Faith stories.
Can you express your personal story of how God has shaped your life? Do you know and share your faith story? How does this spiritual practice impact both our lives and the lives of others?
Faith stories. I listen to them in conversations. I love reading them in books and articles. I lean forward expectedly when they are shared in interviews.
Faith stories connect us with one another. Remind us we aren’t on this journey alone. They inspire us to try once again. They motivate us to stand up for grace, justice, and love.
Knowing, speaking, and sharing our stories reveal how God is ever-present in our lives.
- Knowing our faith story – Reflecting on how we first learn about God, how to pray, what helps us hear him gives us insight into how God is shaping us, calling us near to him. I call it holy hindsight – to review both our spiritual high points and low times and know God walked alongside us. Knowing our faith story brings healing and fills me with gratitude.
- Speaking our faith story – Being able to articulate my faith helps me find just the right words to describe how God influences my life, forgives me, redirects, and teaches me and always offers me grace and love. Expressing my story verbally or in writing brings clarity and affirmation to my walk with God. If it didn’t, the story hides under confusion, fear, and emotional baggage and distractions of the world.
- Sharing our faith story – Writing and sharing my experiences, both the good and bad connects me with others as we all journey together. We find we are more alike than different. We see unique twists and turns in each other lives and offer grace and compassion to one another. We find hope in our collective experiences and strength in our shared troubles. Sharing our faith story with God becomes our gift back to him – acknowledging our story starts and ends with him – us all within God’s story. His story cradles and nourishes our story.
Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) are Lost – a Story of Church is being released on May 17 and is written by Traci Rhoades. Her book is the impetus for all my thinking lately about the richness found in knowing and sharing our faith stories.
In her book Traci shares her faith story within various churches and how each experience formed her, helped her learn more about God, and brought her close to Jesus. She doesn’t judge other traditions but openly tastes them and chooses what is best for her at different seasons of her life.
Her examples plus many other people contributing what they most like about their faith tradition provides for much thought. She sprinkles her writing with light humor and great insight. A variety of ways to worship God is presented – like a buffet to enjoy and consume,
“We need to hear church stories, good and bad, from other people, and hold them in our hands and hearts with tender loving care.”
“You’re not going to find the perfect church experience. In fact, the more involved you get, you’re sure to find flaws in these all-too-human establishments. Yet the local church is where Christ chooses to do his work on this earth, through the Holy Spirit who lives in the body of believers as a whole.”
“How do people decide on a church home? For some, the church of their childhood is the only church they’ll ever know. More and more of us, though, move on from the faith of our early days and try a new tradition…The more I examine the ways we worship Jesus, the more I’m convinced God is big enough to embrace our differences.”
A good book to explore, to feed your mind and heart, and perhaps reveal new insights to your own faith story.
Sharing our faith deepens our faith.
Sharing our faith helps us know who we are and to see God’s hand shaping us.
Sharing our faith in open and accepting conversations calms the divisiveness and creates bridges, not walls.
How have you gotten to know your own faith story and shared it with others and with God?
Hi Jean! I’m struck by the need to actually know and appreciate our stories before we go off to share them with others. Sometimes we haven’t fully understood all that God has done for us.
I’m hearing alot about this book and I’m glad you’ve shared it with us today …
Bless you, friend.
Bless you too, I am so glad we have connected. the process of articulating our story is an important step in this and yes you are right – often we don’t see or fully understand till much time has passed.
As you know, Jean, my husband was a pastor for forty years. For retirement we moved nearly 1000 miles to a medium-sized city. We thought it would be easy to find a new home church in an urban setting. Ten months later we were still looking. Traci is right: there is no perfect church experience. It’s a proving ground where we’re able to practice grace, forgiveness, and love. We found a community where many people are seeking to live by those godly qualities and more, where the pastor provides strong biblical teaching each Sunday with a spirit of humility. Some might find it interesting, though, that our current church is not the same denomination as the one my husband served in all those years. Minor doctrinal differences are less important than the heart of a church, I think. Thank you for gently encouraging us to explain this aspect of our faith story. I’ll be better prepared to share it, when asked how we decided on our current church home. P.S. I’m no longer receiving email notices of your comments and don’t see a list of previous posts here so I can access them. I’ll need to develop the habit of going through past email notices of new posts and get back to them that way!
Being a pastors wife, you really did know there are no perfect churches. She explores so many traditons with such an open mind. Lots of grace is needed. I played with blog tonight and its settings so hopefully you will start to see my comments.
This sounds like a fabulous book, Jean! I will make a note of it so I can order it when it becomes available. Blessings!
Isn’t it fun to read and discover new books? Hope you are doing weel, Martha!