Episode 160: Tell Your Story | Tim Henderson+

Thank you Quig, servant of all. Appreciate you brother. Good morning everybody.

If you got a bible, we're gonna be all over the place. We're gonna start in first Peter 2, so if you wanna find your way there, that's in the New Testament, kind of near the end. Use your table of contents—there's no shame in that.

Over the last couple weeks, Quig and Landon have taken the liberty to share with you their stories of how Jesus changed their lives. And this phenomenon of rehearsing the story, the tale of what happened, of how followers of Jesus came to be followers of Jesus has a rich history. In fact, I think we can make a pretty strong case that one of the reasons God draws people to faith in himself is so that they can tell the story of how God drew them to faith in himself.

A Chosen People Called to Declare His Praises

If you find your way to first Peter, we're gonna look at chapter 2, verse 9. Just listen to this. This is what Peter is saying:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. That you may declare the praises of him who calls you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. — 1 Peter 2:9-10

All of those things—chosen people, royal priesthood, holy nation, people belonging to God—they're all sourced in Exodus 19, before the law was given. There was a promise that if they obeyed, there would be these things. But we didn't obey. And so Peter is describing that all of those things have been given to us. We didn't earn them, but they were a gift. There's no condition of obedience here. They were received as a gift by faith.

He gave us all those fantastic things so that we would declare his praises. We would tell the story of what he's done and how he's done it. Part of our lives is this impulse to tell the story, and as we tell the story, we're necessarily praising him. We're talking about his greatness, what drew us to him, how did he accomplish it.

The Apostle Paul's Example

The apostle Paul does this. He tells the story of how he went on a trip intending to go to Damascus to capture all these renegade Jews that were following this crucified pretender. But on the way to Damascus, he met this crucified one who was quite clearly not pretending, and it completely blew up his life. And he tells that story of the trip to Damascus over and over and over. You see it several times in the New Testament.

I've reflected on why Paul uses this story so much. One reason, I think, is that language is the story of the human heart. Isn't it easier for you to read a novel than it is to read some kind of non-fiction treatise? We love story. And Paul knows that stories can be a very effective approach when we're trying to persuade someone of the truth of something. In particular, Paul wants to persuade people that the Jesus that met him on that road perhaps might meet you. So he tells his story over and over again.

I think another reason he told it is because he just couldn't get over it. I think it was fun for Paul to think about and to talk about how Jesus had changed his life. I think that Paul probably literally laughed at his own foolishness and God's mercy to him.

There's one place where he tells kind of a fragment of the story in first Timothy 1. He says, do you know why God picked me? Like, of all the people in the world that God could extend his mercy to, do you know what it was about me that made him pick me? And he says, because I was the worst of everybody. God picked me as an example of the limitless patience of God. He's looking around—who is the most train wreck of a guy that I could rescue so that no one would ever need to wonder, could the gospel apply to me? And when he was looking for that guy, he picked me, the chief of sinners. He loves to tell the story. He just embraced his own ludicrousness because it was an example of the mercy, the limitless grace of God.

You can find Paul tell the fuller versions of his story. It shows up in Acts 8, Acts 22, Acts 26, Galatians 1. It shows up so many times that telling his story was just a normal thing that Paul did as he traveled around the Roman Empire. Can I tell you what happened? I went on this trip and the whole thing spun out of control.

But whether I'm right or not that Paul loved to tell his story, I hope that you might indulge me to tell you mine, or at least a part of it. The story is long and I'm not gonna give you the whole version. It's been decades in the making.

But I am gonna tell you a part of my story and I wish that I could hear yours. We are in an imbalanced relationship right now because I have the microphone and you don't. But I hope that the day will come, maybe soon, that others will also have a chance to hear your story. That you'll think about this. Like, what is the story? And to whom could I tell it? But for the moment, it's my turn, and I'm gonna declare the praises of the one who called me out of darkness and into his wonderful light.

My Story

So I grew up in a Christian home, at least nominally Christian. We went to church sometimes, not so much in the summer because we had things to do, but for the most part it was Christian-ish, right? And I heard the gospel-ish, maybe, but not in a way that ever really made sense to me. I knew certain claims. I knew that if you believe in Jesus, then when you die you go to heaven. But I didn't honestly understand what does this have to do with that? Why is intellectual assent to this particular claim gonna purchase eternity in heaven? How does that work? I had some sense of that, but why is it not if you believe the grass is green, then when you die, you go to heaven? Why is it not that if you believe the moon is made out of cheese, that when you die, you go to heaven? What is this thing?

