I run a program at church called e4. It’s sort of like a seminary-meets-local-church program designed to take people deep into the heart of Christianity. It’s divided into three tracks, each ten weeks long, and the first track, the one we’re in now, is all about the Bible.

One of the things that I hope God will do in these ten weeks is help each of us to find our story in his story. By that I mean that we will find how our story fits into the larger story that God is telling in history, and specifically in the Bible. The Bible is, after all, a story. It’s the story of God creating, then redeeming, now renewing the world. And our stories are both a small part of that larger story (the meta-narrative) and miniature versions of it.

We can’t know our stories if we don’t know God’s story, and we can’t know God’s story if we don’t know the Bible. Most of us engage with the text of Scripture in a fragmented way. That is, we read it until something jumps off the page at us. By doing this, however, we’re ignoring 99% of the Bible, and when we ignore that much of God’s Word we can’t possibly know God’s story. A fragmented reading of Scripture leads to a fragmented life. How can you know your own story and how you fit into what God is doing in history if you only read the Bible devotionally? e4 brings you present to the other 99%.

God’s story is remarkable. It’s full of pain and redemption, death and resurrection, darkness and light, ignorance and wisdom. It’s the story of broken eikons of God (that’s you and me!) becoming whole, finding healing, love, friendship, wholeness, courage, compassion. It’s the story of which all other great stories are but a seed or a shadow. And it’s your story. It’s the story that makes sense of your life, who you are and where you’re going. You really should read it. All of it.