Stories

RH 4/4


We have dissected God, and man, and the gospel, and we have thousands, if not millions, of facts—all of it quite dead. It’s not that these insights aren’t true; it’s that they no longer speak. I could tell you a few facts about God, for example. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and immutable. There—don’t you feel closer to him? All our statements about God forget that he is a person, and as Tozer says, “In the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.” How do we get to know a person? Through stories. All the wild and sad and courageous tales that we tell—they are what reveal us to others. We must return to the Scriptures for the story that it is and stop approaching it as if it is an encyclopedia, looking for “tips and techniques.”

Reminders of the Story are everywhere—in film and novels, in children’s fairy tales, in the natural world around us, and in the stories of our own lives. In fact, every story or movie or song or poem that has ever stirred your soul is telling you something you need to know about the Sacred Romance. Even nature is crying out to us of God’s great heart and the drama that is unfolding. Sunrise and sunset tell the tale every day, remembering Eden’s glory, prophesying Eden’s return. These are the trumpet calls from the “hid battlements of eternity.” We must capture them like precious treasures, and hold them close to our hearts.
Speaking Worlds into Existence


In the book of Genesis (Beginnings,) God speaks the universe into existence with, “Let there be light.” Badda-bing, badda-boom, the Big Bang. As soon as the lights are on, the Creator continues by saying “Let there be this” and “Let there be that” until everything has been spoken into existence except you and me. Finally, near the end of chapter one He says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

Wait a minute… If, in fact, God said, “I’m going to make some little miniatures of myself and put them in charge of the earth,” and if, in fact, two of these little miniatures are you and I, then why can’t WE speak worlds into existence?

Oh, but we can. You speak worlds into existence every day. Each time you describe an experience or tell a story or name a possibility, you speak that world into existence in the minds of all who are listening.

And one of those who is listening is you.

Are you beginning to understand the awesome force that hides behind your lips and flows mingled with ink from your pen? Would you like to learn to harness this amazing energy and put it to work in your life? New worlds are only a few words away… Do you know the right words?

Roy H. Williams (1998)

Humans can do only that which they have seen in their minds.

We must imagine a thing before we can do it.

Abraham is regarded by hundreds of millions as the father of faith.
We find an interesting comment about Abraham in the book of Romans, chapter 4, verses 16 and 17.
I have condensed it here but you can read the whole chapter in any version of the New Testament you choose:

“For this reason it is by faith… so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants… to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, (as it is written, “A FATHER OF MANY NATIONS HAVE I MADE YOU”)… God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.”

The King James version – translated during the lifetime of Shakespeare – musically says: “calleth those things which be not as though they were.”

The challenge, of course, is to phrase the thing that does not yet exist so that it is not immediately recognized as an untruth by your own legalistic, conscious mind.



Reminders of the Story






We have dissected God, and man, and the gospel, and we have thousands, if not millions, of facts—all of it quite dead. It’s not that these insights aren’t true; it’s that they no longer speak. I could tell you a few facts about God, for example. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and immutable. There—don’t you feel closer to him? All our statements about God forget that he is a person, and as Tozer says, “In the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.” How do we get to know a person? Through stories. All the wild and sad and courageous tales that we tell—they are what reveal us to others. We must return to the Scriptures for the story that it is and stop approaching it as if it is an encyclopedia, looking for “tips and techniques.”

Reminders of the Story are everywhere—in film and novels, in children’s fairy tales, in the natural world around us, and in the stories of our own lives. In fact, every story or movie or song or poem that has ever stirred your soul is telling you something you need to know about the Sacred Romance. Even nature is crying out to us of God’s great heart and the drama that is unfolding. Sunrise and sunset tell the tale every day, remembering Eden’s glory, prophesying Eden’s return. These are the trumpet calls from the “hid battlements of eternity.” We must capture them like precious treasures, and hold them close to our hearts.