INTERACTIVE JOURNEY MATTHEW WEST - Harvest Houserelaxing evening filled with his usual activities: playing video games and eat - ing Cheetos. All of a sudden it hits him. The book

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INTERACTIVE JOURNEY

MATTHEW WEST and Terry Glaspey

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Copyrighted material

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Verses marked esv are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Verses marked kjv are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Cover image © Pixel Peach Studios, Austin, Texas

Cover by Harvest House Publishers

Published in association with the literary agency of Fedd & Company, Inc., 8 Torrington Ct., Austin, TX 78738.

“The Story of Your Life,” “Strong Enough,” “My Own Little World,” “Broken Girl” all Matthew West, copyright 2010 Songs of Southside Independent Music Publishing OBO Itself External Combustion Music & Songs for Delaney (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“The Healing Has Begun” Matthew West and Jason Houser, copyright 2010 Songs of Southside Independent Music Publishing OBO Itself External Combustion Music & Songs for Delaney (ASCAP)and Housermania Music (ASCAP)(Admin. by Amplified Admin.) All rights reserved. Used by permission.

The STory of your Life inTeracTive Journey Copyright © 2012 by Matthew West and Terry Glaspey Published by Harvest House Publishers Eugene, Oregon 97402 www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data West, Matthew. The story of your life: interactive journey / Matthew West and Terry Glaspey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7369-4659-9 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-7369-4660-5 (eBook) 1. Christian biography. 2. Storytelling—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Suffering—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Glaspey, Terry W. II. Title. BR1690.W47 2012 248—dc23 2011036855

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Table of ConTenTs

Introduction: The Story of Your Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 1: Life Is More Than Cliffs Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapter 2: Who’s Holding the Pen? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 3: What’s Your Population? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Chapter 4: Our Broken Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Chapter 5: The Healing Has Begun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Exploring Your Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Leader’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139



9

1

life is More Than Cliffs noTes

it’s Sunday night in the suburbs. A high school kid is settling in for a nice relaxing evening filled with his usual activities: playing video games and eat-ing Cheetos. All of a sudden it hits him. The book report! He’s known about

it for weeks, but being the skilled procrastinator that he is, he never actually got around to reading the book his teacher assigned. His eyes shoot to the nearest clock. “It’s too late now,” he thinks. There’s not nearly enough time to read the book before the Monday morning deadline. But the panic subsides as inspira-tion strikes: he remembers there is no need to worry. There’s always Cliffs Notes!

Remember Cliffs Notes? This series of easy-to-read study guides to great lit-erature gave students a quick and painless overview of the basic story line and characters. The idea behind them was that they could help you review what you had read in preparation for a test. And by you, I mean, well, me. I was that high school kid. When I was in high school I thought that Cliffs Notes were the greatest invention since, well, video games and Cheetos.

Many young slackers, like me, read the Cliffs Notes instead of reading the book itself. Why plow through 500 pages of Moby Dick when you could get it summarized for you in a brief little pamphlet? I used to imagine myself some-day meeting this Cliff guy, shaking his hand, and thanking him for getting me through college.

As a writer and musician, you might assume that I have always been in love with the power of words. But the truth is, as a young person my passion was for



The sTory of your life inTeraCTive Journey10

sports, not books. I was way too busy in the weight room and the practice field to focus on my studies. Someone once asked my mother about my study habits and I overheard her saying, “Well, he loves everything about school except the academic part.” Sadly, she was right. That’s the reason why whenever we were assigned a book to read my first quest was not to find the actual book, but the Cliffs Notes. I figured they would tell me everything I really needed to know. It seemed liked the perfect shortcut.

As you could imagine, my foolish reliance on Cliffs Notes led to some pretty miserable book reports. When I wrote about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the paper came out something like: “There was this girl, and she liked this boy, and he liked her. But their families didn’t really get along, and then they died.” Such lousy reports earned lousy grades, and that’s precisely the problem with Cliffs Notes. They give you the bullet points, but you never actually get the essence of the story—the intricate details, the sights, the sounds, the subtle nuances that make a story unforgettable. By never digging deep you miss out on the chance to really understand the fierce feud between the Capulets and Montagues, or feel in your soul the depth of love and passion that Romeo felt for Juliet…the kind of love that would cause him to lament, “Did my heart love till now? For-swear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”

In the years since those below-average book reports, I have gone back and read the full story of Romeo and Juliet. And I’m glad I did! The last line of this tragic romance reads, “For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

What I have come to find equally tragic is the fact that so many people are racing through their lives allowing only the bullet points of their own lives to be known or told, but never really stopping long enough to see the full story their life is telling. They are living their lives like Cliffs Notes. No one really knows them, and they don’t even really know themselves. What a sad existence! As Maya Angelou has written, “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”

The goal of this book is to help you draw the story of your life out from wherever it may lie—some parts of it perhaps hidden deep within—and then to think about it, to write it down, and ultimately to gain a better understand-ing of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going.

