Testimonies And The Larger Story - Bible Wonders

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder? I do. Did you ever wonder why the sun always rises but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?

Enough. He would reach down in there and read his testimony and, of course, he would need that when he went to enter the celestial city. And I don't know if you've ever made the connection, God made it for me in such a spectacular way, in the way that your story is connected to your heart. In fact, King David, of course, one of the most wholehearted people always, when he was giving us his Beatitudes in the 119 Psalm, the second one that he mentions is, Blessed are those who keep his testimonies and seek him with their whole heart. In other words, we can see once again there's a connection between story, your story, and God's story, and heart. And it's fascinating to me how many times that when we see a great revival that somebody is sharing the story.

I mean, whether you look in the book of Exodus, obviously God's always telling you that you're the God of Jacob, and he's always sharing the story with Moses and telling the children to share the story of what happened every single Passover. They're to share the story, and if you look in the books, how many times are they sharing the story? And clearly one of the biggest examples in the New Testament is Peter shares the story of basically how the people had crucified Christ right to the point where 3,000 people are saved. They're in the book of Acts, and later in the book of Acts you might remember that Stephen tells the story right before he's stoned, which makes a huge effect on Paul, which at some point in time, that seed that's planted bears an unbelievable harvest. And of course even the last book in the Bible is very much the story of what John is sharing about what's going to happen at the end. But even if you look like in the book of Nehemiah, they share the story when they're having this revival. Or in the book of the Song of Solomon, the story is reviewed time and time again, or in the book of Habakkuk that we just studied.

He, in the whole third chapter, is pretty much sharing the story. And the idea is, again, if we want to keep our heart, and again, here's the story of the way God made this happen for me that I saw clearly the connection is, because you might know that I got sick last week because I didn't have a chance to record all the podcasts I wanted to. And I was to give two talks yesterday, I mean, excuse me, last week.

I was to give two talks at the entrenchment that was going to be in Lexington, North Carolina, and I got sick. So the first talk I was supposed to give was on the core desires of a man's heart, which was supposed to be Friday night for me. Well, since I was not able to do that, I spent the day Friday trying to recover from my cold, and God just put it on my heart that I was going to do the next talk, which was the larger story. And he was just hammering me on the fact that I didn't need to do any focusing on the idea of what are the core desires of the heart, I needed to focus in on the larger story. And what he showed me so clearly was how the 119th Psalm, verse 2, is so connected to a wholeheartedness, because the idea of the larger story talk is to show people how Christianity is the answer to putting your heart, getting your heart back, because with the story in context, in other words, what's God's story rather than living in a smaller story, if we live with the larger story, and the perfect example might be King David himself, right? That he was anointed king, and he knew that he was in that larger story.

But interestingly, so was King Saul, and those King Saul chased him all over trying to kill him. He kept the larger story in mind, and he said he wouldn't touch the Lord's anointed. And so you wonder, how did King David keep his whole heart through all those trials that he went through throughout his life? Well, he's the one who wrote the 119th Psalm, and said, blessed are they that keep the story, the larger story in mind, because we're working on eternity, and eternity is a lot longer time than what's right in front of us. And so as we walk with God, and we see his story, wow, what an opportunity we have to share the light of it. You know, again, it said that you're going to overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of your what? Your testimony, your story. And the idea of story is what literally keeps my shows on the air, I know, is people love to hear the stories that my listeners share about how God has come in their lives.

And the thing of it is, is that's what people really are longing to hear, is that God is really for us, not against us. And so when you saw that in any way, shape, or form, you were an eyewitness, and you can give testimony. And it says you're going to receive strength when you do that, and again, just go to 119th Psalm, and look at all the different ways that King David mentions the use of testimonies.

It's amazing. This whole idea of story, and wholehearted, and that being connected to your testimony is a giant wonder to me. And the interesting thing about the word testimony is that it starts with the letter I in, which just coincidentally and not coincidentally is the last letter in the word Yeshua, or Jesus' name. And the idea of that is a vision in so many different ways, because if you look at it, it looks sort of like a Y, because there are two I's, and they come together at one point to make sort of a Y, to give one vision from two different perspectives.

But it also looks, coincidentally or not, like a yoke. And so the interesting thing is you get God's vision as you take on his yoke, and you begin to see things from his standpoint, and you become an eyewitness to what God is doing. Because the more you get God's vision, obviously, the more you take on his yoke. It's an amazing thing, and that whole interesting word begins the word servant as well. And since the second letter in the word testimony is dalad, it fits very well with the idea of the servant. It fits very well with the idea of somebody has a vision for love, because we've talked about many times how that letter dalad has to do with love. And the last letter in the word testimony is a letter hei, which is telling us that we're going to express, right?

The letter hei means to express. And so it's a beautiful thing that when you have God's vision as a servant, and you express what you have seen, you're sharing something that touches hearts. Because there's a gigantic connection, and Jesus knows this all so well, and you'd always know the power of story. It's the reason why movies capture your heart, and it's one of the reasons that we use the movie clips in The Masculine Journey when we're sharing. It's the reason that Jesus talked in parables, because the way that we orientate ourselves to everybody is, you know, tell me the story.

What's going on in your life? Once you know the context of the story, then all of a sudden things begin to make sense to your heart. Your heart speaks the language of story. And so when you see a movie, then something just resonates in you, and the next thing you know you're crying, or the next thing you know you're excited, or the next thing you know you feel totally engaged, it has to do with you are getting a context which you then see as a context of your own life. You relate to it in some different way, and it touches your heart. Well, that is how, that is the power of your story. Once you know the story and you share the story, even how I share the story today of, wow, God gave me this idea on story. And so, interestingly, I'm at the point where I'm asking God, you know, in the story, my story, because I'd love to have him order my steps in his Word.

Okay, God, where are we going? And so he told me this weekend, he said, I want you to go to the Aion chapter. And I said, well, that's interesting. What is the Aion chapter? Well, the Aion is the 16th letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and so the Aion chapter would be the chapter of Nehemiah. And so, fascinatingly, he didn't want me to study Nehemiah the way I normally study. He wanted me to read it as a story. And so I spent the last two days reading them Nehemiah as a story, and because Nehemiah clearly had God's vision, okay, in so many different ways. And so we'll be excited to be jumping into that next time. But right now, we just want to wonder about how story is connected to the heart and how you might be able to share your story or a story with somebody. How God worked in your life just today or last week or whatever it is, believe me, you will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony.