks, we hope you discover that you belong in God’s story – and are equipped to live out your part in it!