The Rusty George Podcast

0:00:00 - Rusty George
As a pastor, I'm constantly concerned about how to create connections beyond just the weekend services, and one of the valuable tools that we have found for achieving this at our church is our app powered by Subsplash. It's one thing to have an app. It's another thing to have an app that has the ability to allow your community to access messages, resources and even give, and Subsplash created that for us. It's become our go-to platform for connecting with our congregation in ways we never could have before. Subsplash is so much more than just a platform or even just an app. It brings people together, empowers giving and transforms lives. If you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to visit their website at subsplash.com. That's s-u-b-s-p-l-a-s-h.com, subsplash.com. Following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated. Join us each week as we work to make faith simple. This is Simple Faith. Hey everybody, welcome to Simple Faith. What's your favorite story of all time? Now, I know some of you literary buffs are probably thinking well, I like this particular trilogy or this particular author, or maybe you're into Tom Clancy or John Grisham or, I don't know, Judy Bloom, whatever it is. I think we've all got different stories we like, but I'm more of a movie person. When it comes to stories, I typically only read nonfiction and watch fiction, so some of my favorite stories of all time are pretty much just movies. For instance, I love the Batman story and I'm always fascinated how somebody always tries to tell an old story in a new way. It started back in 1989, I believe it was when Tim Burton did the reboot of Batman and brought it out with Michael Keaton. He did four movies. Actually he only did two, but that whole series only lasted four movies and it was great. The first two were great and then it began to trail off. Then the next iteration of Batman movies were fantastic, with Batman Begins and the Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises. Christian Bale's adaptation of Batman was amazing. What an incredible story about this kid that witnesses the horrific murder of his parents. But he's got tremendous wealth at his disposal and he decides to pursue just fortune and fame, and it means nothing. He pursues just kind of living in prisons and being left for dead, and it means nothing. And he decides to take up a cause which is to save his city, and that's what he does in Gotham. I love that story. I love the stories of Oceans 11, 12 and 13. Yep, I like all three of them. They're great. This idea of we're going to rob a bank, we're going to rob a casino, and here's the plan we need to pull it off. Here's the team we need to pull it off, and it's going to be filled with all kinds of highs and lows and things that go right and things that go wrong, and we're going to hopefully succeed in the end. I love it and I'm still kind of confused by the ending of Oceans 11. I love the movie.

Remember the Titans? Now, this is an affiction story, this is true, but what an incredible story of a coach that has to bring not just a team together but a town together who's divided by racism, and then deal with difficult tragedy on their team when they incur an injury to one of their players or a car accident, and then they find a way to be it, basically survive and advance and win state. It's just an incredible story. I cry every time. I think about the same thing with Hoosiers. Here's another sports story where a guy takes a group of basketball players and unites them around a common goal and even tries to restore an alcoholic assistant coach and bring the town together and make him think about something greater than basketball and exercise his own demons all to win state with this little group of basketball players in Indiana.

I love stories like Raiders of the Lost Ark that tell us about a guy who's trying to discover something that's been hidden for years and all of the difficulties he goes through. Even Star Wars one of the great stories of all time, with nine different volumes of that and countless other episodes, and even cartoon adaptations and books and this basic story of how can good prevail over evil. Here's the thing I've noticed about all these stories there's a hero and a villain and a guide and a goal. For instance, if it's Batman, well, the hero is Batman and the villain is interchangeable, but the guide is always Alfred. I think about even Harry Potter stories where Dumbledore helps Harry defeat Voldemort, or the one we shall not name In Star Wars, yoda helps Luke defeat the Empire. All of these opportunities for people to basically get rid of their own demons with the help of somebody else to accomplish a goal. That seems to be what makes a great story.

Now, this basic idea of story formation is something that's been used throughout the course of time. I mean, think about it. The typical story arc usually has all kinds of difficulty that ends victoriously. For instance, he came from a humble beginning and the odds were stacked against him, but he fought through and became the CEO. Or perhaps she left her privileged upbringing to serve the poor on the streets of Calcutta and now we call her Mother Teresa. Or perhaps their marriage faced twists and turns and ups and downs, but when they hit 50 years they said it was worth it. You know what story we don't like. He grew up, married his high school sweetheart, they had two kids, they worked till they were 65 and they retired in Florida. I mean, even Hallmark movies have more tension than that. We love a story filled with tension, with twists and turns, with a hero, a villain, a guide and a goal. You ever wonder where that comes from.

I believe that we are hardwired by our creator to think in those ways that God is writing a grand story to basically be able to redeem the world, to bring us all back to his original intent. The Garden of Eden is what God wanted in the first place, where man would choose him willingly and he would live in constant fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But in order for it to be real love, a choice was given and they could choose their own path and to eat of the fruit of the tree, which they did, and it ruined God's great story. But now, suddenly, god writes a new story. How is he going to take his goal and what guides will he use to help the hero rescue the villains? That is the message of the Bible. No place is this idea of storytelling more evident than in the Bible.

Now, for a lot of us, the Bible seems like one of basically three things. For some, it's a rule book. It's filled with do's and don'ts about how to make God happy with you and let you into heaven one day, and that's why we talk about it in terms of well, if I read the Bible, then God would love me. Or we get our Bible out and we hold onto it during our favorite sports teams you know big game. Or maybe we put our hand on the Bible to swear that we are telling the truth. It's a rule book, it's a guide book, it's a holy book, or maybe perhaps it's just ancient literature, where you know what. We put it right up there with Homer and the, the Iliad and Hamlet and Shakespeare and those kind of things. You appreciate it, but you're not living your life by it. You may quote it once in a while, it may make it on a bumper sticker or something on your wall, you might put it on a an engraved frame that you give to somebody at a wedding, but you're really not basing your life off of it.

And for many of us the Bible is just unreadable. I mean you'll never understand it. You're not sure where to start. There are words in there you don't understand. There are people's names that don't make any sense to you. It seems to be irrelevant for your time. It seems to be based on another world. You're not sure what it means, so you don't even start. But yet the Scripture talks to us about that. It itself are the very words of God, that God, through the Holy Spirit, basically inspired man to write down the very words of God and to in turn tell us his story for redeeming the world.

Now here's what's fascinating. Did you know? Harvard did a study years ago on marriages that work and marriages that don't, because the studies tell us that one out of every two marriages will fail in divorce? Harvard did this study and they discovered that the odds dropped from one out of two to one out of every 1264. When a couple things are involved, the couple goes to church, they read their Bible and they pray.

I think about that. Would that be true about the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Would that be true about the Harry Potter books? Would that be true about the latest books on money management? No, there's something unique about the Bible and what it says. In fact, one study tells us that those who engage with God's Word four times a week or more here's what they experienced 62% less drunkenness, 59% less use of pornography, 59% less sexual sin, 45% less gambling, 40% less bitterness, 32% fewer destructive thoughts, 32% less isolation, 30% less loneliness and an increased ability to forgive by 31%. Hey, let me interrupt for just a second. If you're a church leader and your church does not have an app, or your app seems to be a little bit limited, check out subsplashcom as a great resource to really give your app all the horsepower that it needs. You can connect people, you can help them get access to messages and you can help them set up recurring giving, which is a game changer when it comes to resourcing your ministry subsplashcom Okay, back to our episode Now.

You might think that's just because the Bible tells them don't do this, stop that and quit it, knock it off. It's actually because the Bible tells you that you are part of God's great story and you can either be with the hero or with the villain. You can either experience the goodness that God has and be part of his grand meta-narrative to save the world and see yourself as a child of God, one bought by the blood of Jesus and one with the divine destiny and purpose, or you can choose to fight against the story of God. You can choose to be an antagonist. You can choose to be the villain. You can choose to be, as some video games refer to it, a non-playable character. In other words, you choose not to be in the story. Regardless of whether or not you want to be in the story, god is writing his story. You are part of the story. The question is will you be a willing participant?

Over these next few months at Real Life Church, we are going to launch into a cover-to-cover journey through the greatest true story ever told. Most people would say they'd like to understand the Bible, but they don't know where to start. If God has a book with his words and his story, they'd like to read it, but where are they going to begin. I'm going to ask you to join with us in this story Now. You might think well, I don't live anywhere near Real Life Church, just watch us online reallifechurchorg. You might think, well, I've read the Bible before and it doesn't really mean much to me. Join us with this journey because we are going to take a journey through the Bible, cover-to-cover, in a rapid fashion that highlights the upper story of God's redemptive plan, while camping out on lower stories of how God uses various individuals and the life lessons we learn along the way as we play a part in God's story. So let's cover the basics just a little bit.

The Bible is not one book. The Bible is a library of 66 books written over 1800 years by 40 different authors in three different languages, with one theme God's rescue mission for the world. In fact, the Bible basically is a collection of two basic parts. The first part are the Jewish scriptures. This is God's ancient covenant with ancient Israel, how God was going to lead them out of slavery and how he's going to establish a new relationship with them and what it meant to follow him as their king. This collection of 39 books of poetry and prophetic writings and history and prayers. This collection of 39 books was collected by the Jewish people over many, many years to be able to preserve who it was that they were following and think about it.

At some point, somebody had to write down what happened at creation and they would tell these stories over and over and over again to let people know. This is where we come from, this is our God, this is who we follow. You are part of the divine lineage from Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph, eventually to Moses, and God's message through those books establishes that God is establishing a new order and that he is going to come to earth through the line of the Israel people. His name will be Jesus and he is God in the flesh. Then you have the New Testament, which is God's covenant with all people, and they're basically the four biographies of Jesus, and then a bunch of letters written by first century followers of Jesus, namely the apostle Paul, that tell people how to live.

