Wilson The Story of Everything

How You, Your Pets, and the Swiss Alps Fit into God's Plan for the World
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-4460-6
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

Most of life is mundane: work, school, home, TV, church, sleep, repeat. Sometimes it seem as if there's no point to our 'normal' lives. But what we must remember is that we're actually part of something huge: God's story-the greatest story ever told. In The Story of Everything, Jared Wilson takes readers on a journey that starts before the creation of the world and ends after everything has been made new. Wilson shows us that the gospel isn't just a ticket to heaven but God's incredible and unstoppable vision for all of creation. Looking at God's redemptive plan for humanity, this book will help you understand what the gospel means for your life, your home, your pets, your hobbies, and more.

Jared C. Wilson is assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri. He is a popular author and conference speaker, and also blogs regularly at Gospel Driven Church, hosted by the Gospel Coalition. His books include Gospel Wakefulness; The Storytelling God; and The Wonder-Working God.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Jared C.

Leseproben

2

The Story God Is Telling

God’s Plan for History

People who know me well know that the primary arena of my sanctification is the grocery store checkout line. There is no refiner’s fire quite as hot for me as that one. It looks innocent enough. There are colorful magazine covers with amusing headlines to look at. There’s candy. A sign overhead promises “Express Lane.” But it’s all a ruse. And I fall for it every time.

There I will stand in the twelve-items-or-less line with three or four items, waiting behind a person with what I can only assume is medically diagnosed “slow motion syndrome” and a cart full to the brim with tiny items with unreadable barcodes. Then that person wants to write a check, but he can’t remember the date, his name, or how to write a check at all. So I fume. Oh, sure, outwardly I might look pleasant enough. But inwardly I am a raging storm of indignation. I want to grab the nearest bag of Corn Nuts and slay everyone like I’m Samson with a donkey’s jawbone.

When I’m in my right mind, I think about what happens to me in this situation and I ask myself, “Why am I like that?” It’s not like I’m transporting a kidney for transplant and I have to get to the hospital. I’m in a hurry, but for no particular reason except that I’m in a hurry. I find myself similarly agitated on the highway when stuck behind slow drivers. And yet, I’m also aggravated by fast drivers speeding by me “like they own the place.”

Have you ever noticed that? People are always driving way too fast or way too slowly. Why is that?

Because you are the standard by which everyone should drive.

It’s your world; everyone else is just living in it.

See, you and I tend to wake up each morning with the default belief that the world revolves around us. We’re not consciously thinking that, of course, but we immediately begin our waking moments putting thought toward what we’re going to do with “our day.”

When I go to bed at night, I think, “What will my day look like tomorrow?” People request time, schedule appointments, present needs. They’re all features in my day, supporting characters in the story of my life. I decide whether to be generous with my time with them or more discriminating. After all, I have a purpose for my time and my day and my week—for my life—and I have to figure out how everybody else fits into that purpose.

But of course, everyone else tends to do the same thing. Can you believe that? Me? A bit part in someone else’s story? They think this is their life! I mean, how self-centered can you be?

The truth is, we all are incredibly self-centered, and the way we go about our days as if we’re the star in our life story and everybody else are just supporting actors, props, or background noise reveals just how self-centered we are. If somebody dares to ask for too much, if somebody comes across too needy, if somebody infringes upon my day as if it’s actually his—watch out. We don’t like having our sovereignty compromised.

Fundamentally, we believe the story of our lives is actually about us. Our thoughts, our ambitions, our feelings become the motivating factors and primary themes of the story we are trying to play out. But then we keep finding ourselves dissatisfied, or even depressed or angry, because nobody else is acting like we’re the center of the universe, least of all God.

It can be a scary proposition, but we ought to face the very real possibility that, whatever God is doing with the universe and as much as he loves us, we are not the main point.

