Living Story Bible Study Guides: How to Explore Your Story

In 10 days, our family will celebrate the second wedding of one of our four children within a 7- week period. It has been a summer of fresh delight; it has been a summer of unlooked-for loss; it has been a summer of changing-story sorrows; it has been a summer of new-beginning joys.

What does that have to do with Living Story Bible Study Guides?

I share that to explain why it is CRUCIAL to know our stories, and to understand them in the context of the grander narrative God is writing in our lives. Today on its blog, P &R Publishing highlights the three Bible studies I’ve written on the topic of living in God’s story of grace.

As I take a long pause in a few weeks after the final toast has been made, I will spend some time looking at my story. In Learning God’s Story of Grace, I described the “story of grace” the Bible tells, what some theologians call “redemptive history.” I also explain how this structure can be so helpful in remembering what God has done in our story and looking for what he might be doing right now.

Here are those four parts and a few questions I might use to further consider my current story. Why not try it with a story of your own?

The 4 Parts & a Few Questions

1. Creation tells us who we are, male and female, created in the image of God. The “chapter” of Creation is characterized by “shalom,” peace, wholeness, harmony – everything is “the way it ought to be.”

Question about my current story: 

• A big one for me right now is “who am I” as I send two of our children out to form new families of their own?
• Another is, “describe the shalom,” the beauty, the echoes of Eden in this story.

2. The Fall tells us why we struggle with sin and live in frustration. In the Fall, shalom is wrecked; sin has divided what was meant to be together; beauty is distorted; wholeness is deconstructed.

The Fall is compounded when we we multiply sin as we try to restore shalom by turning to people, places, or things that make us feel significant – what the Bible calls idols.

Questions to ask: 

• What has gone wrong, and why? What sin has divided relationships?
• What are the idols underneath this sin? What am I worshipping more than worshipping God? (I’ve really had to sit in this question as I see my “control-freak-mama” persona growing monstrously large and wreaking all sorts of havoc.

Which is why I’m so grateful for the next part:

3. Redemption tells of a sinless Savior who rescued us from sin and death by living, dying and rising.  This wild story of God’s grace means that anyone who trusts in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for their salvation is transformed to live the free life we were made to live.

In this chapter of the story, shalom is partially restored:  relocation, reconciliation, and re-creation characterize our lives, even though we await the final day when restoration will be complete.

Questions to ask:

• Where do I see God redeeming? (Even in the midst of this story, I have to stay close to the good news that Christ has forgiven my sin, since it’s easy to collapse in the Fall of condemnation).
• What new things, new relationships, is God building in the midst? How is he shaping me (and my family) (and yes, it does feel like the potter banging hard on that clay:-)!

4. Consummation describes the ‘grand finale’ of the story, tells us that all our endings are transformed into the beginning of an unending story.

Questions to ask:

• Even as things do not go perfectly with out summer weddings, how does the hope of the final Wedding Feast bring beauty and light into these moments?
• What will this broken/redeemed relationship look like in that final day when we are all the perfectly gleaming bride, robed in his righteousness, resting in his shalom?

As we ask such questions that the Living Story Bible study series raises about our lives, the outcome is NOT about us. It’s really about seeing God’s glory even more clearly and loving him more fully for the love he has already shown us in Christ. It also helps us to discover more about what God is calling us to — to let go of, to move into. Please check out the series or contact me about coaching if you’re interested in exploring this life-transforming exercise further. And stay tuned — new coaching groups forming in the fall. Please let me know if you’re interested!