Sharing God’s Story in and Through Your Life

Cara Garrity: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, we welcome Jeff Broadnax, who will be leading us in sharing our testimonies and what God is up to in our everyday lives. We invite you to co-create your own experiences of spiritual formation through personal and communal practices.

We believe that through such personal and communal practices, we open ourselves and surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst grow us up into the healthiest participants in the ministry of Christ that we can be, to the glory of the Father. Amen.

Jeff: Good morning. I’m Jeff Broadnax, regional director with GCI here in the Eastern region. I’ve served as a pastor for 34 years. And the last few, I’ve been serving as a regional director where I serve pastors. And I help pastors, not only lead their congregations, but help their congregations do the kind of thing that I want to talk about today.

And that is to learn to see and share God’s story through their own life story. I’m honored to be here today and share this with you, and I hope you’ll take the journey with me because this one is a personal one. It’s one that will allow each of us to stop and to reflect and to pay attention to not only what God is doing, but what God has already done.

Because very often when we look at what God has already done in our world and in our lives, it gives us clarity as to what he is doing and frankly what he will do. So, let’s begin with prayer. And then I want to walk you through just a couple of passages of scripture as we move into this clarifying discussion for reflection, for implementation, and for a passionate living sent, of sharing God’s story through our lives.

God, you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we are grateful that we can come and know that you know us, but not just that you know us, but that you specifically made us. You specifically designed the two cells that would come together to make us. That is not just unique, it is powerful.

And what you want from us is that we will see you and that we will see that we don’t have to be anybody else in the world. We just have to be who you’ve created us to be, to come to discover why you made us, why you use us, why you allow us to reflect you very specifically and uniquely in the world.

And so today, as we reflect, it is our desire to be able to see from you what you are doing in our lives. I pray, Lord, that you will bless the words that are spoken to actually be a clear path to a deeper understanding and a deeper discovery or removing of the cover of what you’ve been doing in our lives and what you will continue to do.

And so, we thank you. And in Jesus’ name, do we pray. Amen.

In the book of Acts 1, it was that moment where Jesus was standing before the disciples, and he was about to ascend. And the disciples asked him if it was now the time to restore Israel. And Jesus went on to tell them in Acts 1:7, that’s not what I want you to worry about; I don’t want you to focus on those things. The time and the seasons are not given for you to know.

But he does say in verse 8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And at that point, he was taken up.

And I want to focus on the statement that he made that you will be my witnesses. We know from our 21st century court of law that a witness is somebody who goes and they make an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with the help of God. And if you can, if we can filter that back through what Jesus was saying, cause that’s really what he was saying.

He was saying, you’re going to be a person who will be in Jerusalem and Judea and all of Samaria and the ends of the earth. You’re going to go where you’re safe, where you’re comfortable, where you’re slightly uncomfortable and where sometimes you might be scared to death. And you’re going to tell what you’ve seen, heard and experienced about me.

The Greek word for witness there is martyr. And so, when we think of martyrs, we often think of people who’ve given their lives, in death, for something, but really what that word is meaning in Greek — it may come to that. But what he’s saying is that a witness, or someone who operates in that “martyr,” is somebody who will tell the whole story, tell the whole truth, tell the life story.

And sometimes even telling that hard truth may cost them everything, but they stand on that truth. They stand on that story. And so, what Jesus is saying is he wanted the disciples to be ones who would tell the life story, his story through their lives. Because even with the twelve, none of them had the same story.

Each one of them had a different experience with Jesus, even though they shared some things in common. In Matthew 28, I think this is talking about that same period of time, we call this the Great Commission. But Jesus says, because all authority is his in heaven and earth, he says, I want you to go. And as you go, I want you to make disciples, baptizing people, and teaching them everything I’ve commanded you. And remember, I’m with you to the end of the age.

And I think sometimes for us, it could be easy to teach lessons or principles that Jesus taught. Jesus taught one time about light and salt. We could tell that story, but what if we, instead of just telling the details or the facts of the story, what if we started the story by saying, one time we were with Jesus, and it was this big crowd of people. And when we were sitting there, here’s what we were experiencing while we were going through it. And then he started talking to them about salt and about light, and it was just the coolest thing for me because I remember watching this one woman, in her eyes I saw something special in her eyes and it hit me different.

You see, when you tell the story through that lens if the disciples were to tell the story through the way it happened, the way they experienced it, it might have changed quite a bit about how it’s received.

That’s what Jesus is getting at, I believe, when he says teach them everything. It’s not just about getting a set of doctrines and teaching those doctrines. I believe Jesus is trying to get them to teach about the private conversations he was having with them as they were walking along the way, or when they were sitting in a house, or when they were experiencing somebody who got healed.

Tell the story through the eyes of the story.

When Peter wrote later in 1 Peter 3:15, when he told us to set apart the Lord in our hearts and be ready always to give an answer for the reason that we have hope in you and to do it with meekness and reverence toward God, Peter had so many stories that he could tell. He had so many things, so many moments, and they weren’t just about the facts.

