Recently after delivering a sermon, an elderly lady approached me and said, “I love hearing you preach. You should leave the Convention and go back into ministry!” I laughed and asked why she liked my preaching. She responded, “Because you are a storyteller, and we needed you to tell us the story about who we are and what we can become.” This was perhaps one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten, and it put me to thinking…This lady knows that we live according to our stories, and if the story we’re living isn’t great, it can be changed.
Jesus did that with the woman at the well. She went to the well during the heat of the day as a social outcast. Her story was that of a fallen woman, and she worked when she would not be seen or taunted. She bought into the town’s story of who she was. Jesus looked at her and saw her old story hovering around her. He told her the story she knew so well. Then he talked about her thirst, a thirst beyond any need for a drink or a man, emanating from her very soul: If you knew who was talking to you right now, you would ask him for a drink of Living Water and know that you will never be thirsty again. She went from believing that she was an outcast to someone running back in the middle of the day to recruit the whole town to come and see him.
Perhaps no entity has been as effective at changing lives outside the church as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). People enter AA at their lowest depths of despair with their old stories and have the opportunity to re-enter life with a new story. Their first step in the journey towards recovery involves admitting one’s powerlessness over alcohol and that their lives have become unmanageable. The second step leads to a belief that a Power greater than themselves could restore them back to sanity. They walk in to a gathering of souls with old stories feeling alone and have the opportunity to walk out with a new Higher Power on their side to help re-type their future story.
Many therapists use a technique involving their clients working through old stories to find new meanings. Only when they transfer to believing the new stories does healing take place. In his book, How Customers Think, Gerald Zaltman writes that the words store and story are very similar for a reason. The mind stores what it attaches emotion to, and by working stories around information, memory improves. Memory gurus teach people to remember a name by creating a story around it.
Do you know that the stories we tell about ourselves often tend to come true? The truth is we live out daily the stories we believe about ourselves. What story is that? Is it the story you created or the story someone else created for you? Do you need to rewrite the story you are living into? If so, start writing today!