Why Stories MatterStories give a shape to our lives, rescuing us from the mistake of thinking



Life Is More Than Cliffs Notes 11

that our existence is just the accumulation of a random series of events. No, our lives have a plot. They have a real meaning.

The ancient Greeks had two words for the concept of time: chronos and kai-ros. Chronos just refers to the passing of time, the inevitable march of the clock, the forward momentum of the minutes. But kairos is time that is centered in a meaning. When the Bible uses a phrase like “the fullness of time,” (Galatians 4:4 kjv) it is referring to a conception of time that is filled with purpose; time that is redeemed for God’s purposes. Thinking about our lives in terms of story reminds us that God is at work in our lives. That means that our lives are not just an accident. Instead, they are filled with meaning.

Second, stories challenge and convict us by engaging the whole person. Sto-ries don’t just engage our reason, but connect with our emotions as well. That is part of the power of story. Remember the Old Testament account of David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath? Not only has David fallen deep into deception and adultery, but he is directly responsible for the death of Bathshe-ba’s husband. When God calls the prophet Nathan to confront David with his sinful actions, Nathan does not preach a sermon or engage in a tirade. Instead, he tells a story. It is a story of grave injustice that parallels David’s own actions.

When his sense of right and wrong is aroused by the story, David blurts out a call for justice to be done against the transgressor. Nathan says simply and powerfully: “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7). For the first time David really sees and understands the immensity of his wrongdoing. A story was capable of accomplishing what simple condemnation might never have managed to do. The thing about a story is that we don’t just hear it…we experience it. We feel ourselves drawn into it. You can’t really argue with a story. It acts upon your heart and emotions. And it shapes you in a way that nothing else can.

Third, stories help us remember. During the traditional celebration of the Passover meal, the question is posed, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” It is a call to remember how God acted on the behalf of his people in the past, which produces faith that God will continue to act on their behalf in the present. Stories are like the “stones of remembrance” that God instructed his people to stack up as they passed into the Promised Land ( Joshua 4:1-7). They help us recall where we have been and what God has done for us. When we begin to lose heart, we sometimes need to be reminded about what God has done, both in our lives and in the lives of others. The stories of God’s actions in the past give us hope for the future.

Fourth, stories help us to become engaged in our own lives. It is all too easy




to live our lives in a detached fashion, floating from situation to situation and never really making decisions about what we should be doing. When we think about our lives as stories it helps us remember that we are characters, not specta-tors. The characters in a story are the ones whose actions determine the direction of the plot. So it is for us with our lives. We cannot afford to just helplessly view life passing us by. We can choose how we will respond and how we will react. We should also remember that we are characters in each other’s stories. What I do doesn’t only affect me—it affects the stories of countless others. Our actions may have effects that ripple outward like a stone dropped into a still pond. As the poet John Donne reminds us, “no man is an island”!

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, stories help us learn to live bet-ter lives. They shape us and teach us (by example) how to live. The examples we draw from the stories in books and movies, or the stories told by friends and relatives, or the stories written in God’s Word, all help us figure out how we should live our lives. When we see the stories of how others have responded to various situations, we can begin to imagine ourselves in the same situation and learn something that just might change us.

There is a moral power to stories. That is why Robert Coles, a professor who taught medical and legal ethics at Harvard, found that his most effective teach-ing tool was introducing his students to the moral dilemmas faced by the char-acters in great literature. He has them read stories! He found this to be infinitely more effective than lectures on morality, as his students were given a glimpse of morality in action in great classic stories. Through stories by Dickens and George Eliot and Dostoyevsky they felt the immensity of moral decisions and what was at stake. And they were challenged to become better people.

Through stories we discover how different we are from others, especially those who have grown up in a different place or culture. Through stories we also discover how much we are also very much the same deep down inside, with similar hopes and fears and struggles. Through stories we find the courage to do the right thing, even when it may be difficult or inconvenient. Through stories we find the faith to believe, even when our present circumstances may make it hard. Imagining ourselves becoming better actually helps us to become bet-ter people.

The Power of a StoryWhat we love about stories is that they show us the possibility of change. A

story without change is hardly a story at all. The ugly duckling can become a




swan. The timid hobbits can become brave heroes. The underdog fighter can become a world champion. Stories of change give us glimmers of hope that maybe we too can eventually become the kinds of people we want to be. Sto-ries like these have power.

Stories like Kristen’s…When Kristen wrote to me with her story, she didn’t bother with the bul-

let points. She canned the Cliffs Notes version and dove right in for the real thing. And her story stirred something deep within me, in the way that only a great story can.