And I have a very specific memory of being in my living room at my house in Oakton, Virginia, and asking my mom, "Okay, so but why? Like, what does A have to do with B?" And then she answered me, and she probably did a fine job, but I had no idea what she said. I did not have ears to hear it. So off we go and I just continued my life.

And then I graduated from high school and I went to James Madison University, which I love, love, love, love, love. Did you guys love college? Have you been to college? For me, it was such a happy, happy place and happy time. JMU is one of the happiest places on earth.

And among the myriad of things that happened there that were just constant joy to me, I met a guy named Andy Sparks. And Andy came by my dorm room, and Andy was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, better known today as Crew. And Andy shared with me this little booklet that's a summary of the gospel message. It's called the Four Spiritual Laws. And he shared the Four Spiritual Laws with me and I heard it and it very clearly lays out the gospel message and I just thought, yeah. Yeah. That's what I believe. That's it, right? And it wasn't revelatory to me. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't like the lights came on and everything's like, "Oh, yeah." I mean, I heard something like that. And I never would have been able to articulate it with the clarity that Andy did or the organization of that little booklet. But it was the first time that I can remember at least having it all laid out in a way that was clear. It just didn't impress me all that much.

But Andy also invited me to join a Bible study that Tony Diggs was starting. His name is Tony Diggs, A.P. Diggs. And I agreed that I would come to this Bible study. But then they tricked me and they held the Bible study in my room, right? I learned over my twenty years with Crusade this is a standard technique. You just have the study in the room of the kid that you don't think is gonna come because what's he gonna do, right? It was in my room, okay?

But what you need to know about my dorm room in Hillside Hall at JMU is that every wall was plastered with posters of beautiful women under-dressed. Every wall, okay. So much so that my dorm room actually had a reputation. We would literally have people that I did not know drop by my room just to see my posters. And if that seems strange to you, you gotta know that this was before the internet existed and so it was just a more desperate age, okay?

And we held this Bible study there in my dorm in Hillside Hall. And I tell you, Tony would lead this study and we would come in and we would study the scriptures and whatever spiritual value was imparted in that Bible study was significantly undercut by the posters on those walls. But people came. In fact, it was an unusually well attended freshman Bible study for some reason. And in that study, you guys, in that study surrounded by all these images, my life began to change. Genuinely, actually, my life began to change. And a slow transformation began.

And those posters stayed up all year long. But we took them down at the end of the year and didn't put them back up my sophomore year. Because something had begun to change in me. It didn't finish, but the work had started. Do you remember the moment that the work began? JMU. I love that place. It's where I met my wife. It's where my whole life got turned upside down.

Now when I showed up at Madison, two ideas coexisted in my brain. One was that Jesus rose from the dead. I knew what Easter was about. Thank you very much, right? I know stuff.

Good Friday, he dies. Easter, he rises from the dead. I thought that was true. But the second idea was that this didn't matter at all. And my freshman year, the incongruence between these two things became inescapable to me. Either he rose from the dead, and this is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of the world, or it's totally irrelevant because it didn't happen. But this couldn't be. This just couldn't make any sense.

And so Andy gave me this book. Andy Sparks gave me this book about the resurrection and it basically explored through all these possible theories—what could make sense of the data. Maybe Jesus wasn't really dead. He fainted from the loss of blood but then revived in the coolness of the tomb. Maybe the disciples stole the body. Maybe the religious leaders stole the body. Maybe people hallucinated. Maybe they got lost on the way to the tomb and went to an empty tomb but Jesus's body was somewhere else. I read through all of it and as I read it, I'm like none of these make any sense. It happened. I really think that the best—I know it's, I mean believe me, I get it. People don't rise from the dead, at least not yet. They will. Everybody's gonna rise from the dead eventually. But at this time, they don't or they hadn't. But I think he really did.

And as I was confronted with this claim that he actually is risen, he's stronger than death, it became inescapable to me that this is not just true, but it's important. That it is, in fact, the most significant thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. It explains so much. It validates what he has done, validates everything he said about himself, and it validates everything he said about me. And it was transformative for me. It is the defining event in human history. And the only way that it could be insignificant is if it didn't happen. But I thought that it did. I still think that it did and I'm gonna bet my entire life on the fact that it did.

