Habit 3: STORY OWN, TELL, AND DEVELOP YOUR STORY
People are not problems to be solved or victims who are stuck, we are dy-
namic characters in a colorful story—an adventure—that’s still developing and full of redemptive potential. Maturity is about more deeply facing, knowing, and owning our story; telling our story to safe people; and taking next steps to follow Jesus into a bigger story. Stepping into this bigger story we increasingly recognize God as the hero and ourselves as the supporting characters who make choices to wisely steward the opportunities God gives us. As we listen to other’s stories, our goal is to help people feel known & loved by God and by us, and empowered by the Spirit to take the next step in their story. This is our key discipleship verse, 1 Thessalonians 2:8, in deep action: here we’re deeply sharing the gospel and our lives with one another.
MEMORIZE
Where do you get that living water? Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty. - John 4
STUDY JOHN 4:1-42 TOGETHER.
List everything you can detect in the text about the Samaritan woman’s story
and how Jesus shows up in her life to interrupt, confront, and transform her story. Each time you go through this exercise with a new group of people you’ll likely spot new insights in the text. Expect to detect at least 5-10 key insights that help us better own, tell, and develop our stories. What connections can you make between John 4, the core book you are reading, and your own stories?
“You don’t mature by ignoring your life. You mature by taking hold of your life.” Rich Plass
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OWN AND TELL YOUR STORY.
We grow when we face our story, and when we tell our story to a safe group
of people who want to know and love us. During the course of this discipleship journey devote a meeting to each person telling their story. We recommend the following method: Use 1 piece of paper to draw either a picture or a chart with 5-7 key life events to tell your story from. Alternatively you may find it helpful to use a large piece of paper to draw your story, or to include a drawing of your family tree. Then, use that drawing as a reference point and devote at least one hour to telling your story. See page 23 of The Big Story, Appendix 2 of The Relational Soul, or Appendix 3 of The Emotionally Healthy Leader for further guidance on how to draw your story. The group’s job is to listen to your story, and to lovingly ask further questions to draw out more parts of your story. Don’t tell the pretend or polished version of your story, tell the real story about the real you. You’re safe to do this because the real God loves the real you. Attending to your story leads to integration, the path of coming to fully own your life. All it takes is one person in your group to show up with vulnerability to create a community that can be vulnerable, honest, and quick to confess sin or ask for help with a need.
“All our human stories of heroes, monsters, journeys, and sacrifice give voice to our universal quest for identity, purpose, and deliverance. Instead of competing with God’s story, these stories gesture towards it.”
- Leslie Leyland Fields
“One’s own heart can be a foreign territory.” - James K.A. Smith
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN SIN, WOUNDS, WEAKNESSES.
Include these three components in your storytelling: Sin, Wounds, Weak-
nesses. Sin is our fault, and requires repentance. Wounds are not our fault, and require healing. Weaknesses are realities that require grace and understanding. If we categorize everything as sin we will fall into the trap of legalism and fundamentalism. If we categorize everything as wounds we will fall into the trap of victimization and addiction. Healthy discipleship recognizes the big distinction between sin and wounds.
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“We’re all mixed bags.”
- Gordon Gekko
“If feeling our own weakness makes us rely on God, and if the best ministry grows from reliance on him, then our weakness is a ministry resource. And we have an unlimited supply of this resource. With this approach, learning to embrace weakness has made me feel strangely invincible! The things that used to bring me shame and fear now force me to tell those I lead, ‘Well, we’re just going to have to trust God because I’m so inadequate it’s funny!’”
- Mandy Smith
HOW TO ENGAGE PEOPLE’S STORIES AND PROCESS WITH THEM OVER TIME (ADAPTED FROM RICH PLASS): • Listen to the story of others as sacred journeys. Create safety. • Ask good questions. Say things like: “Tell me more.” “Tell me more about that.” • Pay attention to their deep desires. • Encourage them to face their fears and feel their emotions (the core emotions: shame, guilt, fear/anxiety, grief, joy, sadness, anger, loneliness). • Recognize the difference between sin, wounds, and weaknesses; and how they impact each other. Often 90% of a person’s sins stem from their wounds. • Encourage! • Help people process their limits and losses. • Envision different scenarios/options, help them see what God might be inviting them into now. • Point towards helpful spiritual disciplines for continued growth, maturity, and healing. • Always communicate hope.
“Family of Origin carries the greatest external impact on the development of the soul. Because of it and in it we develop our learned level of intimacy and our basic way of relating to God, others, and ourselves.”
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BE BAPTIZED.
