Church planting is full of stories.
Because if anything should make a good story seeker and a good story teller, church planting should.
Church planting is…
…seeking.
…praying.
…listening.
…speaking.
…loving.
…story gathering.
…praising.
Church planting will give you story after story…
…stories that are broken and in the middle and you won’t see the way out.
…stories that leave you shaking your head in wonder at all God has done.
…stories that make you ache and cry and laugh and sing with the teller of God’s goodness.
…stories that drop you to your knees in prayer because in that moment, you are reminded that there is nothing apart from the power of God that can make a difference in the brokenness contained in that person’s story.
…stories that just scream at you, “This is a miracle. This is what God does. This is God changing lives.” And you want to shout it everywhere.
…stories that just drop in your lap and you wonder how you got to be a tiny part of this person’s awesome story of redemption and grace.
…stories that you will never hear the end of, but you still pray and trust that God is still writing that story.
…stories that happen overnight and stories that take years and stories that pile up in a person’s life over decades of God pursuing them and them pursuing Him back.
…stories that you wish you could make sense of here, but you know might take till heaven to see clearly.
…stories that you wish you could share with the world, but they aren’t yours to tell…at least not yet.
But we must tell the stories to ourselves. Because if we’re not taking the time to remember all God has done and to remind ourselves of the ways we’ve seen Him move mightily, we’ll end up wrong.
…wrongly thinking it was us all along.
…wrongly believing that God isn’t working.
…wrongly allowing lies to cloud our minds with discouragement.
…wrongly withholding praise from a God of glory who works powerfully in people’s stories.
So find the stories.
Tell the stories…at least to yourself.
And praise God for the stories He’s writing in lives all around us…and in our own lives as well.
Be blessed
<3
Love this! The stories are some of my favorite things! It is a blessing to be a part of someone’s story in a significant way, especially when it leads them to Christ or brings them back. Then there are the silly and the serious stories that are part of doing life with other members of the church family. Stories are incredible.