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10 Stories for Teaching or PreachingMay 1, 20201. License Plate MessageFrederick Buechner was upset about his daughter’s illness. If you’ve ever worried about a sick child maybe you can relate to that gut-wrenching reality. He was sitting at the side of the road parked in his car depressed and afraid. All of a sudden, another car came up from behind him as if out of nowhere and passed by. He looked up and noticed that it had a personalized license plate with a single word. Buechner says it was “the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then.” TRUST. He chose to understand it as a message from God. Was it biblical? Check. Perhaps a response to prayer? Check. An encouraging word to lift the head and heart while stumbling through the uncertain shadows of life, family and illness? Check. Psalm 56:3-4 (NLT) says, “when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. I praise God for what he has promised. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid?”Source: Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 49.Possible Directions:Trust, prayer, hardship, providence2. Fifteen Feet At A TimeThere’s an old saying for travelers: The headlights in your car only light up the road in front of you 15 feet at a time—but those 15 feet will get you all the way to your destination. When you think about it, it’s profound. Miles and miles of darkness stretch out before you. You need light on every inch of that road to navigate the journey successfully. But even though your headlights only give you 15 feet at a time, those 15 feet will guide you all the way to your destination. That’s like the road of life. And God. We WANT to know what’s ahead. We WANT to have certainty about the future. We WANT to have clarity about what’s around the corner. But God gives us light for 15 feet at the time. And with him as the source of that light, it’s all we really need. Psalm 119:105 says it clearly: “Your word is a lamp to my feet; and a light to my path.” 15 feet at a time. Do you feel like you’re wandering into darkness or uncertainty? Do you crave to know what’s ahead? To have certainty about your future? 15 feet is all you truly need.Possible directions: God’s word, Bible, uncertainty, light of Christ, day by day3. God is good—even when we hurtMarshall Shelley tells the story of the birth of his son. When the child was in the womb, he and his wife Susan learned that he had an abnormal heart. This was obviously difficult for them. They were told their baby would probably not survive birth. The child might not even make it to full term. So they prayed. They prayed for a miracle! When the time for delivery came, the child was born, alive. They were so happy. Marshall writes, “He was a healthy pink, and we saw his chest rise and fall. The breath of life. Thank you, God.” But two minutes later, the child stopped breathing. He died. Joy was followed by misery. The nurse asked if they had a name for the baby. And the mother said, “Toby.” She offered an explanation: “It’s short for a biblical name, Tobiah, which means ‘God is good.’” The Shelleys believed that God is good when everything is good and makes sense, and even when everything is not good and when it doesn’t make sense.Source: Francis Chan & Preston Sprinkle, Erasing Hell (Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2011), 140-41.Possible directions: Hardship, goodness of God, hope, God’s sovereignty 4. What were you smuggling? In her book Women, Food and God, Geneen Roth tells the story of Nasrudin, a person who was smuggling treasure across the border, and doing it in a way that was eluding the guards. For four years he went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The guards knew he was hiding something but they just couldn’t figure out what it was. He was smuggling something, but they would do their searches, look all over Nasurdin and in the saddle of his donkey, and never find anything. Eventually, Nasrudin moved to another country. So one of the guards took the opportunity to ask him a question: “Okay, you can tell me now. What were you smuggling?” Nasurdin smiled. “My dear friend,” he said, “I was smuggling donkeys.”Source: Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God (New York: Scriber, 2010), 70-71. Possible directions: Looking in the wrong places, focus5. Your defining moment?Gerald Sittser was a professor at Whitworth University who was in a horrible car crash. He was hit by a drunk driver. Amazingly he walked out of the car with no major injuries. But he wasn’t the only one in his car. His mother was in the car, but didn’t walk out. She was killed. His wife was in the car, but didn’t walk out. She was killed. And his daughter was in the car, but didn’t walk out. She was killed. Three generations! I can’t imagine how difficult that would have been. And I hope I never have to. Gerald obviously struggled with this gut-wrenching experience. Eventually, he wrote down many of his thoughts in a book called A Grace Disguised. Here is something he penned, a kind of perspective-shifting idea that he wanted to share with others: “The experience of loss does not need to be the defining moment of our story.”Possible directions: perspective, decisions, hardship, hope6. On the wall of a slave’s cellA young woman from Southeast Asia named Elisabeth was 16 when she was kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. She was forced to work as a prostitute against her will. I could never imagine the horror of that kind of experience. Fortunately, International Justice Ministries learned about Elisabeth’s plight and was able to secure her freedom. The workers came in and helped Elisabeth get her belongings from her tiny, wretched cell. That’s when they noticed something she had written on one of the walls in her native language:“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”It was verse 1 from Psalm 27. Despite having no music, no sermon, no cushy seat, and no other people around her, Elisabeth worshiped God faithfully. In so doing, she rooted herself in a strength, hope and wisdom bigger than herself.Possible directions: worship, praise, faithfulness, discipleship, freedom7. Not paying attentionThere was a woman from Belgium who set out to pick up a friend in Brussels. It was a 90-mile trip. But her GPS was set incorrectly. She missed the turn and kept going… for 900 miles and ended up in Croatia! Later she said that she had been “absent-minded.” If the coordinates are wrong, the route is wrong, and we’ll never arrive at the right destination.Possible direction: distraction, priorities8. Victory!Margaret Feinberg is a teacher and writer who was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the midst of her difficulty she decided to adopt a strategy: To fight back with joy. On her first visit to a possible oncologist, she surprised the doctor with something unique. Before she put on her hospital gown, she wrote a single word across her chest. It was a kind of litmus test to see whether or not the doctor would be a good fit for her personality and for her approach. But it was also meant to remind both of them, in a joyful way, of the big picture. What was that word? “Victory!”Source: Margaret Feinberg, Fight Back with Joy (Brentwood: Worthy, 2015), 26-28.Possible directions: victory, hope, perspective, joy9. Integrity, no matter whatIn 1985 a tornado ripped through Barrie, Ontario—the city where I live. Just recently I was told about something that happened in the midst of that wicked storm. A Mennonite person saw a dollar on the sidewalk and returned it to City Hall. So if anyone had lost it they would be able to find and re-claim it. Can you imagine doing that for a single dollar?! Today, that dollar remains at City Hall. They framed it and hung it on the wall as an enduring testimony to personal integrity.Possible directions: integrity, character, honesty10. The Kintsugi KingI read about something called Kintsugi. It's a ceramic restoration process from Japan where broken ceramic pieces are reassembled. The bits are sealed back together—but not in a way that hides the cracks. It's done so that the cracks stand out. Intentionally. And the cracks are filled with gold. You'd think that this re-furbished Kintsugi pottery would be less valuable. But no. People love it. It usually sells for more than it originally cost! Usually, we hide our cracks. Just outside polite conversation and cropped out of Instagram posts. But God sees the original. And I think he takes your cracks and fills them with gold. Here’s what I mean. In The End of Me, Kyle Idleman writes "Flaws are openings." He means that the flaws in your life are the places where God can enter in and do some of his best work. Why not think of your flaws as openings?—openings being filled with God's gold. God is the Kintsugi King. And he does great work.Source: Idleman talks about this idea and Kintsugi in: The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2015), 37-38.Possible directions: child of God, image of God, imperfect, mistakes, value, worth ................
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