Now, how did these books get collected? How did they get in there? Well, I encourage you to check out a real life church app and go to real life conversations and listen to a conversation with a biblical scholar by the name of Dr Mark Moore, as he outlines this, even greater. But basically the criteria was you had to be an eyewitness or you had to witness the people who were eyewitnesses. In other words, you had to interview them. And so the people that write and have these letters. The letters make it into the Bible because they were verified as having been written in the same timeframe as the events and being verified by the eyewitnesses who were there. Yeah, you'll hear about books like the Gospel according to Thomas, or maybe even the Gospel of Mary Magdalene or various things like that.

These were fabricated many, many years after Jesus, but the words that we have in the New Testament can be verified by people who were still living, who witnessed these events. Here's why this is important. If I told you that the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs last year in the Super Bowl, first of all that would be ridiculous, but second of all, you would say no, no, no, I remember, I saw that. What if I did it 30 years from now? You'd say, well, no, no, I remember, I saw that. I mean, as a Chiefs fan, I will never forget. But this is why eyewitnesses matter so much, and this is why the age of the Bible matters so much because the documents that were written about Jesus and to Christ followers in the first century were written within the same generation of the people who saw it and could verify it, and if it were inaccurate, they would be able to say wait a second, that's not right.

And so with that we have the second half of the Bible, the 27 books we refer to as the New Testament. Well, somewhere along the line, probably in around 400 AD, they decided to attach these two books together, because the Old Testament predicts the coming of Jesus and tells us about the nature of God, and then Jesus shows us who God is. As Colossians says, he is the image of the invisible God. He is the Son of God, god in the flesh. And so we have the New Testament tacked on to the Old Testament, and it began to be referred to as the Bible. The Bible, years after that, was then added with chapters and verses so we could easily access things and find things, and of course, the first number is the chapter, then there's a colon and then there's the verses to help us find out where we're going. And you might be thinking why would I explain that? Because I actually have people ask me that and that's a great question.

But in the story, what they've chosen to do is take out some of those things that make it a little difficult to read. For instance, there's some books in the Old Testament that are a little redundant. For instance, there are things in First and Second Kings that are repeated in Chronicles and also in First and Second Samuel. So let's combine that a little bit. There are some portions in there that are filled with Levitical law and Old Testament law that don't necessarily apply so much to us. Let's take some of those things out. Let's put some connecting paragraphs in there so you can follow the story clearly. Let's put a timeline in there so you can see when these events took place and where they took place. And then, when we get to the New Testament, let's harmonize the four biographies about Jesus so it reads more like one story over the course of several chapters. And let's take the writings in the New Testament and some those up in a way and harmonize those in such a way we understand where they're being written and to whom they're being written.

And in the course of that, the incredible authors of Randy Fraze and Max Lucado were able to put together a story version of the Bible. Now understand this. It's still the Bible. It's still the translated version new international version that so many of us grew up reading. But it's so compact and so easy to read. You can go cover to cover and we're gonna do it over the course of 32 weeks.

Now you might be thinking, well, what do I do? How do I join this? How do I be a part of that? Well, it's very simple. You can join us real life church org. You can buy a copy of the story. You can get it on campus for very cheap, or you can buy one on Amazon, even get it on your Kindle. But then I would encourage you to take another step. I want you to get into a group and talk about it. Now. You can do this one of two ways. You can join a group of people that you're already a part of. Maybe you're part of a community Group or a connection group. Maybe you've got a group of people that you hang out with all the time and just get together.

Watch the weekend message ahead of time, read your chapter that we're gonna talk about each week and ask two questions what's God doing in the story? What's God doing in my story? You're gonna be amazed at how you begin to see God's work. Here's the second thing you could do. You could take a group of people that you're already hanging out with. Maybe it's a bunch of buddies and, and, and. You serve together as a parking team at your local church. Maybe you work in children's ministry with three or four other people. Maybe you serve in a coffee shop. Maybe you have some friends at school where you guys do a Bible study together. Simply decide we're gonna read that chapter each week, we're gonna watch the message and we're going to ask the same two questions once a week what's God doing in these story? What's God doing in my story? We have a lot of resources that can help you with your journey through the story and I would encourage you to check that out and get our website, realiveturchorg and get more information about it.

Friends of all my favorite stories, from Batman to Star Wars remember the Titans and Hoosiers there is no greater story than the story of how God created us and then lost us and then came looking for us and then paid our penalty and brought us back to Him. This is the greatest story ever told, and as we go through this story, you're going to see yourself in the pages of the story. You're going to see the mistakes that people make and you're going to think I've done that and I still do that. And you're going to see a loving father continue to welcome his kids home. Because in every lower story of somebody's life you're going to see the upper story of God redeeming the world. That's how much he loves you, that's how much he cares for you, and I think if you join us in this journey, you'll discover it is truly a knowable story, an understandable story and the greatest story ever told.