Check Your Story

2 Timothy 4:3-4

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Stories can be pretty fun. Stories can be really interesting, and stories can be really compelling. But have you thought about the stories that are being told in our world today, and the stories that we tell ourselves in our own heads? And just because a story is interesting or even compelling, it doesn’t make that story true. If you look around the world today, there are stories that are being told that about history or about the movements in our world, about what is good, what isn’t good, and they can be told pretty well in pretty interesting, compelling ways. But we need to ask, okay, does that story actually match the truth of God’s Word? Does that story that’s going on in my head about who I am and how I should relate to other people, does that actually match what God says?

Consider Second Timothy four, three to four. It says,

For there will come a time when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, because they have itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in line with their own desires. They will also turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

to false stories. There are stories in our world about progression and just where the world’s going and saying, “You should get on board with what the world is doing.” And that might sound good, but while the world may be doing it is actually what God says in His Word. Is that big picture story of what He created us for and what He has planned for the world?

There can be stories that develop even within the Church, a story that sounds good, but actually it’s just scratching our itching ears. For instance, sometimes I know and have conversations with Christians, it can be really easy for us to talk about what’s wrong with everyone else out there while pumping ourselves up, which does that really fit what God would have us do when God actually would have us first and foremost confess our own sin, trust in Him, and then lovingly and with care talk to others and share what His truth says with others? And there can be stories that go in our own heads, stories that say that one pump us up with self-righteousness or maybe the opposite, stories that say, “I better do good enough so God loves me. I’ll never be where I can be feeling good about who I am and how I relate with others ’cause I just mess up and mess up and mess up. God has no plans for me. I don’t have anything to offer.”

All of those things that we can have in our heads, you know, “I can’t be used part of God’s plan because I’m not gifted like this person,” those are stories that go on in our heads. But check them all with what God’s Word actually says. God’s Word says that you are right with Him simply through believing in Christ, that if you have been brought to faith in Christ, the Spirit has given you that faith, which means the Spirit lives inside of you. The scriptures say that the Spirit now is working in you. God doesn’t need big impressive things in this world to do His work. Actually, He often chooses the surprising, the weak to shame the wise. God’s ways are so different than the stories that the world often tells us, and even the stories in our own heads.

So think about what story you’re reading, watching, listening to, even telling yourself today, and ask yourself, “How does this story fit with the truth?” Because God’s Word is full of His truth. It tells us the true story, the story of a God who created us to partner with Him, to have life with Him, who even when we turn away from Him, He enacted a plan to set us right with Him again. Jesus has brought that plan forward, living the life you and I were meant to live, dying for us and rising again. We are now filled with His Spirit as we walk as children of light in this world, and there will be a day that Jesus returns and sets it all right. Of course, there’s much more to the story than all of that. The Bible is full of it. But you and I get to discover that story, remember that story, and live that story. Check the story.