Peter had been able to see his life story come full circle in so many ways. One of the amazing things you should do, we could do, is actually go back and look at Peter’s story and see how many things Jesus does more than once in very specific ways in Peter’s life.

Like the time, [Jesus said] put your net over the side of the boat. How many times did he say that to him? How many different situations? When Peter denied Jesus, there was a smell of coals, and when he came back after the crucifixion, there was a smell of coals. There were so many pieces of Peter’s life that Jesus would bring full circle for him, and Peter could tell the story differently.

That’s the beauty of learning to share God’s story or God’s narrative through your life. Because frankly, if all we do is pass on general information to people, it gets hard for them to be able to see it applying in their world. Giving a testimony, however — sometimes we don’t like that word — but giving a testimony or sharing the story as you’ve seen, heard, and experienced it, allows people to see life through your eyes, and in our case, to see God writing his story through our eyes and through our lives.

I remember reading several years ago, a couple of books. There were three books that really helped me in this space. One was by Henry Blackaby. It’s called, Experiencing God. And it just takes you on a deeper journey of listening for this, the repeatable stories or the things that God has done, where he’s made it very specific.

Max Lucado wrote a book called, The Cure for the Common Life, which is another great book of just walking through helping people, helping one see himself or herself as God has been working very specifically, because no two people are the same.

But the one that really grabbed me and that took me to a deeper place is one by Dr. Dan Allender. It’s a book called, To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future. And he uses the language of story, and he uses the ability to teach us some practices that I think are very helpful in understanding what God has been doing so that we can be clearer on what he is doing and, most likely, will continue to do.

[00:11:11] So, what I’d like to do right now is take you on a journey and have you take a practice with me. I’d like you to just sit for a moment, and I’d like you to think through three words. Maybe grab a piece of paper. You may want to pause the podcast, grab a pen and a paper, because we’re going to write a little bit.

But one of the things I’d love for you to be able to do is when you get your pen and paper, I want you to write down three words that have been regularly spoken. Like you hear them a lot when people describe you or your impact or something that you’ve been used to give to them or to be a part of their life. Write down three words. The three words that come up most often that you’ve heard over the years, and just set them aside for a second.

[00:12:10] And then what I’d like for you to do, I’d like you to think of three times in your life. You may only be able to come up with one. You may only be able to come up with two, but you may be able to come up with 20, but I want you to try to come up with three times in your life where you know that God has made himself real and personal in your world. Three times where you know that you can put a date down You can just write yourself a little shorthand story title, you can write yourself a picture, you can name a place, but three situations or three times in your life where you know that God has made himself real or personal. Or as the Scripture talks about, he made it manifest, able to be grasped in the hand.

[00:13:00] So, when you have those three words together and you have those three situations together. See what they have in common. See if they have anything in common. They may not, but they will all come together in the end. Because when you’re looking at those three times that God has made himself personal, I want you to focus on how you knew it was God.

How did you know that it was God? It could be a circumstance, like he rescued you from some catastrophic accident or some catastrophic situation or potentially catastrophic situation as a child. It may be that time you prayed that God — you’d been a strikeout king in baseball, and maybe you prayed that God would allow you to get a hit. And you not only got a hit this time, but you hit a home run. And it sounds weird, but you believed in your heart that God answered your prayer, and you knew that God was moving in you because there was something different about this one.

It may have been a moment that shook you to the soul. It may have been one of those moments that that God allowed something in your life that not only challenged your faith, but it challenged your being. And then God made himself crystal clear that he was not only present, but he was moving in it. And even though you didn’t have an answer, or you didn’t have the answer you wanted, you were shook to the soul. He was present.

Or maybe it might be one of those times he used you, and then you saw later on that he was using you to answer somebody else’s prayer. Somebody else had been praying, and then God allowed you to be present or to say something or to do something. And they said to you, I was just praying about that. And you had no idea that’s how God was going to use you.

I don’t know what the circumstance is, but I’d like you to write down three times in your life where you know that God made himself real and personal in your world.

So now, when you bring those words back together, and when you bring those times back together, what I’d like for you to do next is I’d like for you to take them and pray over them and ask the Lord why he showed you those. Why, Holy Spirit, did you show me these words and these times? And then take the time in yourself, in that moment, write down what you think you hear, what you believe you hear, what he makes clear to you.

Because by doing so, what you will find is that God will make clear some of the things he’s been doing in your life, how he’s been using your life, how he’s been clarifying his presence in your life. And you’ll start seeing patterns. I firmly believe that as you look back at the stories and as you look back at the words, you’re going to find that they form a pattern. And you’re going to see that God didn’t just do it those three times, but there are other times that he’s done similar things and it’s been in similar ways, and it’s been a similar story. And you’ve come full circle again and again.

Because what that’s showing you is these are some of the things that God has been consistently using your life to reflect his story, to reflect his grace, to reflect his greatness, to reflect his faithfulness, to reflect his ability to hear you in pain, to reflect his ability to celebrate with you. You’re going to be able to see patterns of things that God has placed in your world to help you not just see it yourself, but to help other people.

