Telling Your Story

We have a lot to tell when God is given reign over our life.  My son’s has a story, see it below.

Owen <><

This Is My Story   by Pastor Tim Mannin

Here’s what’s been great about my story – it’s been about something greater than me. I became a believer when I was 14 years old. I graduated High School from Western Heights in OKCity. I started serving in a church that deepened my perspective on the church and faith and it caused me to get really involved and eventually started serving on staff at that church. I went to college, got married to my incredible wife Christie and started working full time as a student pastor and at that church for 10 years. We came to Journey in 2007 and today I lead our family ministries of children’s, student, and college ministries at Journey Church. Through those years of my life God has increasingly stretched and grown me. I am continually challenged and continually humbled in this life to be more courageous, to be show more humility, and to embrace love more deeply.

My story is all about adding to THE STORY. I’m not perfect, in fact I’m often pretty messed up. The scriptures talk a lot about messed up people being a part of His story.

God doesn’t include himself in our story – we join the larger story. We include ourselves in His.

So, I ask you…what’s you story?

Where do your dreams lie? Where do the highlights reside?

You have a story… are you telling it? How are you telling it?

My encouragement to you is to connect your story to the larger perspective of God’s Story.

He wants to weave through your story not as an additional piece, but as the centerpiece.

Our story is an ongoing, ever changing story that includes, heartache, adventure, pain, love, laughter, and so much more. In the end our story is all we have.

Jesus said, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed. (Mark 5:18-20)

See original post of Apr 18 2012 by tim.mannin at:

http://journeychurch.tv/2012/04/this-is-my-story-tim-mannin/

Up Against the Wall

A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel's situation might not be changed.       
—Daniel 6:17

Daniel prayed under the shadow of Babylonian law that demanded the death penalty upon those praying to anyone but the king.  When Daniel was seen praying, the king stated, “The decree stands … [and the law] cannot be repealed” (v12).  Daniel was up against a wall, his fate seemed to be sealed when a “stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den [of lions]… so that no one could rescue Daniel” (v17).  Daniel’s wall was the ferocity of mankind’s intolerance of God, not of lions in the den.

You may be facing a wall, a rock barrier blocking your only way out of a dire situation.  It blocks your every effort, threatens your very life, it overwhelms you, it looks insurmountable.  But, what of our hope; how is your faith?  On Easter Sunday we celebrated the removal of a huge rock barrier at the entrance to a burial tomb, ah, and, who walked out!?!  God removes barriers, and overcomes death with life.  Daniel, like Christ Jesus, walked out of a place of death into life.       

Daniel’s fate wasn’t sealed by a rock, nor blocked by a wall in denial of God.  Daniel had been praying.  Though the king had his rock in place, swearing it “cannot be repealed,” he soon learned about the power in prayer—prayer that moves barriers.  Today, prayer—as with Daniel—prayer is a moving force.  Being up against a wall is nothing, as, Jesus said, “you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done.  If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matt 21:21-22).      

Praying, rolling stones, going through walls, tossing mountains aside,

Owen <><