Have you ever been asked to share your story and wondered what to say?
Or maybe you’re the one in the audience listening.
Those insignificant details caused you to lose interest. Perhaps the person rambled. Lacked clarity. Never provided an aha moment.
Sharing our stories is scary. But it doesn’t have to be.
You can learn to tell your story in a way that captivates and compels.
And this matters. Why?
The Author of life is writing His story through you—yes, YOU!
And you were never meant to keep that story to yourself.
How do you share your story in a way that transforms and glorifies God?
1) Identify your aha Moments.
Reflect on your spiritual journey. Jot down a list of moments when you felt like you encountered God.
On the download w’ere offering, you’ll list many before zeroing in on one.
2) Identify what God used to reveal himself to you.
Perhaps you encountered God through affliction, blessing, Scripture, community, retreat, or study, spiritual discipline.
3) Create a list of how you transformed.
With each aha moment, add a few bullet points of how your life shifted through the encounter. Perhaps you discovered a facet of God you never knew before. Comprehended new depths of a scriptural truth. A heavy weight lifted. An addiction released. Forgiveness set you free. You knew you were loved, accepted, valued.
This will become clearer on throught this amazing, free download:
4) Reflect on why the aha moments meant so much to you.
What question, doubt, fear, or uncertainty, did the Aha Moment resolve for you?
Consider your upbringing and past. What’s the root? A past hurt, disappointment, frustration, or unmet need.
Often when we encounter God in a meaningful way, we can trace the incident back to a bigger story of redemption God has been writing in and through you.
5) Write your story.
Begin with the root of the struggle, doubt, or fear from your past. Describe how God met you, what He used to get your attention, and how you were transformed.
Download the How to Tell Your Testimony: 5 Steps to Sharing Your Story in a Way that Captivates and Compels now.
Even if you haven’t been asked to stand up at church or share in your small group (yet), this is a great activity to practice and remember the faithfulness of God in your life.
Remember…
The Word dwelled in the beginning.
Then the Word took up residence among us.
The Word lived out the syllables of God that one day the story of God might be displayed in us.
I can’t wait to hear your testimonies. Please post below so we can all be encouraged, challenged, and blessed.
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I sank slowly to the ground in my kitchen, right in the same spot, where the cabinets meet and form a v-shape. For some reason, I’m drawn here every time. Maybe on some level, the closeness of the cabinets feels like someone’s comforting arms. Not that anyone would comfort me if they knew what I had just done.
As tears poured down my face, I feel so helpless, defeated and shameful. I’m in church weekly, a volunteer at the elementary school, and harboring a secret that if anyone knew would cause me to lose everything. Why can’t I get my anger under control? Why do I hurt my little ones, with my words and actions, over and over?
My secret was anger. The cycle was vicious. I would blow up, cry my eyes out in my corner and then get up acting like it never happened. Deep down I wanted to change; I did everything I knew to do. I prayed, I tried, and I failed, over and over. At the time, I was teaching an adult class at church; we had started a study on the book of James. It was in that book where I discovered something that changed me.
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16 NIV).
I can still remember when I saw those words on the page, I started sweating and I felt like I might throw up. I wanted God to make my anger go away, but I would never consider telling anyone. What would they do? Who would they tell? How would people treat me?
My girls were young, Meghan was nine, Katie was six and Lauren was four. I knew what I was doing was marking their lives. ‘Confess your faults’ must have rolled around my head for days. One evening I was walking down the hall at church, and I saw our Pastor’s wife. As I asked her if we could talk, I started stammering. I thought I was going to die! I really can’t remember exactly what I told her, but it was at that moment that I changed.
The power of a secret is huge! Once I pulled my secret out into the light, then God started showing me what steps I needed to take next to be healed. In my case, it was telling my husband. That was a painful conversation; he was so disappointed in me. Next, came getting down with the girls individually and telling them bluntly it was sinning when mom said/did that, and it was wrong. Would they forgive me?
Now my girls are twenty-four, twenty and eighteen, and they still remember some of the bad times, but what they remember most is that mom changed. I’m not the same anymore, I have been healed!
If you are hanging on to a secret, I know that if you share it the power will be broken. Find someone you can trust and tell them. Nothing is more exciting than freedom!
Thank you for sharing such a touching story. Grateful you found the courage to ask for help & bring the secret to light. Huge hug!
God bless you for your honesty and having the courage to change. Your story is strong and although my children are grown, there were times my anger got the best of me.
Thank you Dawn! They are worth it and my biggest prayer is that when they have kids they parent differently.
Sweet encouragement, Dawn!
I want to tell you a story of being marked by grace.
Because we are creatures of story. Your whole life you have been making meaning and learning how to live and love and relate to other people through stories. It’s why we go to movies and read books and gather around campfires.
And story is the foundational thing that shapes our soul.
It’s what we believe about who we are and what we have been created to do. And it’s also what we believe about God.
And for me, like so many of us here, my story has been marked by a deep and prolonged suffering.
As a young child I was happy and full of life and made friends easily. We were a family of 4 with my mom and dad and my little brother, who is 13 months younger then I am. We were a horse family and spent a lot of time training, riding and competing in jackpots and rodeos. Caring for animals and getting dirty was the perfect playground for a kid.
But my parents were really broken people who didn’t know how to deal with the trauma in their own lives and responded to all of the unprocessed pain in the only way they knew how to at the time. Heavy drinking and fighting and the constant threat that my mom was going to leave was my everyday normal until one day, she finally did. And they divorced when I was 11.
