TrenidyDavis.com

Stories have always been an important part of my life. Stories, good stories, have a way of capturing and keeping my attention like nothing else. If you think about it, most of our everyday conversations are simply us telling stories to each other. Growing up my parents always told me stories, mostly funny and some sad. I have fond childhood memories of sitting on the front porch of my Grandmother’s house with all the adults as everyone rocked, drank coffee, and told one story after another. {My Dad was usually in the middle of most of them!} Most of these stories were very comical and usually started with the phrase “Remember the time…”. I pickup on this so much that in high school I can remember a guy making fun of me and point me out as, “the guy who always has a story to tell.”

Unfortunately time and adulthood has a way of killing this child like enjoyment of storytelling. However; several things converged last week in my mind that has given me a greater understand and appreciation for stories: personal stories of experience, stories of history, and faith stories found in the Bible.

One thing that I’ve notice of late is how much my girls loving hearing me tell personal stories about when I was a child. They seem to love the ones where I do something goofy at school and all the other kids laugh at me {I guess that helps them feel better?} The next thing that I’ve noticed is how much they can recall from the stories that they cover in school. The resource The Story of the World has been our history text for this first semester and the kids love it and retain so much of it because of the story format. History after is not simply about facts, it is man’s “story”. Finally, I understood more fully the importance of God Story in the Bible by listening to Daniel Taylor’s sermon entitled “The Life Shaping Power of Story: God’s Story and Ours“. I took so many notes from this message, which I’m proving some of those (below) for your benefit. May God bless you as you fulfill you role in the Greatest Story Ever Told.

•  The Bible doesn’t just contain stories. Stories are the means God uses to reveal himself to us and how to be in right relationship with Him.
• Stories also allow for the preservation of the messages through generations. Just like the nation of Israel we tend to fail to remember the stories of God. Knowing God’s stories of the past is the key to understanding both the present and the future.
•  Stories remind us who we are and where we came from.
• Stories are the best way to instruct the next generation. If we fail to tell the stories they will die.
• Stories are the best way the brain and process/ packages and stores the data. We both understand the world and remember our experiences through the stories.
• Sin is wanting a different story than the one God has scripted for you.
• Stories have the power to change us. The great stories will not let us stay the same. The greatest story of the Gospel demands that we become something other than we are.
•  Stories teach us our lines for life.
•  Deprive Children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words. (Alister McIntyre)