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A New Story

               “You are fat!”
                Those three words became the story that my friend’s fourteen-year-old daughter told herself.  In fact, she believed that story so strongly that this once bubbly, happy, certainly not overweight, young woman began struggling with her self-esteem and, eventually, became anorexic.
                What would have happened had she believed a different story?  What if “You are amazing”, or “You are smart”, or “You are beautiful” were the words that shaped her? 
Stories are powerful and what we do with them can have long-term effects.
                Jesus knew the power of stories.  In fact, most of his teaching falls into a category that we call “parables” which are simple stories with a point.  However, Jesus used stories in another, even more powerful way: He told new stories!
                One day a group of religious leaders came to him and said, “We caught this woman in the act of adultery.  What should we do with her?”  Jesus quietly reminded the group to examine their own lives and not hers. Then he turned to the woman and said, “I do not condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8).
                Another time, he met a woman who had a bad reputation, but he ignored what everyone thought about her and instead talked to her about “living water” and new beginnings.  She became a believer and then told the whole town about the man who changed her life (John 4).
                A man named Zacchaeus wanted to catch of glimpse of Jesus as he passed through town, but no one would let him to the front of the line.  He was a tax collector and a cheat and everyone disliked him.  When Jesus spotted him and said, “I must stay at your house today”, everyone was angry because he was going to the house of a “sinner”.  In the end, though, that sinner gave his heart and his possessions to God (Luke 19).
                The point is simple:  When others were telling stories about what people had done, Jesus was telling stories about what they could become. 
                Jesus focused on hope, new life and new creations.  We will be his messengers when we tell those stories too.
                “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

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