[00:17:20] The last part of the practice of taking the words, taking the stories, asking God why he showed it to you, and then following the pattern — the last part of the practice is, when you come up with anything that’s clear, I would love for you to find someone that you trust , a dear friend, and I want you to tell them what you found.

Share the story. And I don’t want you to share the details of what I ask you to do: to write down three words, write down three situations. I want you to frame it as a story:

Recently I was listening to a podcast, and I was challenged to give a witness of the God story in my life. And so, I was challenged to … (and then you can lay [out] the things you were asked.) And so, here’s what I came to, and I just feel like I want to share it with you.

And then what you do is you listen to see if it’s validated in them. I’m pretty, pretty sure that what you’ll find is they will acknowledge that’s how God has been using your life, even in them.

I’ve come to see that there are several patterns in my life. And when I look for them, when I look for God in those moments, I call them divine appointments. But when I look for God in those moments, I know he’s present and I know he shows up.

In fact, this very morning, I had one of those circumstances. I had been invited to a prayer breakfast, and the guest speaker was going to be sharing a personal testimony of the tragedy of the loss of a son. She had lost her son during pregnancy, during the late, last stage of pregnancy, and the child was stillborn. And she went through all the gamut of emotions and the struggles of losing her son. Lord, why?

She was a believer. She is a believer. And she struggled. She struggled. It was a soul shaker moment. And she’s one of our local newscasters, and when I heard her story [previously], I began praying for her and for her husband and her family because 30 years ago this year, my wife and I had a very similar circumstance where we lost a daughter at 39 weeks.

And I began praying for them, and I wrote her an email to tell her. I wrote her to share with her that I’d be praying for her and her family, and I understand what that feels like in a small way especially as believers when you’re shaken to your soul. But I never had an opportunity to meet her.

This friend of mine who invited me to this [prayer breakfast], I got there, and I waited around afterwards. And I met her father who’s a pastor, and I just shared with him that I had been praying for him and his family. And I will continue to pray for him and his family.

It was a moment. And I found that what God did was he allowed me to see that there were some circumstances that were virtually identical, not in the loss, but in the conversations that we had with him. And so, he was able to validate for me, God heard me, and I was able to validate for him that God heard him.

And as I told this woman, the story — I got a chance to meet her — as I told her the story, these were her words for me. She said, even though she’s a newscaster, she’s a reluctant public speaker. And she said to me, thank you for sharing what you’ve shared, because what this has done is validated for me that my story, that the story God is writing for me, is one that I have to tell.

Now she had no idea that later today I would be doing this podcast about God’s story through our lives, but the language she used was specific. It was personal because that’s what I’ve learned about God in my own life. God uses specific language that validates for me that he’s speaking to me in that moment.

It’s what I’ve come to know. I can’t miss it. And so, it was a two way street, right? I was validated. She was validated, and we were both moved in this mission of how God is using our lives. Versus whether it’s just a situation that happens. And this is a pattern. This is a pattern for my world.

As I close, I’ll give you one more, brief story. A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting a church, and I had a young person who went to college in that town. Actually, they go to Harvard, and they were up at Harvard, and I wanted to visit them before I came home. But I wasn’t able to meet with them the night I thought. And so, I ended up running to the airport late, trying to get to the airport.

And so, all I had time to do was call this young person and say to them, “Listen, I’m only going to be able to come by and pray over you and give you a hug, but then I’m going to have to get to the airport.”

I meet this young person on the campus, and we start talking and she says to me, “I have to share something with you. Right before you called me to tell me that you were coming, she had just texted a dear friend and said, I feel just a wave of just dark energy and darkness around me. And I just need to know if you could talk because I just need a hug and I need somebody to pray.” And she said, “And then Pastor Jeff, you called me, and you said those very words. Thanks.”

And she started to cry. And I hugged her, I grabbed her hands, and I thanked God for allowing me to pay attention and let him use my words to be an answer to a prayer she was offering. I had no idea, but he did. That’s how God uses our story. That’s how God uses our ideas. That’s how God uses the life that we live.

Will you begin paying attention, too? Will you find out how God makes himself clear to you? If so, I ask you to take those words, take those moments, ask God to make himself clear to you. And then continue to be his witness where you are comfortable, where you’re safe, where you’re comfortable, where you’re uncomfortable, and sometimes where you’re scared to death.

Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you for being the God who sees us, who works with us, who blesses our lives, who invites us to join you in ways that will blow our minds if we would only pay attention. Lord, thank you for this time. And it is my prayer that each person will be able to see your story in their lives, Lord, where you are moving, where you get the glory, where you get the praise, where you validate that you are present, that you are moving, and that you are God.

We can’t thank you enough. And I pray that everyone who hears this podcast, that what they will find is you manifest, personal, real in their past, in their present, and in their future. It is in your glorious name, Lord Jesus, do we pray and thank you by the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at info@gci.org with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.