Scholar or an Epistle?

2 Corinthians 3:3 (MSG)
Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.

What is Paul saying?

⇒  God does not write the message upon tables of stone as He  did when He gave the commandments to Moses.

⇒  He writes upon the fleshy tables of the heart. He puts his message upon the hearts of men, which causes men to live changed lives.

⇒  He simply meant your life is a living letter, written by the hand of God through the agency of the Holy Spirit intended to be read by others. God writes stories with people’s lives.

When you live a story, you take ownership of the journey. Every challenge you overcome leaves its own permanent imprint upon your heart. Then, when you talk about it, your entire being radiates the story.

When you have ownership, the story is communicated passionately. That is why as a preacher, I must find how the scripture applies to me first before I can effectively and passionately communicate it to the listeners.

 John 1:14 (NKJV)
¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus became the message; the Word was made flesh. When you are the message, you move people at the deepest levels. So, it is with our lives, we become the story in flesh. When people can relate to our challenges and victories, they too are moved.

 On one hand, the lessons you have learned enlighten their minds, but a life message doesn’t simply touch the mind, it moves the heart. And that is because the journey has transformed who you are. When you tell your story, people don’t experience a message, they experience you.

That is the difference in scholars and epistles. Scholars move the mind, they depend upon their research to sway the thinking of their hearers. But Living Epistles do more – they move the heart. That is why God takes you on a journey, He is instilling in you a message a story so that you tell it with passionate ownership.

“God wants you speaking from your heart, not your library.”

The point of your story is to make God – not you – look good.  The power of your story is measured by the degree in which God intervened in your affairs. The more God had to do for you makes for a more dramatic story.

People hear the same mundane stories of people’s lives every day. How doubtful and hopeless life is, how nothing ever seems to go their way. This is not what makes your story. What defines your story is the moment when you begin to tell others how God got involved in your journey.

The man at the pool of Bethesda had the same story the others had until began to tell how God got involved in his journey.

Here is the scene, there was a sheep market which had a pool to provide water for the animals to drink and five porches to provide a resting area for the comfort of the people. The one thing they all had in common was there was a pool and a whole lot of impotent people. Each of their stories were the same.

⇒  There was the blind who could not see.

⇒ There were the lame who could not walk.

⇒ There were the withered who were deformed and paralyzed.

⇒ There were so many who were poor and beggarly.

⇒ They were all waiting for something significant to happen.

 The same is true today. So many in the world are blind, lame, and spiritually withered and they too are waiting on something significant to change the way their story ends.

 The guy at the pool of Bethesda’s story was somewhat the same as the others but it took on an interesting twist at the end which made his story a story of significance.

 His story starts like all the rest, then, he begins to passionately tells of his journey as he takes ownership in what happened.

 He said for 38 years, I was like all the rest of these people I had an illness which prevented me from doing pretty much anything. For 38 years like many of the rest I watched at a certain time of year the waters would begin to bubble as they were troubled. For 38 years, I watched along with everyone else the one fortunate individual who managed to get to the pool and be healed. For 38 years, it was always someone else getting a miracle, receiving a healing, but never me.

And then one day it happened…no the waters were not troubled, I did not make it to the pool, but a man named Jesus came walking by and saw me. And He said to me, “Do you want to be healed?” Well of course I wanted to be healed what kind of question was that? So, I said to the man, when the waters are troubled I have no one to help me in. But the Jesus said to me “Rise take your bed and walk.” And just like that I was healed. I didn’t have to get in the pool, I didn’t have to wait on the troubling of the waters, He simply spoke 6 words to me and I was healed after being ill for 38 years.

 Now that is a story! What grabs the heart is when we hear how God stepped into the regular-ness of everyday life, infused it with His power and produced a testimony of His greatness.

 Now let’s look at the scripture again but this time in the NIV version.

John 5:2-9 (NIV2011)

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.
Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.  One who was there had been an invalid (unaccepted, dysfunctional, worthless, unsound, and void) for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw, him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid (unaccepted, dysfunctional, worthless, unsound, and void) replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,

 You may feel like your story doesn’t matter, that the story of your challenges are better off untold. What you must realize is it is your story that God is wanting to use. He chose to author the story of an invalid, unaccepted individual to bring salvation, hope and healing to others who’s futures seemed dim.