Stories.

KaraLynn sent this article out to us girls on staff last week.
I've been reading it almost every day since, and feel like it's about time that I share it with the rest of you. So read, and be challenged.

Your Story Must Be Told ~ By Shauna Niequist (taken from relevantmagazine.com)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
   Romans 1:16 NIV  

MY LIFE IS not a story about me. And your life's not a story about you. My life is a story about who God is and what He does in a human heart. There's nothing small or inconsequential about our stories. There is, in fact, nothing bigger. And when we tell the truth about our lives—the broken parts, the secret parts, the beautiful parts—then the Gospel comes to life, an actual story about redemption, instead of abstraction and theory and things you learn in Sunday school.

If you want your community to be marked by radical honesty, by risky, terrifying, ultimately redemptive truth-telling, you must start telling your truth first. If we allow the Gospel to be told only on Sundays, only in sanctuaries, that life-changing story will lose its ability to change lives. When Christ walked among us, He entrusted the Gospel to regular people—not just religious professionals. If you have been transformed by the grace of God, then you have within you all you need to write your manifesto, your poem, your song, your battle cry, your love letter to a beautiful and broken world.