Quotes about Stories

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.

Jesus didn't come just to tweak things, but to overthrow the kingdom of this world. We are slow to learn and need more stories to help us catch God's kingdom vision and even to help us make sense of the example Jesus sets for us.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible7 is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God.

We think stories are about getting money and security, but the truth is, it all comes down to relationships.

I get so full off of stories that people send in of encouragement.

I've done some analysis of the biblical stories as part of my psychological work. I knew that I had more to do, and every time I've done it, it's been extremely valuable. It makes me a better teacher because I have a richer understanding of cultural history.

The deep places in our lives - places of resistance and embrace - are reached only by stories, by images, metaphors and phrases that line out the world differently, apart from our fear and hurt.

As a pastor, I've spent 30 years talking to people and heard every kind of story imaginable.

I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry.

You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

Take away the stories of Jesus's birth, and all you lose is four chapters of the Gospels. Take away the resurrection and you lose the entire New Testament, and most of the second-century fathers as well.