The Power of the Story

Stories can bring both life and death. They can build up or tear down. They can distract, deflect or ring true. They can make sense or not. Stories, along with the power that myth presents, continue to unfold among us today. In this episode Wes talks about the best story ever. 

Transcript

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Over the years, I've done a lot of reading, as most of us have, and what I've learned is that the story or the power of the story is uniquely equipped to reach people at a level that can bypass the intellect and go straight to the heart. As such, I think that we ought to take a moment and review our understanding of the text of Scripture when you boil it down.

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It is a story. It's a true story, but it's a it's a record of God and how he dealt with us as human beings. And I believe that coming to this story sometimes with fresh eyes can reveal fresh insights, more things we can learn about the world that existed at the time that the Scriptures began to be written, and what that context means.

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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is West Ruff again. And today I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the power of the story. I think this is important for Christians for a number of reasons. As one scholar said, we should probably be looking at the Scriptures as if it is a story, a good novel, a novel that is true front to back, but a novel nonetheless.

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And in fact, that makes good sense. It doesn't mean there aren't still places in the text where we find strong instruction and admonition for living moral lifestyles, for example, say but the gospel or the the book that we call the gospel, the Bible, all 66 books tells a remarkable story. If you stop and you think about it, stories have been told the world over as far back as we can see through history.

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We're told stories at night when we're younger to help us get ready for the evening. We tell stories when we meet new people. It's a great way to get to know someone, find out their story. When we study history, we're learning the stories of others. Stories don't just exist to fill conversational space. They bring understanding to the world and help us to know our places in it.

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Stories can bring both life and death. They can build up or they can tear down. They can distract, deflect or ring. True. They can make sense or not. Stories, along with the power that myth presents, continues to unfold among us today. One of the oldest stories on record is found in the text of Scripture. It's a story of would be gods and their servants who intended to deprive humanity of its relationship with its maker, its father.

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In this story, evil congregates together to deceive, manipulate and destroy. And evil brings blindness to us to keep us in the dark with its truer motives. But it's also true in this story that while evil wishes to destroy all that it sees, there is tremendous hope. The true God, the one worthy of our time and attention came to us in a form we could recognize and see and relate to and with.

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He did not come with platitudes. He came with the truth to a world blinded by its own prejudices and sin. And I don't know about you guys listening, but I can tell you that I need that truth, that the truth of God, the truth of Jesus Christ, the truth of who Jesus Christ is, is the most important thing that I think that we can learn.

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And as it occurs, it expresses itself through our lives day to day, and we become more like Jesus in our actions and thoughts. We're being changed by again, by the power of story. You know, the Lord, when he came to this world, as I said a moment ago, blinded by its own prejudices and sin, he came to reverse the effects of evil in creation and will, one day, according to the Bible, restore the Vision for Eden that he has never forsaken or forgot.

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And remember, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. A new heaven and a new earth. It's a wonderful, beautiful thing. Evil is going to be addressed. Every injustice in the world will be accounted for. Every lie will be neutered with the truth. Every thought that has raised itself against this good maker will falter, fail, and it will fall away.

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In fact, the power of God's presence was is like a fire, and it will consume these things. The lies that are out there today in culture are propagated by people who believe that it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. And such people have embraced nonsense. They've turned aside from the truth. But the reality of hope is that it still is.

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It is still real. Of all the tyrants in existence, both human and otherworldly, they have never been able to reduce the efficacy of truth, hope and faith. And God Almighty knows they've never been able to reduce the efficacy of love, the power of love to heal, the power of love, to heal and to restore what has been destroyed.

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This is an incredible reality. The world will one day be supernaturally restored by our maker. And I want to say to the advanced Western world, rationalism will not take us very far as a species, and we will discover and see that for a very long time we have been loved and we have a home and our Father, through Jesus Christ in Heaven.

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Supernatural realities do indeed exist. And it doesn't matter if you can test for that existence in a lab or not. Faith is, as the Bible has said, the assurance of what is hope for and the conviction of what is not seen. And contrary to your average garden variety atheist out there. Faith is not believing what you want despite the evidence.

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I cannot tell you how many times people have said that to me. Faith is altogether different. It is powerful. It comes only from God. That is the only place to get it. And when we ask over the course of our lives, I am a witness that he will most certainly give us faith. God has not forsaken us. He is not unaware of all that we have seen and been through.

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As I said in a recent podcast on the fires of Pentecost, if today for any reason your heart is broken and you lack hope and think that the heavens are brass and your prayers worthless, may you see the efficacy and the power of your cries to the good and just God who cannot forget you any more than you could forget yourself.

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God keeps us in ways that we do not understand or see. And that's not a copout. It's a reality we are going to find one day how intricately God has woven Himself into every life on this planet, into every place on this planet, into every human being. All the times he bore witness of himself and his goodness, all the times he spoke to people and we just did not hear.

