What’s your favorite story to hear? Is it an action,
romance, comedy, adventure, or horror story? What about it intrigues you?
Now, what’s your favorite story to tell? Coming up with a
blank?
My answer would be, without even knowing you…your own story.
You may think you don’t have a story, but you would be wrong. Everyone has a
story; some series of events that brought you to this exact moment right here,
right now.
Over the past week, I have been put in some situations where
I have had the opportunity to meet many people. Some I met at bus stops or
resting on the sidewalk. Others I met on airplanes or while shopping at
Wal-Mart. The thing that struck me about every person that I met is that each
one of them had a story. Most of them, whether they knew it or not, were
longing to tell those stories.
As a Christian, at times, I have felt the pressure of the
evangelical movement (and this is not a slam) to push the message and story of
Christ to those around me. This past week, though, God has been showing me that
I cannot adequately share Christ’s story unless I listen to others’ stories
first. I have to hear where they are coming from, what they have been through
and what they need before I can help them.
A quick visual aid: Picture a grocery store and a frantic
woman rushing up and down the looming aisles. A grocery clerk, eager to
help,
frantically starts tossing items into the woman’s cart in an effort to provide
what she is looking for. However, this only frustrates the woman as she tries
to put the items back on the shelf while still continuing to look for the items
she needs. In fact, she becomes so angry that she starts sobbing and screaming
at the clerk, who now is completely confused because he was just trying to
help.
Our first challenge as Christians is to listen to people.
While this may take away from the numbers of tracks we give out or the number
of people we pray for in a day, the issue isn’t numbers. It’s RELATIONSHIP.
