Vision For Life

This episode is one of a series of conversations that have to do with living all of life within the bigger story of the Gospel. We're calling the Gospel the “Beyond Me Story.” This bigger story sits in contrast to the “Me Story," the highly individualistic story of the culture within which we live.

The Me Story is characterized by a set of questions that everyone living within it asks. We ask these questions almost instinctively, having been thoroughly conditioned by our culture and society to do so, and we place these as an overlay on every aspect of life. When we ask the Me Story questions of work, they sound something like:
"Does my work allow me to express my true self?"
"Is this job helping me grow and develop as a person?"
"Will this job lead to a successful career path?"
"Do I find my work satisfying or fulfilling?"
These questions, while not bad, are limited. Many of us experience frustration with work when it doesn't provide the answers to these questions as we'd hoped.

Ephesians 6 broadens our view of work outside of the bounds of the limited Me Story by revealing that, regardless of our work environment or the status or value ascribed to our work culturally, we can choose how we work. Paul encouraged both bondservants and their masters to see their work as a call to mutual, reciprocal service to each other and to Christ. Christians are called to see their work as service - whether they are designing a building or washing its windows.

This episode is one of a series of conversations that have to do with living all of life within the bigger story of the Gospel. We're calling the Gospel the “Beyond Me Story.” This bigger story sits in contrast to the “Me Story," the one handed to us at birth within which we all live.

Today Clark shares his own story of "finding home." Not unlike many Colorado transplants, Clark and his wife moved to Denver with hopes of hiking, biking, and climbing their way into a fun, fulfilled existence. They did find beauty and adventure in the Rockies, but they also began to sense a need for relationship that the mountains couldn't fill. Eventually they began, not only to seek out relationship for themselves, but to build relational community for others. As they invested more of their time and energy in their neighbors and church community, God grew their heart and affection for their "place," and they began to find the home they'd longed for.

Clark has now joined the Fellowship Denver staff team at and will be pastoring a new congregation that will focus on creating the same sort of place he and his wife found a "home" - a relational community that models Jesus' compassion and love.

This episode is one of a series of conversations that have to do with living all of life within the bigger story of the Gospel. We're calling this big Gospel story the “Beyond Me Story.” This story sits in contrast to the “Me Story," the one handed to us at birth within which we all live.

One of the innate longings all people experience has to do with place. Most people want a place to belong, a place to feel at ease, or a place to call our own. We call this place home. Something about home feels right, or safe. The Me Story would have us believe that we can find a place in our own journey of self-discovery and self-fulfillment that will provide an essential piece the puzzle that is "me."

The Beyond Me Story reveals to us a different reality. The notion of place, or home, is central to the Beyond Me Story. So, too, is the reality of exile, a separation from the fullness of God's presence that we experience as an unfulfilled longing for home. The central character of the Beyond Me Story, Jesus, displaced himself from his home in order to dwell with us, in our state of exile, to show us the way home. The reality of a home found in and through Jesus has both a temporal and an eternal dimension. Jesus' earliest followers called themselves "sojourners" or "wanderers," terms that captured the temporal nature of an earthly human experience. Yet even as they sojourned, they reflected the greater reality of the kingdom by building up the people and places around them. In this way they, and we, find home.

You are and I are born into a story. The world and its story are old, and big, much bigger than any one of us. Yet we all instinctively tend to center ourselves in the narrative and write a version of the story called The Me Story. In the American cultural context this story develops via an experiment we call “finding ourselves.” We mix the ingredients of our lives in an attempt us to find and express our most authentic "selves." We may, for a time, mix the ingredients of the Me Story in such a way that they are temporarily satisfying. But we all find that the Me Story is inherently limited.

Another story, The Beyond Me Story, predates The Me Story. Genesis 1 and 2 introduce us to the Beyond Me Story. The Me Story is limited because it's author is limited. The Beyond Me Story is expansive because it's Author is limitless. Within God’s Story, our most authentic selves are received from God and expressed by listening to God. God saves us out of the limited, restless Me Story via re-creation: new birth into The Beyond Me Story.

The doctrine of the authority of Scripture states that God's word stands above all earthly powers. Within God's governmental structure, God - the Living Word and the Written Word - hold positional authority. We are created, not Creator. We are stewards, not owners. Because many of us have experienced "authority" as a way to leverage power or to obtain a desired outcome, we may balk at the notion of the authority of Scripture.

Yet acknowledgement of the authority of the Word of a God who gave his own Son on our behalf is not submission to a power-hungry deity, but to a Father who inverts the very idea of authority. He gives grace and agency to the humble. He elevates and protects the meek and powerless. Submission to such a Father grounds us and allows us to share in his abundant life, a life animated by his Word and illumined by his Spirit.

Autumn, Kimiko, and Caitlyn discuss how God has chosen to use written words, recorded and preserved in the Bible, as one of the primary means of revealing himself to us. We read the Bible to learn who God is, who we are, and to understand his created world and his kingdom.

However, reading the Bible is not simply an educational exercise nor purely an emotional experience. Interacting with the written Word leads us to the Living Word who is the Way to the Father. The multi-faceted, complex nature of the Bible reveals to us a God who is himself beautifully complex. The varied nature of God's written word, composed of different books, genres, and literary styles, affords us the ability to spend time with him via devotional reading, to enter into the vast biblical story via rapid reading, and to have intellectually stimulating conversation with him via studied reading.

As noted in the audio, for more information about Women's Ministry or Women's Bible Study, contact [email protected].