The Gospel in Community

And if it's true, it's important and it marks us. When I read that book and I began to churn and ponder, I came to the inescapable conclusion that I needed to follow Jesus. But I want you to watch this because this is a really important part of the story. All these things that I'm learning, all this information, all this data—it wasn't being received in a vacuum. It was being received in a community, in a group of people, in a little pocket of friends. This journey that I was going on in which all these things that I'd heard, which were kind of in gray tones, became vivid color and transformative for me—it was all happening in a set of relationships. I was not alone in my room just reading a book. I was in a community.

And there were guys like Neil Webb, whom I don't think anybody here knows. And Todd Meyer, who some of you do know. All of this theoretical, heady stuff was being played out in real relationships. And bit by bit, my life began to change. What was happening, and I didn't know it at the time, I didn't have language for it—was that all of my loves were being reordered. There were all these unworthy things that I had placed at the top of the stack, and a whole bunch of really worthy, important things that I had delegated to the bottom. But as these things started to shift, I began to love worthy things more and unworthy things less, and my whole life began to be unpacked. And all of that was happening with a group of people, with a group of friends.

And I didn't know it yet, but I was experiencing a phenomena that Paul describes in First Thessalonians 2:8. Maybe you've heard this—I quote this verse all the time because I love it. Here's what it says:

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well because you had become so dear to us. — 1 Thessalonians 2:8

Those are the two things that Paul shared with the Thessalonians. The gospel of God and his life as well. The gospel of God—that's the verbal articulation of the gospel. That's the data. That's the information. That's Andy Sparks coming to my room every week faithfully to answer the questions that I have about Jesus. I wish it would be such a gift if Andy had secretly been recording those conversations. I would love to hear what was opaque to me at that time. I think not all of it made sense. I didn't know anything. What were the things, what was the first question I ever asked Andy that started to work its way in? I don't remember at this point. But there was data, there was information. I would go to this Bible study and Tony Diggs would teach me stuff in this very basic, very fundamental Bible study. What were the things that I learned? People were speaking, I was listening.

People were writing and I was reading. Information that I didn't have was being given to me. Questions were being answered and my mind was being reorganized. Faulty beliefs and faulty behaviors were being challenged a bit at a time, and it was all changing.

But at the exact same time, people were sharing their lives with me. This group of guys, men and women, people that I enjoyed, people that I felt safe with, people that I did fun things with, people who liked me, and people that I liked were modeling the Christian life.

I remember one thing very clearly: they modeled their failures. They talked about their own badness and brokenness. And do you know what that does? That creates a place of safety where you're allowed to talk about your badness and brokenness. In my experience, nobody gets better. Nobody changes if there's not enough space where you can be honest about what you actually are. If you're just stuck in some community where it's all curated and it's all fake and projected, and it's just your avatar—nobody grows in that environment.

But I was in a place where we were allowed to be bad, allowed to be broken, to bring our stuff out of the darkness into the light. And because these guys did it, I didn't think they'd burn me if I did it. That was massive. What a change that makes in a person's life.

I got invited to a prayer meeting every single week of my freshman year that was held Sunday nights in Hillside Hall, and I never went, not one time. Do you know why? Because it sounded so boring. Who wants to go sit in a room for an hour and pray? Not me. But eventually, my sophomore year, we started holding these prayer meetings at 6AM on Wednesdays. And I was there every week. 6AM is early. It is cold and dark at six in the morning. We would get together every week to pray that the gospel would spread across JMU, that people would hear of Jesus, that there'd be some tidal wave of people coming to faith.

I went from being too lazy to walk across the hall on a Sunday night when I was wide awake to getting up early in the morning to go pray. It was because there was this community, this group of friends. I wasn't going to go pray alone. I was going to go pray with these people that I loved and who loved me. And it was the sharing of their lives that transformed mine.

Learning to Share the Gospel

And then this happened, and this was massive. Andy Sparks, the guy that started this whole thing, he invited me to come with him when he would talk to people about Jesus. And so I went. At first, I was simply a tag along. Andy was the professional. He knew what he was doing, and I would come along and I wouldn't say anything, but I would listen.

