Monthly Archives: May 2016

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Gospel Storytelling–Part 6–Refining Your Personal Story

In the last episode of this series, you were encouraged to record your personal Gospel Story in writing. Taking the notes from the previous number of weeks you were invited to put on paper the history of God Breaking Into your life, God Breaking Through the sin, shame and hurts of your life, and God Breaking Out on mission through your redeemed life.

If you haven’t had the time to read through each of these articles and spend some time reflecting on how God is working in your life, feel free to get caught up this week. Click this link for all the articles to this point.  GospelStorytelling.pdf

Hopefully, your had the opportunity to pencil out a rough draft of your story.  If you did not, stop and work on that now.  If you did, now we begin the process of refining that story into a short form that would be appropriate to share with a friend, teammate, neighbour or co-worker when an opportunity arises.

First off, let me state that we want to make sure all of this work is not to be used on people that we make into our projects.  We simply are doing this so we will have the confidence to naturally give testimony of the Gospel’s impact in our lives when opportunities arise and trust me opportunities will emerge when we are tuned in and looking for them.

Refining Your Personal Gospel Story: Set aside a period of time (30-60) minutes to transform your rough draft story into a more concise and clearly presented document.

Make sure you will be able to unplug and remove yourself from anything that will distract you.

As you begin your time of reflection, pray that God would remove any distractions so you might hear clearly from the Lord.

The goal of this exercise is to refine your Personal Gospel Story down to a 3-5 minute informal conversation you can have with a friend.  This week we will seek to get the written form down to what you can share in 3-5 minutes, then next week we will talk about creating opportunities to share the story.

Now your aim will be to get your story to a two-page document. To make this happen we will follow the basic layout of a 3 point essay.  This layout will consist of the following points:

Introduction Paragraph: This paragraph will tell the reader/hearer what you will be telling them.  For this purpose, you should tell people about how important the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus has been to your life.

Breaking In Section:  This will be one or two paragraphs telling the short version of how God got ahold of you and broke into your life.

Breaking Through Section:  This will be one or two paragraphs telling the short version of how God Broke Through the shame, sin and hurts of your life.

Breaking Out Section:  This will be one or two paragraphs telling the short version of how God is now allowing you to partner with Him on his mission to redeem all things to Himself.

Conclusion Paragraph:  This paragraph will summarize what you have already told them and to remind them of how important the Gospel is to your life.

Once you are done with refining your story please set it aside and read it once a day until next week.

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Gospel Storytelling -Part 5-Your Story Has Been Written, Now Discover It

If you have been following this set of articles over the last few weeks you have
hopefully taken the time to consider God Breaking In(to) your life (BI), God
Breaking Through (BT) your hurt, sin and shame and God Breaking Out (BO) on
mission through your redeemed life.

If you are like me, a good time of reflection always teaches me something. I
hope through the exercises of the last three weeks, that you have been able to
see how God has been active in your life for longer than you might have realized.

This is what I mean by the idea that your story is already written. Gospel
Storytelling has nothing to do with writing your own story but rather recording it.
The exercise this week is to simply record your story that the Lord has been
writing.

Recording Your Story Exercise: Set aside a period of time (30-60 minutes)
to begin to record “Your Gospel Story” that God has written.

Make sure you will be able to unplug and remove yourself from anything that will
distract you.

As you begin your time of reflection, pray that God would remove any distractions
so you might hear clearly from the Lord.

Pull out the notes you have tucked away over the last three weeks and review
what you have written. Now begin to write a rough draft of your story starting
with God Breaking Into your life, then covering how God has Broken Through
your sin and shame, hurts and struggles, then ending with how you see God
using you for His mission and His glory. Eventually, you will want to have this
down to a page or two but for now, write as much as you need to. Next week we
will talk more about simplifying your story.

If you are a verbal processor like me, it might help to record yourself telling your
story and then writing it down.

Enjoy this process and don’t stress about it. It should be fun to see how God has
been and is working in your life.

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Gospel Storytelling-Part Four

Over the last few weeks, we have been addressing the three-fold act of Gospel-
Storytelling. That being, developing the ability to give witness to God Breaking
In(to) our lives (BI), God Breaking Through (BT) our hurt, sin and shame and
God Breaking Out (BO) on mission through our redeemed lives.

We have looked at the idea of “God Breaking Into Our Lives”, and “God Breaking
Through” the junk in our lives.

This week we turn our attention to the idea of “God Breaking Out On Mission”
through our redeemed lives. We need to be consistently reminded that we were
not saved simply to cleanse us from our sins. Jesus’ death on the cross and his
free gift of grace do allow us to walk in a reclaimed state with our creator God,
but we were also redeemed that we might be involved in God’s active mission of
bringing saving hope to others.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, JesusChrist, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
Titus 2:11-14

Breaking Out Exercise: Set aside a period of time (30-60 minutes) to focus
on how God has uniquely gifted and called you to make a difference for His name
sake.

Make sure you will be able to unplug and remove yourself from anything that will
distract you.

As you begin your time of reflection, pray that God would remove any distractions
so you might hear clearly from the Lord.

Then ask the Lord to bring to mind ways in which God has gifted you with unique
skills, passions, and desires. Reflect on how God has allowed you to be used for
His Kingdom sake in the past and how you sense He is planning to use you in the
future. List doors that God has opened for you. List times when people have told
you that they see God at work in your lives. As you listen to God, make sure to
list every time you have seen God call you to partner with him on his mission. Do
not overlook the small opportunities as well as the large ones.

Once you have listed these things, keep them safely tucked away in a safe spot
until next week!