When I was putting this together, all of a sudden, the light bulb went on. Jesus tells a story about the prodigal son in the far county. When he was in the pig pen, the Bible says, "He came to himself and said, ‘I will arise and go to my father's house'." He wanted to go back and hook up with his roots and his story. He liked the father's story, though he was trying to get away from it. Whatever your story is, it's God's story.

The problem in our culture is that we are a culture that has done away with its stories. If you don't know these stories, you can't understand literature. Steenbok wrote East of Eden, a story directly out of the Bible. The movie ET — if you don't know death, burial and resurrection, you won't understand ET. Where does Judas Goat come from? Or "scapegoat," or "skin of your teeth, or "apple of his father's eye"? These are all biblical terms, and we have worked hard to make sure that our children don't know these stories. "I'm afraid if they know the Bible, it would change their lives! Don't teach the Bible; teach them how to relate to the world." No! Just teach them the stories. Stories work down into the pores of our being, then we begin to respond. These stories direct us to respond.

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I want to chide you a little. Your children won't learn much about the Bible when you bring them once a month to Sunday School. When you deny them access to worship, they won't learn much about the stories. We have substituted our own stories, and these are okay, but your children won't learn about Adam and Eve, or Jonah and the large fish. They will learn about Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Buzz Lightyear and The Simpsons, a good model of family life. We learn about the Osbornes, and Barney and Andy from Mayberry. These are the carriers of the stories of our culture because we have refused to learn the stories that God has given us.

If this was a seminar, I would ask you to write your story, then I could file it away so I would have it when I do your funeral. Write your stories. Some of you have pulled me aside and said, "I want to tell you about this." I've pulled some of you aside occasionally to tell you my story, but I'm one of the few blessed people in the world who gets to tell everybody my story. We all have a story. What influences have shaped you? What choices have focused you? What forces have tempted you? You do have a story. All you have to do is bring it out and bless it.

I was going to prepare some family life sermons and couldn't find any good families in the Bible. They are all flawed. We have a lot of bad examples of families in the Bible. But the one thing I want you to hear is that these stories change when the person met Jesus. Look at our text, "If a man be in Christ, he is a new creature." Then all of a sudden, his story changes. It didn't make any difference who he or she was — when they met Jesus, their story changed. It's that simple. It's not when they understood the deep dynamics of the inspiration of Scripture and how that relates to the Virgin Birth, once saved always saved, the necessity of baptism, and the ecclesiastical history of their denomination. That is not what saves you. They were saved when they met Jesus. It is a relationship. That is the key to all of this. We see all of these tangled people who are dealing with the issues of life, and then it all points in the Old Testament to one direction, then in the New Testament, Jesus comes and touches lives. And stories change. Do you know what this means? If you don't like your story, it can be changed, because this is the year you can write the chapters of the story like it ought to be, and Jesus should walk through the middle of it.