Life as Story Intro

1. Three Core Assumptions

• Your life is a visible story that is to be honored and treated as sacred.
• God is writing a Larger, Transcendent Story that is all about making known the depths of His goodness and grace.
• God desires your visible Story to be caught up in His Larger, transcendent Story.

2. Importance of Story

• Your story connects us to the past and places our lives within a context so we know where we are from and thus who we are.
• Knowing who we are and where we have come from opens the door to understanding God’s unique call on our lives -thus our calling always comes out of our story.

3. The Essence Of Your Story

• Your Story is Not Your Life’s History
• Your Story consists of a few memorable events (both times of innocence and tragedy) that you have unconsciously arranged and interpreted to bring a sense of coherence and meaning to your life.
• Your Story is not invented but forms slowly over time.

4. The Manifestation of Your Story

• Core Manifestation: Your Attitude Toward God
• Internal Manifestation: Your Antidote Against Pain
• External Manifestation: Your Relational Style With People

5. The Redemption Of Your Story

1. What it means:

• A redeemed story is not a “fixed” story, but a story that uses the past to draw you into a deeper relationship with God and His purposes for your life.
• A redeemed story, therefore, interprets your past through the lens of God’s Larger Story (cf. Gen 50:20, Rom 8:28).

2. What it looks like:

• IMAGINATION: A redemptive way to live a life that courageously faces and engages your tragic and chaotic world by creatively “Imaging” God in a way that brings beauty and goodness to it.
• FANTASY: A non-redemptive way to live a life that seeks to protect yourself from the chaos of your world by finding various ways and means that will hide you from it.

6. Purpose of Story-Time

• To help you more fully understand your story and how it manifests itself in non-redemptive ways.
• To give you a vision of what a redeemed story might look like.

7. Preparing to Tell Your Story

1. Take time to be by yourself to think about your life.

2. Think about your family of origin and the relationships in it. How did you and your parents relate? How did you and your siblings relate? How did your parents relate to one another? As you think about your family, what themes emerge?

• Think about the different scenes in the story of your life – the times of innocence (when everything seemed good) and the entrance of tragedy. How did you choose to respond to the tragedy that entered into your story (i.e. “I will be mean, nice, naïve, invisible, etc.”)?
• Now choose 4 or 5 scenes that seem pivotal to your life’s story. What commitments (conscious or unconscious) did you make to prevent these scenes from happening again? How have these commitments molded the way you relate to today?
• Think about how your family and friends might feel as they are in your presence. How do you relate to them? How are you (consciously or unconsciously) trying to get people to respond/react to you? Why?
• Come to the group prepared to share (in narrative form) these 4 or 5 pivotal scenes of the story of your life.

8. Listening to Other Stories

• Don’t try to “fix” their story – just listen to understand (not to respond).
• Don’t interrupt – let them speak until they are finished.
• Listen for details. Listen for what is said and what is not said.
• Listen for themes. What have they done with their longings? What have they come to believe about God, themselves, others, and life?
• Listen to how they tell their story. Do they tell an “Auschwitz-type story” in a “Disneyland” manner? Are their reactions to the events of their lives greater than what you would expect? (i.e. “A $20 reaction to a 5-cent event) Why?
• Be aware of how you feel in their presence. What is their pull? How are they presenting themselves? How do they want you to respond to them? What visceral response is produced in you? (i.e. Understand me – I’ve been a victim; Applaud me – I’m doing good; Stay away from me – I’m mad; etc.)
• Be curious! Ask yourself what is the payoff for the various beliefs, behaviors, and emotions that don’t seem to fit.
• Listen for the movement and work of God in their life. Are they aware of it? Do they speak with a glimmer of hope while not diminishing tragedy? Do they use God to hide from tragedy?
• Invite them to a larger vision by telling them what you see and what you feel as they tell their story. What might the redemption of their story look like? (This is part of the Believing Community’s call to lovingly offer each other a vision of what we could become if Christ more fully got a hold of our lives – individually and corporately)
• Above all, be kind. Remember “It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance”