Tell Your Story

God has filled our lives with His stories, but if you’re like me, sometimes you’re just to busy to take notice. In the next four weeks, I’m going to give you four steps for sharing your faith in your everyday conversations. Even now I’m paying more attention to God’s activity in my life so I can tell you. I hope that will be a happy side-effect for you too! The four steps I’ll cover are:

• Tell your story
• Connect your story
• Make Jesus the hero
• End your story with hope

Today, as we intentionally start to consider the stories we tell to people, I want to give you some questions for reflection.

About how God is at work in your life:

• What problem have I struggled with where God has taught me?
• What joys have I experienced that I clearly see as a blessing straight from God?
• What are some of my character flaws that I know God has been addressing? How has this shown up in my every day life?

About the people around you:

• What common problems are the people in my circle concerned with?
• When I sit with my friends at the coffee shop, what topics always get discussed?
• What circumstances are weighing heavily in the lives of the people I interact with daily?

Your unique God-story is at the intersection of what God is doing in your life and the need you see in others. (Click here to Tweet)

Here’s an example from my own life. I’m writing quarterly for a blog called Missional Motherhood. My friend Lindsey, who administrates the blog, just sent out an email with a list of topics moms are begging for. One of the needs–children with anxiety and fears–intersects with my own journey of helping my youngest through severe anxiety in elementary school. It’s a natural fit for me to write about how God was at work in that hard season. I can share our story in an authentic way to help other moms in a painful situation and show God’s hand at the same time.

Sharing our lives and stories in this way is a beautiful living out of II Corinthians 1: 3-7, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”

Do you hear Paul’s evangelistic heart? Sharing our God-given comfort is the most biblical, natural, and passion-building way to become more evangelistic!

Are you a single woman who has had God meet you with His sufficient presence in lonely moments?

Are you the mom of a special needs child who has learned the beauty and value of every life?

Have you suffered through unemployment and experienced God as provider?

Are you a woman who has suffered under perfectionism, but God is teaching you to surrender to His perfecting work instead? Oh! That’s me!

See, you have a story to tell too. Since I don’t have a dramatic story of recovery from abuse or being freed from drug abuse, I used to think I didn’t have a story at all. But God is at work in the broken areas of each of our lives, so we all have a story to tell.

Now think about yourself and the story of God’s work you have to tell. Here’s the hardest part. How can you tell it in under 2 minutes?

In natural conversation, you’re probably not going to have an hour to tell the full story, so what are the important details? How can you boil your story down to its most powerful essence?

I’d love to hear! What story is God showing you that you have to share?