Our Story: A Condensed Scripture Narrative of God's Redemptive Story

By Jon Woodroof

What's our story? What's this life all about? Over the past five years, I've been compiling text (and audio clips the text) of the Old and New Testament scriptures, trying to weave together a solid overview of the great themes and consistent threads of the Bible. This narrative, "Our Story", is the result. I've tried to select clips of scripture (the scripture clips are taken from the English Standard Version of the Bible) that will give an honest searcher a good (and condensed) overview of this eternal redemptive story. At the heart of the story is Jesus, the Messiah. We cannot prove, beyond doubt, much of anything in life - life is just not like that. Every approach to life requires a faith of some kind. When I look at the magnificence of the creation around me - the wonder of the subatomic world, the intricacy of a newborn, the beauty of oceans and mountains, the vastness of the universe - I cannot believe that it all just happened through chance and time (some very intelligent people do believe it all just happened, but this also demands faith on their part). There is so much design and order and complexity and purpose in what I see, that it forces me to believe that it all was created - not by an incomprehensible energy source, randomness, and time - but by a Creator, and for a purpose. So what I'm searching to know is "Who is this Creator?" and "For what purpose did He create all this and place us here?" The Bible gives me a picture of this - it was "written over a period of some 1,500 years by over 40 different authors from all walks of life: shepherds, farmers, tent-makers, physicians, fishermen, priests, philosophers and kings." Despite this diversity, the Bible tells a remarkably consistent and compelling story (what philosophers call a "meta narrative"), that reveals the Creator's reason for doing all this. The Bible tells of a great redemptive story:* God created this universe, and created us for His eternal purposes. This life is full of "sign posts" that point us home to Him, and "events" designed to bring us to an end of ourselves. * God offered us an intimate relationship with Him, if we would keep covenant with Him; and choose to walk in His ways and obey His commandments. * Time and time again, God would covenant with man (Adam, Noah, and Abraham, Moses), and man would decide to break covenant with God and to go it alone; to call his own shots, to be his own god. * Then God, through Jacob, made a nation of Israel to play out His redemptive story before the nations. Calling Moses, God redeemed Israel from captivity in Egypt through the Red Sea, gave them His law (picturing what being in relationship with God looks like), set up His presence among them in the Tabernacle, and brought them across the Jordan into the promised land. * Though Moses pled with Israel to "Choose life", yet again, Israel broke covenant with God.* Over and over, God sent His prophets to warn Israel about going its own way, and also to tell them of a coming Messiah who would be the path back to God. * In the fullness of time, God came, in the form of Jesus the Messiah (Immanuel - "God with us"), into our world to live among us, to experience every aspect of our life, and to show us life with God. * So that sinful man (the covenant breakers) could be reconciled back to God, God gave Jesus as our covenant (Isaiah 42:6), took our guilt, and died in our place, so that we might be granted life in Him. * Salvation requires believing in this redemptive story, surrendering one's will/life, and following this Jesus into the life for which God created us. * And in the fullness of time, God will return and make all things new; renewing His people, along with the whole cosmos, and God will dwell among His people, forever.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 107256050X
• ISBN13: 9781072560500
• Release Date: November 2020
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.4" x 7.0"