My dad moved my brother and I to California to find work in construction, moving from job to job just trying to keep food on the table, just trying to survive. We lived in motel rooms and on and off with distant family members and were in and out of different schools until I ended up dropping out of school my freshman year of high school.
I had a broken heart.
And this is where feeling unsafe and unloved rooted insecurity and shame deep into my identity. Deep into my soul.
Shame lies to us and says not only did you do something bad but that you are bad, that you are worthless and don’t deserve to be loved.
The weight of that kind of deep pain was too much for me to bare so I started to numb the pain by drinking heavily and partying and doing drugs. I was so lost and I wandered for a long time trying to find my way to love.
I had no history with God at this point In my life and as I moved into my 20s I adopted the mantra that said:
Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell and spirituality is for those of us who have already been there.
That was true to my experience and i can tell you that It is only by Gods grace that I lived through that time in my life.
I was eventually able to get my GED and go back to school and worked to build a life for myself that looked pretty successful on the outside but I was still full of every shade of darkness on the inside.
Then on a day just like any other I met a guy in a park who was like no one I had ever met before. I had no language for it at the time but there was something different about him and I wanted to know what that was.
Tim and and I started dating and had quite the adventure navigating two completely different world-views and life experiences.
He came from a very loving Christian family and a real faith so It was very much a Jerry Springer meets the Waltons kind of situation!!
But we fell in love anyway. And the way that he loved me, and still does, is staggering. That kind of love can undo a whole lot of pain in a life and invite you into living a different kind of story.
I eventually worked up the courage to go to his church with him and it was a big, scary, mega church in Highlands Ranch Colorado so I put my best outfit on and tried not to cuss.
I continued to go to cherry hills on and off with Tim and one day I saw that they had a group for artists and were having an open call.
Hmmmm. Interesting.
I went to the group a few times with much fear and trembling and got the idea to make a painting using the herbs and spices that Jesus was buried with in the tomb but i had no earthly idea what they were or how to find out what they were, I barely even knew who Jesus was! But there was this girl at work who talked about church and I decided to ask her about it.
That girl turned out to be a VLI student at the smokeyhill vineyard in Colorado, do you all know what that is?Vineyard Leadership Institute and she ended up inviting me to alpha. A 10 week program that explored Christian faith where I could ask difficult questions and really figure out what this whole deal was about. Who was the Holy Spirit, why did Jesus have to die, why are these Christians so dang loving!!
It was on the weekend retreat with friends on either side of me praying that I had to decide if I could really trust God…..that he was real…and I remember calling out to him in prayer and saying
“if you are real will you show me and my eyes immediately began to flutter and in that moment I knew in my guts that it was him and that he was real and I gave my life to Jesus at the age of 31.
And in a moment my whole story was rewritten.
My story of being abandoned and unloved and full of the shame of sexual abuse by a family member was now one marked by a deep love and grace and beauty.
And isn’t it just like Jesus to use my love of ideas and art to bring me into the kingdom? He knows how he made us and how to capture our hearts.
It was a huge celebration and I called Tim and his family to tell them the news and found out that his whole family had been praying for me!!!! Gah!!! I didn’t even know that was allowed!!
The next day I called my mom.
I was all excited like shiny new Christians are, and gushed to her about giving my life to Jesus and waited to hear her response.
There was a long pause and then she said, well im not surprised after your experience with the truck.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
She was surprised I didn’t remember and started to tell me the story of being in the truck when I was 5 years old.
We were driving from Colorado to California in the middle of the night on one of those treacherous switchback roads and my parents were in the car in front. My uncle and I were in a truck pulling a gooseneck horsetrailer with all of our belongings in it. It was a little two lane road with a mountain on one side and a shear drop off on the other and the trailer started to sway back and forth acoss the road and began to pull the truck with it . My uncle got scared and told me to get down on the floor board for safety because he thought we were going to go over the side. I tucked my little 5 year old self down on the floorboard and started to pray out loud and the trailer and truck immediately straitened and we made it safely down the mountain.
I was in stunned silence and finally asked her what did my uncle say, and he said it was a miracle.
I had completely blocked out that story. The miracle story, the one where God shows up in a real and tangible way and saves my life. The one that tells me that he has been with me since I was a small child and that He hears my prayers. And the one he tells again from the mouth of a mother who went away.
My story is one marked by grace.
But getting all the healing that I have needed had been a process over years as I’ve learned to trust people and lean into the truth of who God is and who I am in him. Finding our true selves is really our great act of worship.
Every story regardless of the type or theme throughout human history is made of this:
A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.
I decided to do a writing exercise and ask myself those questions with the character being me, and asking what do I want and what conflict do I need to overcome to get it. And this is what I wrote:
She had always been creative and seemed to cary the mark that identifies all of His artists. The thing she carried was a fiery God breathed passion that she would need to learn how to move in and release or suffer the soul scorching scars of keeping it hidden inside. The world would wait to see wether or not she would believe that she was actually created and called for this purpose of being one of gods artists.
But god had known this long ago and had gone before her to lay the groundwork and would stir her passionate heart anytime she came near to the things she loved. She would have to begin the journey of remembering who she really was and choose to take up the sword of the spirit and fight for her calling.
Even as I read that now, it rings true and calls me to a deeper knowing that will shape the stories that I tell with my life and art.
So what about you?
What is your story and is what your believing about it even true?