What I learned is that the questions people would ask him fall into a pretty finite set. Andy had heard the questions a hundred times and he had good answers. Over time, I learned that I knew what Andy was going to say next, and in fact, I could say it myself. I got to the point that I not only could say it, but that I wanted to say it. I learned how to talk to people about Jesus by spending my afternoons with Andy, watching him talk to people about Jesus.

What Jesus was doing in my life was so fun, so obviously central to God's eternal purposes, that it became so thrilling to me to think that I could catalyze that in somebody else's life. I remember when I began to go out with Andy, and then I began to go out on my own, and then I began to take other younger guys with me.

I remember the first kid I ever saw become a follower of Jesus through my lips. His name was Sean. What great fun to find out that Sean's life has been changed. I was like, "What do I know? But I was the guy, I was the sock puppet through whom God spoke to Sean. And for a hundred billion years, that's going to matter."

What a thrill that we're not left on the bench, but we get to take the field and be involved in helping people come to know Jesus. It was so incredibly fun.

I learned at JMU that the gospel came to me on the way to someone else. Just like the gospel had come to someone else on the way to me. And just like the gospel came to someone else on the way to you. And just like the gospel came to you on the way to someone else.

What a thrill that we are involved in God's purposes. He does not just leave us on the sidelines.

Last week, Quig asked the question: "Why don't we—if Jesus has made it so clear—why don't we talk to people with greater winsomeness or greater urgency or greater frequency? Why don't we do that?" I appreciate the list that you started, and I would humbly like to add one more reason to the list. What I've seen in my own life and what I've observed in others is that there are a lot of reasons.

Why We Don't Share Our Faith

But one of the reasons I think that we don't talk to people about Jesus is because we don't think it's gonna make any difference. We don't think they're gonna believe anyway. And that expectation of what we think of as failure just keeps us from even trying. Right? I don't know what I'm gonna say or I'll screw it up or I'll do more harm than good or even if I don't do more harm than good, I probably won't do any good in the first place and so why bother?

I mean if you can share the gospel with somebody and they don't believe or you can not share the gospel with somebody and they don't believe, the second option is easier. Right? So just don't talk to anybody. Same outcome either way. Does this sound plausible to you? That this functions in our minds?

If that resonates, let me simply say: you don't know that. You do not know what will happen if you open your mouth and talk about Jesus. And in fact, I believe that great good will come of that if you do that.

The First Benefit: Declaring His Praises

Even at the most basic level, if you proclaim the gospel, if you speak of Christ, if you tell your story, you are declaring the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. And if that's all that happens, that's enough. The declaration of his supremacy, telling the story of his beauty, his sufficiency to meet our needs, what he's meant in your life—that alone is a success all by itself.

We declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness and into his wonderful light. — 1 Peter 2:9

We are not responsible for the result. We are simply called in obedience to tell the story, to declare his excellence. But if we do that, you may get a whole lot more besides.

The Second Benefit: Deepening Your Own Faith

It may deepen your sense of all that you've been given. The rehearsing of that story, the telling of the tale will bring to your mind the sweetness of his love for you and that has value.

The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. — Galatians 2:19

When you tell others the story of how he loved you and loves you still, it deepens your awareness of his pursuing love. It strengthens your connection to him. And that itself, I think, might give you hope for the other burdens that you face. And I suspect that there are many. It might help you fight sin. It may set you on a path to flourishing.

Does anybody in this room have such a surplus of hope that you don't need anymore for the burdens that you face, the things that you fear, the challenges that you're dragging around? I mean, are you just so flush with hope that you're like, "Please, I couldn't take another bite"? I doubt it.

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? — Romans 8

The rehearsing of the story of how he gave himself up for you floods our hearts with hope that there may be yet more. When we tell the story to others, it helps us believe that he will show up in desperate circumstances. It helps us believe that perhaps those that we love, maybe those that we're talking to at that moment or others that we love, may yet come to believe. Talking to anyone about Jesus and what he's done in your life increases the plausibility structures in our mind that he is for us.

The Third Benefit: Contributing to Someone's Conversion

And then there's this. You might actually contribute to someone coming to follow Jesus. That can happen. It happens all the time. It happened to you. It happened to Quigg. Some dude shared with Quigg. Don't you wish you knew Quigg when he was a college kid? Don't you get the sense that he was a pretty good time? And nobody thought you were coming to faith, frankly. But he did.

