The Power of an Unfinished Story

Good morning, Radiant Church family. In preparation for our time together this morning, I’ve been reminded of God’s kindness and faithfulness in my life over the last 25 years, and my prayer is that God uses some of my experiences to encourage, strengthen, and equip you to impact others for His name and His glory.

I want you to think about someone in your life for a second. Someone you love who is not okay. Someone who is managing something nobody knows about. Someone who is smart enough and resourceful enough to keep it hidden—but if you looked closely, really closely, you’d see it.

The eyes that are a little too tired. The laugh that’s a little too quick. The way they change the subject when things get too real.

Now I want to tell you—that person you just thought of? I know exactly who they are.

Because for a season of my life, that person was me.

Strung out. Shame-soaked. Drowning in the distance between who I was supposed to be and who I had actually become. Looking over my shoulder every single day. Wanting a way out of the mess I’d created—but not sure a way out even existed for someone this far gone.

The only prayer I could put together was: "God, if you love me—get me out of this."

Little did I know that the how was going to be a kicked-in front door.

On May 16th, 2001, the Douglas County Sheriff kicked in my front door. That was my moment of exposure and total collapse. All that I had been running from—came apart in one morning.

But that door coming off its hinges was also the moment God intervened in time and space to come to see about me! Not gently. Not politely. He didn’t even knock. He came right into the middle of my mess. And He said: "I see you. I know everything you’ve ever done. And I’m not leaving."

That summer morning became the starting point of my healing, recovery, and discipleship journey. And ultimately into discovering my life’s calling, “to seek the welfare of the city” where God has planted me. Over the past 20 years of ministry, I’ve dedicated my life to making sure that youth, parents, schools, and communities have a safe space to engage their pain and find their path through the work of Pathways2Life, a nonprofit focused on solving the youth mental health epidemic through prevention and early intervention strategies.

Now—I want to tell you why I started there. Why I didn’t walk out here and open with a program update or the latest research finding, as a person in the prevention field does to expose a problem and highlight solutions.

Because the world you and I are trying to reach has a problem. And it’s not that they haven’t heard enough information. In fact—that’s exactly the problem. We are drowning in too much information.

Because the world you and I are trying to reach has a problem. And it’s not that they haven’t heard enough information. In fact—that’s exactly the problem. We are drowning in too much information.

According to the American Psychological Association, 70% of Americans report feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information they receive every day.

The average person is exposed to 6,000–10,000 messages every single day—ads, headlines, posts, notifications, reels, etc.

The average human brain processes 65,000 thoughts daily—most of them repetitive and anxiety-driven.

According to Microsoft research, the average human attention span is 8 seconds—now shorter than a goldfish.

This isn’t good news, and here’s why…

Researchers have found that when the brain receives more information than it can meaningfully process (COGNITIVE OVERLOAD), it activates a stress response—cortisol rises, and the prefrontal cortex—the part responsible for decision-making and connection—begins to shut down. The brain goes into self-protection mode. It numbs. It scrolls. It tunes out and seeks relief. A stressed brain will always seek relief.

And here’s the part that should stop every one of us in this room:

The church is not losing people because we have too little to say. We’re losing people because we keep leading with information in a world whose brain has already learned to shut it out.

But there's something else that opens our brain's capacity to receive information: STORYTELLING. And something amazing happens in our brains when it hears a story.

Scientists call it neural coupling. When we hear an authentic, personal story, our brain doesn’t process it like information. Instead, our neurons fire in the same pattern as the person speaking, mirroring the storyteller. We don’t just receive the story—we enter it. We feel what they felt. We fear what they feared. We hope what they hoped.

That’s why I opened with a story instead of the statistics, like I mentioned. Because I knew your brain wouldn’t tune that out. It leaned in. And that is not a communication strategy. That is how God designed us as human beings to receive transformation.

Authentic stories of transformation become the catalyst for people finding themselves.

When someone hears your story and recognizes their own pain in it—something cracks open. That is the moment real connection becomes possible.

Story—Chapel experience: A young man who was preaching told his story of being arrested by the DCS and how God used this arrest to prove he was a COG, and he preached on Hebrews 12:5–6, describing the Discipline of God as restorative rather punitive. I'll share more as we get deeper into my talk.

So, here’s a question I'd like you to consider: What makes a story work in a way that information alone doesn’t? What gives it that power to break through when everything else gets filtered out? Our brains were designed to receive meaning and make sense through the lens of a story.

