Listen to Your Life

Your life is saying something to you.

Jim Gillespie's story is the perfect illustration of the way each of us can trade in an old story for a new one. A choice is set before each one of us: We can choose to live a story that, in the end, will kill us and everything else that is good about our lives. Or we can choose life.

Like Jim, you can discover within the pages of Scripture a perspective-changing, direction-focusing verse for your life. That's what happened for Rick Barry, my friend and youth pastor at Keystone Fellowship in Souderton, Pennsylvania:

When I was a senior in high school, my senior pastor challenged me to not just read my Bible, but to get to know God's heart behind each book of the Bible. He challenged me to read and study a book of the Bible each day for an entire month. I started off with the book of 2 Timothy, and then began to work my way through all of the Epistles.

During my freshman year of college at Michigan State University, I had been praying that God would give me boldness like never before. I wanted to be a light to that campus, and I wanted to make the most of every opportunity that I had to share the gospel. However, I continually found myself intimidated by my peers and (in my mind) their lack of desire to hear about the things of God. One day, I had a clear chance to bring up Christ in a conversation with my friend but completely chickened out. I let fear get the best of me, and I left feeling like a complete failure.

When I got back to my dorm room, I spent time praying. I asked Christ to forgive me and give me the strength not to miss out on any more opportunities like that again. I then opened up my Bible to read the book of Philippians for the day; I'd been reading this one book over and over for three months. Before I began reading I simply prayed, "God, show me something today to help me have boldness so that You will be glorified." As I read through chapter 1, I came across Philippians 1:21, which I had underlined. But this time as I was reading, God opened my eyes to Philippians 1:20, which is a prayer that Paul prayed for himself. For the first time, it popped out at me. The verse says:

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. (NIV)

My eyes were opened to the vulnerability in Paul's prayer, and I began to pray that for myself. I prayed it when I was in my dorm, on the bus, in class, at parties. I prayed it everywhere. As months passed, I was still praying that for myself. I came to realize that Philippians 1:20 was not just a verse that I wanted to be true while I was in college, but I wanted it to be true for all my life. I realized that wherever I was, whatever I was doing, whenever I was doing it, I never wanted to be ashamed, but I wanted sufficient courage so that Christ would be exalted in my life, whether by life or by death.

My life verse is the prayer that God showed me, which I continually pray and want to be true for my life!

What's your story? Maybe it's one in which every day seems filled with the same struggles. Get up, get ready, go to work, go home, go to bed—only to start the cycle all over again. Feeling trapped in life, people look for distraction—something to numb the pain, a way to get away from it all. But this only creates more frustration. Avoiding life's struggles is not the answer.

Life can sometimes feel like a hamster's journey on his wheel. During these times it's quite easy to drift off into fantasy, dreaming about all the different ways we might achieve happiness, running mental video clips of better circumstances and more loving people. All those images and dreams have a way of cluttering our heads, bogging us down with so many pseudo-options that we don't know what to do next. We begin to feel like there is no way out.

We are capable of making a new choice to see life as a gift, starting a new story in which everything propels us in a positive direction. Jesus acknowledged, "In this world you will have trouble." Then He continued, "But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, Niv). We will learn much more about this new story later in this book, but first let's muster the courage to take a close look at the old story.

Do joy and contentment seem to elude you? If you've ever felt as though life is unfair, don't blame bad karma or bad luck or even necessarily bad judgment. The real cause is something deeply embedded inside you that governs and directs everything in your life. It's your old story.

I'm not talking about random stories you might share over dinner, but rather your life story—the one you tell yourself every moment of every day. There's power in story. How? Let's take a look.

Our Stories Shape Us

John chapter 4 contains many stories, all taking place at the same time. A story of geography and the division of people. Another story encompassing history, the present, and the future. Stories both natural and supernatural, religious and theological. Stories of racism, gender, and politics. And centrally interwoven throughout all of these is a story of a conversation between a man and a woman. On the surface these two individuals are very different, but something beautiful is unfolding, involving more than can be observed by onlookers.

The story begins with Jesus sitting at Jacob's well, outside a Samaritan village. It's high, shadowless noon. Jesus is hot, road weary, and thirsty, and He has nothing with which to draw water. So He waits.

He hears footsteps, hurried and hesitant. He looks up, then down, then does a double take at the woman preparing to draw water. She is used to being stared at by men; she's beautiful—she has always looked ten years younger than her age—she knows it ... and she doesn't care. Any illusions she used to believe have now been shattered. She has enjoyed the glamorous life, been wined and dined by well-to-do men, heard her share of empty promises, and reached out to the men she thought would bring her happiness. On closer examination, Jesus sees cynicism in her eyes, along with a sadness revealing that the best of her days are now behind her. She expects nothing more from life than what it gives her now. Her stories—they are...