His Story, Not Ours

"I love to tell the story..." goes the old hymn. Lots of people do love to tell it, and many others love to talk about telling it. Sometimes we worry that we're not telling the story "of Jesus and his love" often enough or to the right people. But really, whose story is the Gospel? And does that make any difference in how we tell it? If it's up to us to tell the story more often and more effectively, we've got several problems. But if the story is really God's story - and it is - he will be a lot more involved in telling it than we are, and there might be a difference in the outcome.

Let's remember, this has been on God's mind since before the Creation (Rev. 13:8) and is one of the first promises made to humans as a sign of his grace to us even after our rebellion (Genesis 3:15). The Messiah who would rescue his people was a promise God made to Israel (Deut. 18:18) and the hundreds of prophecies and references in the Hebrew scriptures continued to flesh out the picture of that coming rescuer. The rescue he would bring is described in the Old Testament so many times in so many ways I would have a hard time writing a whole book about it, let alone fitting it in here. And the focus of the entire New Testament is on the enfleshed Son of God, what he said, what he did and how he has rescued us from sin and death. 

Make no mistake, God is excited about this. His Spirit goes before us, creating hunger in people for meaning and purpose in life, and for some assurance of the future. As I've said before, we don't have to worry about fitting God into our conversations with people -- God is already holding a conversation with everyone on earth, whether they recognize it yet or not, and he desires to fit us into his conversation with them. Our biggest challenge is "showing up," letting him follow his agenda, and not trying to grab the steering wheel from him! 

It's HIS story, not ours, and his love for his kids is driving it. His joy when somebody gets it (Luke 15) is so great there's a continual joy-party in heaven, and when we all get together in one place, finally, to celebrate, (Rev. 19:6-9) he's going to throw the biggest party ever! God wants our neighbors, friends, relatives, acquaintances, workmates, bank clerks, grocery-store clerks, repairmen, doctors, lawyers, restaurant waiters, kids, grandkids and anyone else we can think of, to know this Good News (why can't we call it Great News?) a whole lot more than we do. So let's not worry about whether we've got the whole sequence of points memorized in exactly the right order. Let's just make ourselves available to him for when he wants to tell it, and see what miracles he works!