And every story ever told—from Genesis to the Gospels, from a campfire to Netflix—is built on the same four bones, or what I call the Anatomy of a Story.

You may be wondering, what is the Anatomy of a Story? Well, it's a way of breaking down a narrative into its core structural components to understand how and why it works.

The best creators in Hollywood leverage key components of a story so they can move the audience in a meaningful way.

Here are 4 key components or bones of a good story:

A world. A wound. A way through. A world without end.

• A world—Someone living their life. In a normal state. A before moment.

• A wound—Something happens, breaks, or unfolds. A fracture that can’t be ignored.

• A way through—A decision. A sacrifice. A mission emerges. Something found—or forfeited.

• A world without end—Not a return to normal—an arrival at something better than normal ever was. The story doesn’t close—it opens into something that has endless possibilities (example: PTG).

Most good stories stop at the way through. The hero survives. The problem gets solved. Life goes back to something like it was before. And that feels like enough. But when the story turns into something more than you could have ever envisioned, a life of purpose that never seemed possible, that’s redemption.

My journey of discovering meaning was found at the intersection of understanding my story and how it intersects with God’s story of Redemption.

You see, you & I are actually wired for this arc. Because we were made by a God who is Himself a storyteller—and He built the shape of His own story into the way we receive meaning. That’s not an accident. That’s architecture; we were made for a life of meaning and purpose.

Now, back to a little more of my story.

Post-incarceration transition & relapse experience moving back home with my parents to start over. I often say, I had a pile of rubble I had to sort through (regret, financial issues, legal issues that had to be handled). I received divorce papers from my wife, who was still in active addiction to heroin; this experience opened a wound of rejection that had been buried for decades and triggered a relapse that lasted 6 months, and increased my desire to find out why I turned back to drugs and alcohol when I know that God has something better for me. I was at a CR meeting and heard a guy named Stephen sharing about his relationship with Jesus and his struggles with cocaine and strip clubs, and God showed me that He would help me unpack my story and find out why I relapsed. It was in this relationship that God began to help me find my authentic self, my voice, and my childhood dream to be a coach and a teacher. This was the beginning of what made that dream a reality. I'll share more later.

This is what makes a testimony worth telling. Not “I went through something hard and survived.” But “I went through something hard, and God used it to build something I could never have built on my own—and that story is still going.”

How many of you have been to a 4D movie?

In a regular film, you sit back and watch. The story happens at a safe distance. You’re an observer.

But in 4D, the film grabs you. Your seat rumbles. You feel the mist. When the character leans over the cliff, your stomach drops. You’re no longer watching. You’re in it.

That’s exactly how the Kingdom of God works. The Gospel isn’t information to process from a safe distance. It’s a reality that invades your senses, your history, your shame, your hope—and makes you a participant in the greatest story ever told.

The Holy Spirit isn’t a theologian. He’s the one who reaches into your heart and pulls you in. He activates what’s dormant in you and brings you from death to life. Not as a spectator. As someone who has been encountered.

John 3:8—"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

You can’t diagram a wind. You can’t schedule an encounter. But you can feel it.

Remember my story of my first encounter with the Holy Spirit through a personal testimony and the preaching of the Gospel… where I became ALIVE spiritually for the first time, and the pursuit of God through discipline was the proof that I was a son! I was now a part of the story of God’s redemption and what I call the story behind the story of God’s 4D story—that’s a living story. (THE WORD OF GOD IS ALIVE; IT’S A LIVING STORY.)

The Four Dimensions—The Story Behind the Story

• DESIGN—Architected, Not Accidental

  In the beginning, God. Not chaos. Not accident. Design. You were made on purpose, for purpose, bearing the image of God. Every longing for meaning, for belonging, for something more—that’s not a flaw. That’s a compass pointing home.

  Genesis 1:27—"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them."

• DECEPTION—The Story Got Hijacked

  But the story was hijacked. Not by a powerful takeover, but—by one question. Genesis 3: “Did God really say?” The Fall isn’t primarily about fruit. It’s about choosing to author your own story instead of trusting the Author. The result is fracture—in our relationships, our identity, our purpose. We all carry it. The details differ. The wound is the same.

• DIVINE INTERVENTION—The Author Enters the Story

  Then God does something no one expected. He enters the story. John 1—the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He walks into the wreckage and says: "I see you. I know everything about you. And I’m not leaving." The cross isn’t God losing. It’s God absorbing everything the Deception produced so none of it has to define you. The empty tomb isn’t a footnote. It’s the hinge of history. Jesus revealed Himself to over 500 witnesses and then ascended, so the Holy Spirit could come to empower us to be His witnesses.

