Live God’s Story for Your Life

"Your Story Indwells God's ..."

BY Corine Gatti

In God's Story, Your Story, pastor and author Max Lucado talks about embracing God's plan for your life.

Written in a warm and conversational manner for readers, Lucado said, "As God's story becomes yours, closed doors take on a new meaning. You no longer see them as interruptions of your plan but as indications of God's plan."

Lucado also shared how the devil is a real enemy looking to infiltrate the believer’s life using the distractions of the world to keep them occupied.

By the end of our conversation I was challenged to dive deeper into the Bible, reassess my own priories and sprint towards God's plan. I hope this gallery will inspire you to embrace God's plan for your life.

Lucado is a Minister of Preaching at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas. Content was used with the permission of Zondervan, Inc.

Deception

Could you talk about the devil and his devices [Chapter 2]?

So to do that you have to introduce the main characters and one of those characters is the devil. If you were to take a panoramic view of the New Testament and really try to center in on the high points of what happened in the New Testament, I think one of those high points would have to be the encounter between Jesus and Satan which is the ultimate good guy bad guy, white hat black hat, hero villain encounter. And so that’s the reason I included that chapter because I believe that the New Testament teaches the reality of Satan, his ultimate defeat and his current subordination to God but still his ability to influence, to test and tempt us.

So I think to have a really accurate world picture according to the Bible with ideology there is right now a Satan, a devil in the world who’s plotting and his goal is to do nothing more than steal and kill and destroy. He wants to steal our hope. He wants to kill our peace and destroy our future. And so let’s be honest about that, be aware of it. But I don’t really believe we need to obsess ourselves with the devil, but just be aware that he is the one who is sowing the seeds of anxiety in our heads and pray and trust and know that what Christ did with the devil in the wilderness is what he will do with the devil in our wilderness.

The World

Do you think churches have watered down their teaching in order to conform [p. 40, You Know Satan's Next Move]?

I write books for people who don’t like to read books and so I’m thinking if there’s a person who has on their bucket list man I’d love to read the Bible but I just don’t know where to start. This book would be their friend because I’m trying to introduce to them the big point, the major concepts of the New Testament. One of those concepts is the church, you know, the place of the church, the role of the church. The churches are called out people to a place where through whom God works. He’s trying to influence society. One of the things would be to distract the church by encouraging the church to obsess itself with itself instead of obsessing itself with God. Quite honestly I’m not a big critic of the church. I think it’s tough to be God’s people in an ungodly world. I just think it’s tough and it’s hard to balance the responsibility of preaching and leading worship. It’s hard to know when you’ve crossed over from ministry into seeking notoriety and I don’t know if I’ve always succeeded in maintaining the balance there. So my goal in the book is really not to slam the church but it is to make the church aware that one of Satan’s goals is to get us obsessed with ourselves instead of with our message.

Writing

Tell us about the process of writing this book?

Tell us about the process of writing this book? Yeah, well it’s a really neat process. I am a pastor so all of my books come out of sermons. And a few years back, we decided it would be wonderful if we could take the whole church through the whole Bible in one year. That’s a daunting task. Randy Frazee who’s my co-teacher at church, knew of a chronological Bible published by Zondervan that takes the reader through the whole Bible and it’s organized chronologically so it’s a little easier to follow. And so we looked at it and we said okay let’s try it and Randy will preach the sermons based on the Old Testament and I’ll preach the sermons based on the New.

When Zondervan heard that we were doing this they really got excited and said let’s see if other churches would like to do this too so let’s create a whole kit and included in that kit is this book, that I wrote based on my original sermon that takes the reader through the whole New Testament. Also included in the kit is a book by Randy that takes the reader through the whole Bible in shorter chapters. Plus there’s a music component, there’s small group component, youth component, it’s just really a great turnkey kit that churches can use to help people because we really are trying to deal with this issue of Biblical illiteracy. Most people don’t read the Bible and if they want to they don’t know where to start.

Reading the Bible

Are you talking about unbelievers as well?

Well statistically most people in the United States own Bibles but don’t read them. Church members read them more frequently but they don’t study them and so there’s the challenge. And that is to acquaint people with the big picture of scripture and to help them know where to begin in the Bible. I think what happens is that people look at the Bible and they don’t know where to start. There are so many different issues and genealogies and confusing cultural—they don’t know where to start and so the story project, this whole initiative is designed to help a person get from point A to point B to get the big picture and then in doing so get the big picture of their own lives. If I don’t know the story of God I’m going to never know the story of Max. And so only by understanding God’s story can I understand my own.

Our Story

How can we make God’s story our story?

Well first of all we understand God’s story. We have to understand what God is up to and God is up to something really big. He’s up to something a lot bigger than my personal pleasure. He’s up to building a new kingdom that will take place not in this life but in the next in which he will restore this universe to its original splendor. And he will populate that kingdom with human beings who have on this earth voluntarily signed up to be a part of the new kingdom. They will have been redeemed by the death of Christ.

