Stories: They aren’t Kid’s Stuff

For most of us, our earliest childhood memories involve stories.  We are raised with them.  In the context of stories we got our first exposure to biblical concepts like forgiveness, love, truth, God’s sovereignty, peace and calling to mention but a few.  Verses were put into our minds.  Texts came first and then their meanings.  This experience is sort of like a calculator in the hands of a five year old child. He knows how to turn the thing on, but he hasn’t figured out what all the buttons can do.  It’s just a cool piece of technology.  By the time he is a teenager he has figured out buttons and can do sophisticated math problems. 

I think about biblical stories in a similar fashion.  Every time I hear a particular biblical story my mind drifts back to my first hearing of that story.  I’m not exactly sure why I do that – it just happens.  But more to the point, each “hearing” reminds me of the calculator example.  The buttons in the story have come to mean so much more to me now than when I first heard them.  Stories read differently now.  They have taken on a larger dimension.  They aren’t read simply to “remember the story line”.  Colored pictures and flannel graph boards (remember those days?) have given way to more sophisticated reflection and imagery.  The teaching imbedded in the story has through reflection and an accumulation of life experiences sewn itself into my life.  Some are read with a more serious attitude. Others make still make my heart skip with joy or triumph.  There is greater respect for the magnitude of what happened in the lives of the people who make up each storyline.  I suppose a good way to describe it would be simply that the storylines have become “more human and real”.  Perhaps that’s because I have become more aware of my own finitude, weakness, and need for God and His word.  Stories are no longer “kids stuff”. 

I think that’s why God gave us so many of them.  We are children only for a season.  As spring follows winter, we grow up and life is there to meet us.  “Ready or not…here I come!”  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve fallen headlong into a story of some kind.  On occasion they have served as a warm blanket that warmed my spirit or a stick across my spiritual backside or a strong hand that pulled me up and said “keep walking…straight ahead!”  One thing is for certain:  My life wouldn’t be what it is today without biblical stories. 

Perhaps that’s what Paul meant when he wrote these words: 

“For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

Perseverence.  Encouragement.  Hope.  Those are big buttons on our spiritual calculator.  We do well to spell them as children.  Learning what they mean is where the real blessing begins.  And, biblical stories – reading them, thinking about them, praying over them – are just the kind of travel companions we need as we experience life’s tests.  Paul says God gave them to us for our instruction.  It is up to us to find them, love them and live in the blessing that they provide. 

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas

I am a Christian!

³² So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, ³³ but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.  ³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. ³⁷ Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. ³⁸ And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹ Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Scripture comes to life in many ways.  Just reading a familiar scripture brings a particular truth or teaching into our minds.  Listening to someone teach scripture opens our minds in other ways.  But, nothing opens our minds to the teaching of a particular scripture like seeing it enfleshed.  

Saeed Abideni is a name that may be familiar to you.  He is the Christian minister who has just recently been sentenced to eight years in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, Iran.  He was formally charged with being a nationally security threat.  His real “crime” is being associated with a Christian house church movement that is spreading through Iran.  He participated in this effort in the early 2000’s when the house church movement was not considered a threat by the Iranian government and more especially, Islamic extremists.  Times have changed.  He was recently identified on a recent trip involving humanitarian aid and subsequently arrested.  He is 34 years old, has a wife and two small children.   Sources from within the prison say that part of his interrogation involves undisclosed torture for the purpose of locating the house churches.  He will be given his freedom, allegedly, if he gives up his brethren.  Other Iranian Christians and ministers have been imprisoned for the same reasons.  

Each time I hear a story like this one it brings a lot of things to my mind.  It reminds me that our faith is a “confession.”  To be a disciple of Jesus Christ means that we stand behind the truth about the gospel with our “lives.”  Confession is more than something we say before baptism.  It is a mantra we pick up and carry with us everyday.  Paul said, “We carry in our bodies the dying of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:10).  

Stories like this one remind me that faith is not lived out in isolation from other believers.  We are bound to each other by the Holy Spirit based on our confession of faith and obedience to Christ.  Christian community is anchored in a conviction about what God has accomplished and promises only in Jesus Christ.  I doubt the Iranian house churches have time for “bickering, slander, rudeness, and anger” given the circumstances in which they live.  With Satan prowling about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour through Islamic extremists, I can only imagine how much they depend on and treasure each other in prayer, encouragement and worship.  

Stories like this one rebuke and encourage me.  They bring scripture from the page and set it starkly and passionately in my mind awakening my imagination about what it means to be a Christian.  Such stories sharpen my confession and show me the true purpose of Christian community.  

We should pray for Saeed and his family.  We should pray for ourselves, too.  We should pray that in a land of peace and protection we can possess such a faith as theirs.

O Father, we live in blindness sometimes and call it sight.  Use your Word and your Spirit to drop the scales from our eyes so that we can see the majesty and power of our confession that Jesus is Lord.  Our world needs us to live with such conviction so that they might know Christ and the power of his resurrection.  Because of Jesus….Amen

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas

No More Clarity

A few weeks ago I was reading through Philip Yancey’s book “Reaching for the Invisible God” and was struck by the following excerpt:

“When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life.  On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa.  She asked, “And what can I do for you?”  Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. 

      “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked.  He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States:  Pray that I have clarity.”

      She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”  When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.  So, I will pray that you trust God.”

We can all identify with the need for “clarity.”  Handing our lives over to God is easier said than done. Clarity allows us to stay in control while consulting God for “direction.”

We want to know the details.  God says, "Trust me."

We want to know where the road of a particular decision leads us.  God says, "Trust me."

We want "clarity" because we are really uncomfortable with the "unknowns" of trusting God.  Gods says, “Trust me.” 

Can it be that simple?

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight."  

That will do for clarity.

Father, quiet our hearts and help us to lean on you.  You are faithful and trustworthy in all things. May we lay our lives at your feet knowing that you will lead us into the blessing of your purposes.  At the end of the day, there is no better place we can be.  Amen.

Randy Daugherty
Stephenville, Texas