• DESTINY—A Guaranteed Ending

  The story is going somewhere. Every fracture healed. Every wrong made right. Every tear wiped away. Design, fulfilled. Deception, defeated. Destiny, secured. NEW HEAVEN & NEW EARTH.

  Revelation 21:3—"Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them."

Design. Deception. Divine Intervention. Destiny. This is the architecture of God’s story—and yours. When people hear your story told through this framework, they don’t just learn about God. They find themselves inside a story they already belong to.

Transition: “Now—here’s where I want to tell you that this architecture isn’t just for understanding Scripture. It can be used as a framework for telling your own story. Your story becomes the front door to God's story.”

Here’s the practical turn. Everything we’ve talked about only reaches the people around you through one vehicle: you.

Your story must be told. Testimony—in the Hebrew—means "do it again by the same power and authority."

Not your church’s programming. Not a curriculum. Not even this sermon. The most credible version of the Gospel your neighbor, your coworker, your family will ever encounter—is the story of what happened when God showed up uninvited in your life and refused to leave.

Your story of salvation, redemption, sanctification, and mission is the most powerful evangelistic tool you carry. And you already own it. You lived it.

This isn’t a new strategy. In fact, it’s the oldest practice of God’s people. Moses recited God’s works every morning and evening. The Psalms are full of people singing their stories back to God and each other. Paul says in 1 Cor 15: "I passed on to you what I received"—the same language rabbis used to transmit Torah from generation to generation.

The early church didn’t grow because of sophisticated argument. It grew because broken people kept telling other broken people: "Someone found me. And look what happened."

Revelation 12:11—"They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony."

Two things: the blood of the Lamb—what God did in history; and the word of their testimony—what God did in their personal story. Both matter. And the second one is yours to tell every single day.

Let’s now look at John 4 and a conversation Jesus had with a woman at a well in Samaria. At noon. On an ordinary day. Listen the way we talked about watching a 4D film. Lean in. Ask yourself: Where am I in this story?

Three Things the Story Just Showed Us

Wow, that wasn’t just a beautiful passage. It was a master class in how the Kingdom of God invades a human life. Three things I want highlight for you to consider how they relate to your story.

CONCEPT 1—THE THIRST BEHIND THE THIRST

John 4:13–14—“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

She had been to this well before. Many times. And she kept coming back thirsty.

Five marriages. Not five mistakes—five attempts. Five times she went looking for something she believed the next relationship would finally give her. Security. Worth. Someone who truly knew her. And every time, the well ran dry.

Here’s what’s important: Jesus doesn’t condemn the thirst. He names it.

Because the people in front of you are not bad people with bad habits. They are thirsty people drinking from wells that cannot satisfy. And in the suburbs, those wells look respectable. Achievement. A title. A zip code.

A marriage that checks all the boxes on the outside. A glass of wine that becomes two, then three. A shopping habit nobody talks about. A fitness obsession that’s really about control.

Nobody in this room would say they’re desperate. But desperation doesn’t always look like chaos. Sometimes it looks like a very full calendar and a very empty interior.

Jesus says—everything you’ve been drinking from will leave you thirsty again. Not because you’re broken. Because you were built for something those wells were never designed to give you.

The thirst isn’t the problem. The thirst is the invitation.

CONCEPT 2—WORSHIP IS NOT A LOCATION

John 4:21–23—“True worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

When the conversation got too close to the real wound, she changed the subject. She pivoted to religion. Which mountain is right? Which tradition? Which location carries God’s approval?

The oldest deflection there is. As long as we’re debating the right conditions for encountering God, we don’t have to actually encounter Him.

This is where your audience lives. Not in overt rebellion—but in perpetual spiritual preparation that never quite arrives. Waiting for the right church. The right season. The right version of themselves. Waiting until the marriage is more stable, the kids are older, they’ve dealt with the thing they’re ashamed of.

Waiting for the right mountain.

And Jesus says—the mountain is not the point. True worship isn’t a place you travel to. It’s available right here, right now, with exactly the life you’re living and exactly the questions you haven’t resolved yet.

He told her the full truth about her life. And she stayed. Because something about being fully seen and not abandoned was more real than any religious debate she’d ever had.

The encounter you’ve been waiting to be ready for is already happening.