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We did not see. As the Bible says, there would be a time where there are people that have ears but could not hear and they have eyes, but they do not see. Yet I'm also convinced at the same time that we can come to God in our blindness and say, Father, I don't know how to see. Would you please teach me to see?

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I've done this. It works. You learn. You grow. And coming to terms with the fact that we should be more impressed with what we do not know than what we think we know. Well, that is a prime time to go to God and get the help that we need. And I would encourage it. I think it's also important to state that the darkness that we see around the world today has been properly put on notice by the just and good being who created all that we see and know the same being, who created all that we see and know with a word.

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The power of his authority brought everything into existence. This God is not going to be overcome by the evil and the tragedy in the world today. I want to say that again, God is not overcome by the evil we see in the world today or by the tragedies that we have experienced in life. There's been much that stood against us and has tried to derail us and threaten to throw us off the train of faith.

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But God has not forsaken us. He's not forgotten us. And he calls to us in the midst of our pits of despair and loneliness and hopelessness. And coming to him will restore. I say this from experience. We're in a story that has no end of drama and no lack of adventure, darkness, goodness and restoration. The evil in this world knows that its time is short, and while it can no longer take us from our maker, it does its level best to blind us to him.

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But praise God, enemy doesn't get the last word, does it? Light can't stay hidden forever and evil will be out, thought out, acted and outdone on every level with its every action and step forward. It is contributing to its own undoing. I expect that this will continue at the long sought for end of all things. All godliness will prevail and will win front to back throughout all creation.

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Jesus Christ is a warrior like no other. He is alive and active and love will in fact win. So let me encourage you hold fast to what you know. The truth doesn't leave us or let us go. And the stories of the earth we catch wind of ancient spiritual conflicts that rage around us almost unnoticed today. But he, who is the King of kings and Lord of Lords, is not dismayed by what we see out in the world.

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And while we may all perish, even in the overall struggle, death does not get the final word or say regarding our eternal states that will come through. And by God alone and in Him, we win. There is no other way. There is only one. And he has been setting the stage for his greatest triumph for millennia. The time is short for evil.

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It will continue to rear its ugly, deceptive and unjust head, and it will continue to set itself against the Lord of All Lords. But truth wins, love will overcome. And ladies and gentlemen, love is not weak. There is a power to love that we have barely touched, tasted or seen. It is redemptive that love can raise people from the dead.

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That love started the universe with a word that love has all authority and power. And we may be down here in a conflict that we don't fully understand that we've been born into. Nobody asked us to let us get born into this. We just showed up one day and found out that everything is going to hell. However, the God that we serve is greater than all of our fears.

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He is greater than the sum total of our pain. He is greater than all the missed opportunities that we as human beings have had throughout to create the time that creation has been around. All the missed opportunities where we could have linked arms with our maker and turned things around. The Lord is Lord over all of our missed chances and some of you out there today have sinned a great, great deal and you know the pain of your sin and you're struggling to feel in your heart, to know that God loves you, that there's truly no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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That is the truth. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Let me encourage you today. If you're if you're having a hard time hearing the Lord, if you're doubting that you're even being paid attention to by this king, if you're not sure, if you're big enough, strong enough, godly enough or whatever to be on his radar, let me do my level best to set your mind at ease.

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And let me tell you, God is crazy about you, my friend. I don't know who you are. I don't know where you live. I don't know anything about you. But in every group of people we get a chance to spend time with, there's always someone struggling and in deep spiritual pain. And I have to assume that would be the same thing in in this audience.

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And I want to tell you all first, thank you for listening. Secondly, I want to tell you the Lord is with you. May the Lord enrich your prayer time. May the Lord speak to you in the night hours. In your deepest moments of fear. May you feel the presence of the light of the Lord. May the gentle word and ways of the Holy Spirit come and roll through your life.

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Bringing, healing and peace. May you know that your maker does not sleep, that he loves you, that he holds you, that he keeps you. There's none of us who can stand on our own but the Lord is the one who causes us to stand before Him and before His Father, as approved members of God's family. And you are an approved member of God's family, joyfully welcomed in, and your past is your past.

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Truth wins, love overcomes, light will outshine and will remove all the darkness we are in. A conflict of would be Gods and the Almighty who has staked out his territory and we are his. I want to say that again, we're in a conflict of would be gods and the Almighty and the Almighty has staked out his territory and us.

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We are his. Let me remind us all things will not always be as they seem. And when it is all done and all things have come to pass, this story will be the best of all possible stories. Christians, steel yourselves. Show that faith in your spine. Open your eyes. May your ears be open. May all of our ears be open.

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Hear the Word of the Lord as it comes from heaven to earth in this day and this time that we might be, as the Sons of S.A. were in Scripture, those who saw the time and who knew what to do. May God richly bless you. Thank you for listening. God take care of all of us. In Jesus name.