Again, the problem is that we keep trying to write our own stories—with our work, our families, our gifts and talents and aspirations—but these stories cannot carry the quality of glory that we are hungry for until we submit them to the story God is telling. Until we understand the big, overarching story—what literary scholars call “the metanarrative”—of the universe, we will only be throwing our best personal narratives into the forgettable dustbin of history.

The metanarrative of God’s plan for the world gives perspective and proportion to our own personal narratives, but it doesn’t diminish them, really. If anything, placing our stories in subjection to the sovereign story of God enhances them, gives them more meaning and resonance. That’s what’s so great about the story God is telling. It makes sense of so much we find nonsensical in the world and it gives great importance to the ordinary things in our lives we tend to rate as unimportant or frivolous. What we discover is that, following the plot of Matthew 10:39, if we are willing to lose our storylines for God’s sake, we will actually find them.

In another great twist, we discover that God tells stories differently than we would if we were on his throne. Most of us know what we plan to do and how we plan to do it, but we don’t really know how it’s all going to end up. We just hope for the best. But God declares the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10). He may not exactly tell us what he’s doing in the middle of his doing it, but we are not at a loss about knowing where we came from and how it’s all going to end. In fact, what’s really interesting about the story God tells is how it begins with the end in sight.

The Conclusion

Moses concluded that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s Genesis 1:1, and the story should start there, because if anything, it tells us that all this stuff we’re working with was authored by God. He made it. There was a time when it wasn’t—then, poof!, it was. All because he said so. When God tells a story, he isn’t just blowing smoke. He’s blowing entire worlds into existence. God says, “Universe,” and the universe shows up. Only God could do that. But he’s not just showing off.

As each stage of Genesis 1’s account of creation unfolds, in fact, we see that God is going somewhere. Like the grain in a beam of wood, there is a grain to creation. More specifically, Genesis 1 establishes the direction God intends for mankind. We see it primarily in verse 28:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

So what is our purpose?

To enjoy God’s blessings. To be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. All of that basically boils down to this: Mankind is meant to enjoy God through engagement with him and reflection of him in creation.

That looks like a lot of things, including the building of civilization, the cultivating of order, the establishment of excellence, and the carrying on with intelligence. “Build things,” God essentially says, “create things, organize things. Reflect me as Creator and Sustainer by creating and sustaining.”

Now, if Genesis 1 is the big panoramic scene, Genesis 2 is the close-up. In Genesis 1, the Hebrew word for God used is Elohim, and in Genesis 2 it is Yahweh-Elohim, the personal name God later gives to Moses in the book of Exodus. So what we see in Genesis 2 is an intensely focused revelation of God’s relationship with his creation and God’s relationship with man. In Genesis 1 we see our place and role in the story God is telling. In Genesis 2 we begin to see some of our lines and plot points. As some actors might say to their director in an especially tricky scene, we ask, “What’s my motivation?” If Genesis 1 outlined it, Genesis 2 fills it in.

Essentially, our motivation is glory. We don’t have it, but we want it. It will answer our feelings of loneliness and insignificance. So how will we get it?

Every day we try living out our own self-centered stories, and the God-shaped hole in our souls doesn’t get the least bit filled up. This irritating reality is constantly nagging, “You were made for more.” So how do we decode this? How do we get an understanding of what it means to have eternity broadcasting from our insidest insides? How do we figure out what the “more” we’ve been created for is?

Well, we begin not with what we were made for but with the very fact that we were made in the first place. In other words, where do we get off thinking the universe revolves around us, when it existed before we did?

Genesis 1 and 2 remind us that with as much power and dominion as God gives to sinless Adam, there is still no mistaking who is in charge.

Who is in charge? The Creator: “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen. 2:7).

Adam at this point had no sin, no corruption, no mortality. He had almost boundless freedom. He could apparently work without sweating, without getting tired, without getting hurt. He was immortal. But he wasn’t God. He wasn’t even a god. For all the strength and dominion Adam had—God had effectively given him a practical rule...