If you’re a Christian and you’ve not yet been baptized, now would be a great
time to “go public” with your faith by being baptized in the presence of your church family and sharing some of your story. Baptism doesn’t save you, but it’s one of just two sacraments Jesus gave his church. Baptism is the first and one-time sacrament we practice upon someone’s entrance into the family of God. Communion is the ongoing sacrament we practice once one has been born again and baptized into God’s family.
And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name. - Acts 22:16
Michael Horton
“The gospel is not just a series of facts to which we yield our assent, but a dramatic narrative that re-plots our identity.”
UNDERSTAND THE BIG STORYLINE OF THE BIBLE, A STORYLINE CENTERED ON GOD, NOT YOU: CREATION, FALL, REDEMPTION, CONSUMMATION.
Creation: God created the universe for his glory, and declared his creation
good. Fall: The first humans rejected God’s rule over them, sin and death enter the world. Redemption: Our loving Creator unfolds his master plan to redeem his world and rescue fallen sinners, climaxing in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Consummation: Jesus will return to judge sin and evil once and for all, and form a new creation—the joining of heaven and earth—where God will dwell with his people forever and receive glory. Our individual stories fit under, and only make proper sense in, this big story. *See Appendix 4 for another way of understanding the Bible’s storyline, and for a method of using this storyline to listen to other people’s stories and thoughtfully sharing the gospel with them.
“The world does not revolve around you.”
Anonymous 32
“If we discern a plot to our lives, we are more likely to take ourselves and our lives seriously. If nothing is connected, then nothing matters. Stories are the single best way humans have for accounting for our experience. They help us see how choices and events are tied together, why things are and how things could be. Healthy stories challenge us to be active characters, not passive victims or observers. We cannot live our story alone because we are characters in each other’s stories. What you do is part of my story; what I do is part of yours. Few things are as encouraging as the realization that things can be different and that we have a role to play in making them so.”
Daniel Tay l o r
DEVELOP YOUR STORY.
Practice (for the rest of your life) seeing yourself as a character in an un-
folding story. You are not stuck and you are not alone. You are a character, a unique image-bearer of God, who can make choices today that take your story in a new direction. A good question to ask yourself to help you re-frame things: “How can I choose to enter a better story here?” In telling your story you’ve focused on where you’ve been, now you can shift your focus to where you want to go—the new territory God is calling you into. Share as a group 1 or 2 big goals (don’t set more than 2 goals, our souls need focus and time for deep change to occur) you each have for this year as you step further into the big story God is writing for his glory and your good. You might benefit from looking at the lists in Appendix 2 to hone in on the 1 or 2 ways God is inviting you into deeper maturity and development. Also: Consider if someone in your group has a story that ought to be told to our whole church family because of how it would build up and encourage the whole church body.
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“The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is not satisfied with a merely psychological explanation of our lives. It doesn’t do justice to our conviction that we are on some kind of journey or quest, that there must be some deeper meaning to our lives than whether we feel good about ourselves. Only people who have lost the sense of adventure, mystery, and romance worry about their self-esteem. And at that point what they need is not a good therapist, but a good story. Or more precisely, the central question for us should not be, ‘What personality dynamics explain my behavior?’ but rather, ‘What sort of story am I in?’”
William K i r k p at r i c k
ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER!
Encouragement is powerful. Human history is full of stories of God using
someone’s encouragement and words of life to deeply bless, heal, embolden, and transform the direction of a life. The entirety of Habit #11 will be devoted to encouragement later, but start encouraging now. Create a culture of encouragement in your Discipleship Group. Aim to become the biggest encourager in your group. Set the tone. Encouragement can play a big role in shaping our stories and our next steps of faith.
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11
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BELIEVE THAT GOD IS WITH YOU AND FOR YOU.
We won’t progress much as a disciples until we come to believe that God is
for us. Our sins are forgiven, we are loved, our story is deeply connected to God’s big story and glory, and we can find rest and strength in the reality that God is with and for his people. God is at work, and that work includes working all parts of our story together for his glory and our good. Take time as a group to praise God for who he is and for how he has cared for each of you and your stories.
“Coming to the end of myself is the realization that I’m dependent on someone other than myself if I’m going to be truly free.” James K.A. Smith
The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? - Psalm 118:6
“You see no matter what, in spite of everything, God would love his children with a Never-Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love. And though they would forget him, and run from Him, deep in their hearts God’s children would miss Him always, and long for Him—lost children yearning for their home.”
MEMORIZE
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:28
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MAIN TAKEAWAY: We’re a church of disciples who practice the habit of owning, telling, and developing our stories.
What is God saying to you?
What’s your next step?
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES FOR HABIT 3: The Big Story, Justin Buzzard The Story of Christianity, Justo L. Gonzalez You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan Tell Me A Story: The Life-Shaping Power of our Stories, Daniel Taylor On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, James K.A. Smith Telling The Truth, Frederick Buechner
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