In Philippi, God opened Lydia's heart to respond to Paul's message. It wasn't the last time. In Ephesus, because God is rich in mercy, he made those that were dead in their transgressions alive in Christ. On the island of Crete where Titus served as pastor, it was the love and kindness of God that appeared and he saved those people because of his mercy. He did it at JMU and he does it in Roanoke.

What were the particulars for you? What's the story?

A Practical Invitation

I want to invite you to do something this afternoon. Take thirty minutes. It's Sunday. It's the Lord's day. Sit down for a half hour. Grab a piece of paper. Grab a pen. And start to draw to mind your story.

What happened? When did it start? Maybe you were a little kid. Were you six? Were you in high school? Were you a college kid? Maybe it was last year. What was going on in your life? Was it a happy time? Or more likely, was it a difficult time? My guess would be for most of us we came to Christ in the midst of some disruption.

Something almost always like, it's not working anymore. What do I do? Right? Who are the people? Was there somebody moving their lips, answering your questions, challenging you, pointing you to something? Was there a book that you read? What was it? What was the story? What was going on in your life? Who were the key players? Was there something that clicked? It's like, ah, the penny drops. And now I see something in a way that I hadn't previously—hadn't made any sense to me before.

Or maybe you might think of, well, I don't know. I can't remember what happened, but I remember the result of it because this began to be my love's word. That thing about your loves being reordered, yeah, that's something like that happened to me. What was the story? Jot it down. Begin to just pull together, Lord, what did you do? How did you do it? Maybe it was a slow process like me. Maybe it was a sudden event. You know the date. Click. You know the key players. Maybe there was some decision that you made that embodied that the old is gone and the new has come.

I think that if you choose to do that, it might be a really fun half hour for you to rehearse the love and the kindness of God and his pursuit of you and how he won you and made you his own. If you're like, I don't think there's a story to tell. Well, congratulations, because the story could start right now. This might be the day that there's a process going on and that story doesn't need to be complete. The story doesn't even need to have started, but you're here. Maybe there is a work that God would be pleased to do and a story that he's writing. He is the author and perfecter of our story. He is the author and perfecter of our faith.

If you write the story out and you're thinking about how it's all happened, then I just wonder—be careful, because it might be that as you look at the story, you might start to think of somebody to whom you could tell the story. Because stories are meant to be told. Who is it that should have the privilege to hear of what God has done? Who is it that should hear you declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light?

An Invitation to the Rail

I want to invite you, if you want to. We've got these rails. Here's how we do it. The front rail is curved. It's all alone for you. You might want to come forward and spend some time with Jesus. The side rails—there'll be friends there that'll pray with you. Either one is wide open.

Couple things you might choose to do. Maybe you began to follow Jesus a long time ago, but you have forgotten the sweetness of his love, his pursuit. And maybe you just need to say thank you. Jesus, thank you for that person who came by my dorm. Thank you that my mom said this. Thank you that these friends called me out in this. Thank you for that book that I read. You want to just thank him. Jesus, this is where the story started. This is where the romance began. You come down, you just want to spend some time and thank him.

Or maybe what's on your mind is somebody that needs to hear your story and I'm afraid. I don't know what to say. I'm gonna feel so stupid. But I would love them to hear of your love and your grace and you want to come down and say, Lord, give me the courage, give me the words, help me tell the tale.

Or maybe something nothing related to that at all. It's just, man, you've been dragging something around all week and you're afraid or you're nervous or you're scared or you're guilt ridden and you just need to take some time and process with Jesus. It's all wide open. Whatever you need, we're here for you. He is here for you.

Prayer

I'm gonna pray for you that whatever he's pleased to do in these next few minutes, he'll do and you will cooperate with him as we seek to be a people that are just constantly talking about how great he is in such a way that other people will want to know him too.

Lord Jesus, you're the king of every story. You are the hero of our story. Even our stories are about you. You are the center of all things, and we love you. And we thank you, Lord, that you didn't just leave us alone, but you pursue us.

But I pray for those that are right here that like, I don't know if you're pursuing me. Lord, would you chase them? Would you win them? Would you be the hound of heaven? Capture their hearts, win them from rebellion and the love of unworthy things and lift their eyes to see your splendor.

And we thank you, Lord, that to whatever means, you did it for us. Would your praises ring out from this place and from these places of work, from these neighborhoods, in these households, that we would see your beauty and your greatness. We lift you up. Thanks for loving us. Amen.