Their bodies will have been restored to their intended state by the power of God and they will reign with God, we will reign with God forever in the new kingdom. So there are two big stories right there. Now if a person doesn’t know that story, if they don’t understand that story then nothing’s going to make sense. God won’t make sense, their story won’t make sense, cancer won’t make sense, death won’t make sense, and disease won’t make sense. The economy failing, that won’t make sense because there’s no climax, there’s no goal. There’s not destiny to it all. And that’s what frustrates people. They think the whole story of life is just going to take place between birth and hearse and you try to have as much fun and get as much as you can. It’s a very small timid, weak story. God comes with this robust powerful grand saga in which you and I play just small parts but very essential parts. And once we understand what our part is in this story then we begin to get excited about life and it starts to make sense.

Wizard of Oz

Are there practical tips that the reader can do to fulfill God’s story in their lives?

I think step number one would be can I write, do I know God’s story so well that I could summarize it in one paragraph. I would encourage people to try to do that. Could I summarize God’s story? I did that just about two or three minutes ago when I talked about the new kingdom. Most people if you were to say what is God up to they wouldn’t have an answer for that. Well I guess he’s up to loving us or I guess he’s up to I don’t know, managing the world. Well they don’t know what God is up to. And so I think the most practical thing a person could do is focus in. what is the story that God is writing? In this book in the opening chapter I relate how I was a nine year old in Wizard of Oz.

I played the role of one of the munchkins. I knew the songs. I knew the dance. I had the costume. But somehow I never knew the story. I’d never seen the movie. I didn’t know the story and the choir director just assumed all the munchkins knew the story. So when it came time for the dress rehearsal I didn’t know the story. I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that here comes a mean witch. There’s a good witch. There’s a lot of smoke, a lot of loud explosions. And I got scared because I didn’t know the story. I didn’t have a context. Well that’s where many people live. They don’t know the story. They know some songs. They have a little dance but then the witch comes in with cancer or disease or death or stroke. They say oh boy this story has no happy ending. The purpose of this book and the whole story is to help people say okay there’s a big story to this. Yeah it’s tough right now, but golly the witch, the bad witch gets it and the good witch wins. You know to help people see where the end of this is headed. It really invigorates live. I don’t know any other way to invigorate life without that.

Crazy World

Can you tell me about the distractions we face and how to overcome them?

Well again, if you don’t have the big picture, if a person doesn’t know the big story then the purpose of God is to make this life comfortable. And if that is the case then he’s failed miserably because life is not always comfortable. We go through comfortable phases in life but we don’t have a comfortable life. So if God’s goal is just to make this life comfortable and happy then either there is no God or he’s failed miserably. So if however God’s goal is to not just prepare a kingdom for us but to prepare us for a kingdom then he’s going to use difficulties to prepare us and to equip us so my struggles have a purpose. They have a reason. They’re not just distractions. There’s something in these tests and struggles that can prepare me for what is yet to come. So then I begin seeing the challenges of life not at some accident or random happening. No, I begin to see them as really from the hand of God used to equip me for something in the future, something that I’ll need to serve him in the kingdom.

Personal

How did you make God’s story your story?

A whole personal life I’ve had my struggles just like everybody else. I’ve made more than my share of trips to the cemetery. I’ve had to bury people I loved very much. In my own life I’ve struggled with temptation and with sin and disappointing myself but also in my own life I’ve really cast all of my hope in Christ. I really have. I believe in Jesus Christ for two reasons. Number one I believe in Jesus because of Jesus. I just never read or heard of a life like his. I believe in him for reason number two because of the alternative. I mean there’s just no plan B that works for me. There’s no plan B that works. So by faith I’ve cast my lot with him and am trying to believe what he says. And he says that this world is not the end, that this world is just the beginning. He endorses all of scripture so I try to trust all of scripture and I’m just trying to live my life according to his will. I’ve not had any major crises in my life. I’m not a recovering drug addict. I’ve never murdered anybody so I don’t have a dramatic story like that but I have found his grace to be sufficient to forgive me and sufficient to strengthen me and so that’s kind of where I am. And I love to study the Bible and read about the story of God.

Favorite Scripture

Is there a scripture that speaks to your heart?

There’s a verse in I think it's Hebrews 6:10. Forgive me if I got the reference wrong but it says that God is fair and he will not forget the work that you’ve done and the love that you’ve shown him by caring for his children. I love that verse and I’ve read it a lot and I think about how God some day will say well done good and faithful servant. You’ve been responsible with a few things. I’m going to make you responsible over many. So the hope of heaven is a big part of my life and that Hebrews six passage that says God will not forget the work that you’ve done and the love that you’ve shown him by caring for his children. Oh boy that just really lifts my spirit.

Testimonies

Do you have any testimonies from people during your writing career?

I do, I do. I’ve been writing for 25 years so there’s a lot of stories that have come out of the books, pretty dramatic stories. We have a story for example of a lady who was going to commit suicide and the going away gift I guess you’d call it--she bought some of my children’s books to leave for her children. And en route to committing suicide she stopped at a railroad track to let the train pass and began reading the children’s books while the train was passing and there was enough to convince her not to take her life. And she wrote us a letter. So that’s pretty dramatic. I’ve had several people come to our church to say I’ve read your books while I was in prison and turned my life around. My life isn’t perfect yet but I’m working on it. I’m really grateful for those stories. I think there’s something powerful that happens in books and just really thankful for.