The story-teller

 My intro for last night's youth group discussion about mission and outreach.  I want to give the students a sense of the grand story and adventure that God calls us to participate in: 

God is a story-teller.  This world is his story, his book.   He has been writing his story from the beginning of time and will continue to write it until Jesus returns.   The theme or purpose of God’s story is that he is turning his enemies into his friends.  He is turning rebels into his friends.  He is bringing proud, selfish, distracted sinners like you and me into a relationship with him.  He is bringing peace into the wars that we fight against him.  This is what God’s story is about.  

You have a part to play in his story.  The first part that you play in the story is that God wants to turn you from a person who only lives for yourself into a person that lives for Him.  He wants change you by loving and forgiving you.  He wants to bring you into a relationship with him so that you trust in Him and He takes care of you.  The first part of the story is that you would be reconciled with God.   This means that there is a broken relationship that needs to be fixed.  God offers to fix our broken relationship with Him by taking away our sins and showing us great mercy.  

Once we are turned from enemies to friends of God, then we have another part to play in God’s great story.  He sends us out on a mission to bring other people into a relationship with Him.  God is writing a story where people who think they don’t need him and people who don’t want him come to see that they both need Him and want Him.  God is on a mission to give people the one thing they need and desire at the deepest level-Himself.  And he wants us to play an important part in this mission.  He writes us into the story by giving us a mission as ambassadors for Him. An ambassador is someone who represents someone or something else.  The USA sends out ambassadors to most other countries.  That person lives in the other country and represents the USA.  They speak for the USA in that country.  Well, we are ambassadors for God.  We represent Him wherever we are at.  We speak his message and tell others about Him.  This is the mission that God has put us on.  Our lives are part of His great story!  

Have you ever been watching a movie or reading a book and wished that you could become a part of the lives of the people in that movie or book?  Have you ever wanted to jump into the movie and have a part in the story?  Well, you have a part in the greatest story that has ever existed!  And it’s not make-believe.  It’s real!