CONCEPT 3—YOUR TESTIMONY IS YOUR SUPERPOWER

John 4:39—“Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”

She left her jar the same day. Ran back into the community that had pushed her to the margins. And led with the most embarrassing thing about herself: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.”

Not a polished testimony. Not an edited highlight reel. A woman so undone by an encounter with Jesus that she forgot to be ashamed of the thing she’d been hiding. And many believed—not because she had it figured out, but because her honesty gave other people permission to be honest too.

This is what your audience needs to hear most. Because this is the audience most tempted to edit. We’ll share our story—when you have more distance from it. When the ending is cleaner. When we can tell it without crying. But she ran into the city mid-story. Still processing. And that raw, unfinished testimony opened the door for an entire community.

The part you’re most tempted to leave out—the addiction your small group doesn’t know about, the depression behind the good job and the nice house, the marriage that almost didn’t make it—that is not a liability. It is the most powerful thing you carry.

Because the person next to you on the bleachers, or down the street in the house that also looks fine from the outside—they are not waiting for you to have it together. They are waiting for someone to go first.

Your testimony doesn’t need to be finished to be powerful. It just needs to be honest.

The thing you’d say if you weren’t afraid of what people would think—that’s probably exactly what God wants you to share.

Remember, long before there were church buildings or Sunday services, God’s people kept their faith alive by one practice: they told the story. Every morning. Every evening. To their children. To their neighbors. They recited the works of God until His faithfulness became the ground they stood on.

Because they understood something we’ve forgotten: a story isn’t just a delivery mechanism for truth. A story is how truth becomes real. How it moves from the head to the heart. How it becomes something you can feel. Something we can encounter—the Spirit of Truth.

The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is in this room right now. And He is not looking for observers.

He is looking for people who will leave their water jar.

We can stop performing. Stop managing the image. Stop coming to the _____________ at noon every day to avoid being seen. He already knows everything about you. And He is still here.

We can stop shopping for the right mountain. The Kingdom isn’t somewhere you get to when you’ve cleaned yourself up. It’s Someone who already came to you—through a door you didn’t open, in a moment you didn’t plan, with a grace you didn’t earn.

We can stop hiding the part of your story we think disqualifies us. The thing behind the garage door that nobody at the school pickup line knows about. In the hands of Jesus, it becomes the most credible part of your testimony. Our credibility isn’t that we have it all together. The credibility is that He found you when you least expected it.

We have to become willing to tell somebody: "Come and see."

Before we close, I’d like to suggest we have a Jar Moment—I want to give you something to sit with.

She left her jar. She didn’t plan to. She didn’t go to the well that day intending to walk away empty-handed. But she encountered something so real, so alive, so completely unlike anything she had ever experienced—that the thing she came to get suddenly didn’t matter anymore.

And I want to ask you something right now. Not rhetorically. I want you to actually think about it.

What part of your story have you left untouched? What chapter have you kept sealed—too painful, too complicated, too embarrassing to let anyone near? And what if that’s exactly what God is highlighting right now?

Maybe it’s a season you never talk about. Maybe it’s something that happened to you. Maybe it’s something you did. Maybe it’s still happening and nobody knows. Maybe you’ve been carrying it for so long it just feels like part of who you are now.

But what if that sealed chapter—the one you’ve decided is too much, too messy, too far from the version of yourself you’re trying to present—what if that’s the very thing God wants to use?

Not someday. Not when it’s cleaned up. Now.

REFLECTION—give 60 seconds of quiet. Then walk through these questions slowly:

• What part of your story has God been nudging you to stop hiding?

• Who is one person in your life who needs to hear exactly that part?

• What would it look like to steward that story—not perfectly, not with all the answers, just honestly—in the next seven days?

Not a sermon. Not a platform. Just one conversation. One person. One honest moment.

The jar she left at the well wasn’t just a container. It was a symbol of the old way she’d been surviving. And God is not asking you to have it all figured out before you set it down. He’s just asking you to leave it.

In closing, I want to leave you with this: Our youth need to hear your stories. The next generation isn’t waiting for your perfection. They’re waiting for our honesty. They don’t need to see a life that never came apart. They need to see a life that came apart—and was put back together by the God who showed up in your life and never left. He’s still showing up! Give them that story. That is the front door to God’s story.

Psalm 78:4—“We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.”

Design. Deception. Divine Intervention. Destiny. This is the story of the universe. It is the story of your life. Go. Tell. It.

Let’s pray.