There's Glory in Your Story
Reading - 2 Corinthians 2: 14-17
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christs triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? 17 Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.
If you were to rate your salvation story, the chain of events that led to you coming to faith in marks out of ten..based on dramatic events, depths of depravity, Hollywood movie-esque Damascus road experiences, how many stars out of five would you give it? Would you rate it in terms of how much of an impact it would make on a non-Christian, or how your conversion experience compared to another family member or friend for its life-changing-ness?
Storytelling is important..not just for preachers, but for all Christians in general..it speaks directly to our hearts. Jesus based many of his teachings round stories. But how do we use stories to get our message across as Christians? Perhaps we focus on how to tell a story, rather than what stories to tell, and to what end. Roy our pastor said a few months ago something along the lines of he is stopping telling people what to do or say, and just tell his story instead. After all, all of us are a part of Gods story for this earth. The problem is when we make it ours too much rather than his.
Paul describes the work of God as a triumphal procession, an ongoing victory parade that HE leads us through. At the moment I enjoy reading stories to our son. I lead him through the story almost 100% at the moment but I know that as he grows he will become more aware of the words, certain parts of the story, character development, and will learn to read alongside me, then ultimately for himself. Our story is always entertwined with Gods plan, and we will become more confident in our story the more we recognise that God is reading it alongside us..pointing out the key characters, subtle details we maybe are only noticing now years later..showing us new words, encouraging to step out and do a bit more ourselves. But ultimately it is the story of Christ, his fragrance that catches the attention, not ours.
We worry about our stories. We worry what people will say, think, how they might react. My first testimony in church was terrifying as a teenager. It was almost a rites of passage experience in evangelical culture here. Within each of us is a desire to control things, to avoid embarrassment, doubt, or fear, guard our dreams and visions. Paul says that we give off a sweet fragrance, a pleasing aroma that will be recognized both by those on the way to death and those on the way to life.
An aroma cannot be controlled. A liberal spraying of Lynx across the inside of your blazer at school cannot hide the fact that you didnt have a shower after PE and you still stink. When restaurants used to have no-smoking sections, did the cigarette smoke stop to read the signs and retreat back to the table of smokers? It just traveled naturally across the air, beyond anyones control. Gods fragrance is beyond our control, it will get peoples backs up, it will encourage and point people to eternal life. That is his call. The honest, messy details of our lives outside of the cosy faith stories we try to tell are as much part of Gods aroma and can speak to others in a much deeper way. We are privileged to be a part of this. Regardless of all those reactions good and bad, we as an aroma are pleasing to God. There is no going back on that.
Of course, when we tell our story, we are telling the story of Christ in our lives. The story we are given to tell is a story that smells of his life in all its aliveness, and our commission is to tell it in a way that makes it come alive as a story in all its aliveness and to make those who hear it come alive as well.
No one is competent to take this on themselves..none of us are equal to such a task off our own bat. As the message says this is a terrific responsibility..and its; hard not to think "terrifying" We would try to iron out all the rough edges, and uncertainties to dull this life.
Peddlers are people with packs on their back full of things they want to sell, and the things they try to sell hardest are the things that will sell best. Peddlers are less concerned with what the world needs than with what the world wants or can be made to settle for. They are interested less in the quality of what they are selling than in the success of their sale. One way or another all of us are peddlers of Gods word. When it comes to us speaking about our faith in a general way, we like them, tend to stick to the salesmanship of it, and to speak of it whatever is easiest to speak and whatever we think will go down more easily.
We are inclined, I believe, to tell what costs us least to tell and will gain us most, and to tell the story of who we really are, and of the battle between light and dark, between belief and unbelief, between sin and grace that is waged within us..all costs us plenty and may not gain us anything, we fear, but an uneasy silence and awkward stares. So we tend to reduce his story to a formula, rather than paragraphs.
We are commissioned by God to speak in Christ, and to speak in Christ is to speak truth, and there is no truth we are closer to than our own, than the story of what its like to live within our own skin. The problem is that, like Christs story, its often the last story we tell, partly because we are uncomfortable with it, and partly perhaps because we have half-forgotten it.
Two stories then, our own story and Christ's story. Perhaps they are the same story. If we look within the our own stories and lives, we see glimmers of his story coming to life in ours. Where we are weak, he is strong. Where he is faithful, we..are our usual selves.
Our story allows the aroma of his to smell sweeter and stronger. They meet and diverge. This side of paradise, it is our business then, to speak with our hearts (sincerity), and to bear witness to, and live out of, and love toward, and live by the true word of his holy story as it stammers forth through the holy stories of us all.
- Jonny Currie