Kristen’s story was no fairytale—far from it. She shared a real and honest look into the story of a life that’s had its share of brokenness. This is Kristen’s story.

I am an unwanted, cast out, unloved orphan who has been in and out of foster care my whole life. I’ll turn eighteen in two months and age out of foster care, still with no family to call my own…

What a tragically broken beginning to Kristen’s story! It’s one no child should have to tell. But listen to what she wrote next.

A childhood friend and her parents reached out to me. They took me to church with them, and I even accepted Jesus into my heart. That day changed my outlook on my life. I learned that even though I’ve never had a father who loves me, I have a heavenly father who has always loved me. And now I know that he is all I need in this life.

Kristen could have toughed it out through her rough years in and out of fos-ter care, growing more and more bitter about her broken beginnings. And hon-estly, who could blame her? She could have chosen to just go on through her life, never dealing with her painful childhood, and as a result letting her bro-ken beginning define how the rest of her life would go. But instead, she stopped long enough to take inventory of her story. She dug deeper than the Cliffs Notes version of her story and was willing to deal with the most painful chapters, no matter how much it hurt. Out of that experience, Kristen resolved that her story was far from over. God has blessed her with a clear direction, and she is deter-mined to write a story with her life that makes a difference in the world. She finished her letter by saying…

Now, I plan to reach out to other foster kids who have had the same experiences. I know that God has uniquely gifted me to be able to




reach them because I am one of them. I am a child of God, and my messed-up childhood isn’t the end of my life. It’s only the beginning.

Can’t you just feel the redemption in Kristen’s story? Sure, her letter was just an abbreviated version of the much larger story that God is telling through this young girl’s life, but what honesty, what transparency, what clarity, and what victory! I was so inspired by her vulnerability and her determination to rede-fine her life’s course that I began to write what became the title song on the CD, The Story of Your Life.

Take a moment to read these lyrics to the song I wrote inspired by Kristen’s powerful story.

Is this the end? Or only the beginning?The second chance you never thought you’d get.The question is, will you do something with it?Or spend your days lost in your regret?

This is the story of your lifeYou decide how the rest is gonna read.This is your chance between the linesTo redefine what kind of legacy you leave.This is the story of your life.And it’s a story worth telling.

Breathe in deep, feel your heart still beating.Let’s go see the reason you’re alive.You are here, and love is up to something.So take your fear and leave it all behind.

This is the joy, and this is the painAnd all the pages in between.Your finest hour, your weakest moment.It’s where you’ve been, it’s where you are,It’s where you’re going.

This is the story of your lifeYou decide how the rest is gonna read.This is your chance between the linesTo redefine what kind of legacy you leave.This is the story of your life.And it’s a story worth telling.




So…What’s Your Story?Has anyone ever asked you that question? If so, how did you answer? Did

you mostly stick to the generalities, the “bullet points”—where you’re from, what you do for a living, what your major was in school, how long you’ve been married or single, and how many kids you have? That’s all very interesting stuff, but this litany of facts really doesn’t tell us much about the real you. These details are just the Cliffs Notes to the story, not the story itself. They are the bul-let points, not the essence.

So what’s your story?You owe it to yourself to find out. And this book was created with that spe-

cific purpose in mind: to invite you and guide you on a journey of discovering the story of your life. Isak Dinesen, the great writer, wrote, “To be a person is to have a story to tell.” She’s right. You do have a story to tell. Now is as good a time as any to begin discovering the story of who you are and who God made you to be. How can you tell a story you don’t know yourself ?

Perhaps somewhere during the course of your life you’ve been made to believe that your story doesn’t matter, or that it wouldn’t even make a differ-ence if you told your story. Or maybe you are hesitant to dive too deep into your story for fear of chapters you’ve tried hard not to deal with. If that describes you, I encourage you to revisit Kristen’s story before moving on to the rest of these pages. Be inspired by her bravery. I am certain there were times when this orphan girl seriously doubted that her story could ever make any kind of a dif-ference in the world. But with God’s help a scared and broken teenager has gained a clearer vision of who she is and where she’s heading than most people I know.

Be brave; don’t look away. This will not be easy, and it does not happen over-night. But it starts with a choice. Make the choice to face your story, and like Kristen, victory will soon follow.

This is the joy, and it’s the painAnd all the pages in between.Your finest hour, your weakest moment.It’s where you’ve been, it’s where you are,It’s where you’re going.

Once Kristen chose to go deeper than a Cliffs Notes version of her story, her perspective on her rocky upbringing began to shift. She started to see how God’s plan for her life was still very much intact. She began to see that even her




days as a forgotten foster kid were something that God would use as a part of her story to reach others struggling in similar situations. It’s all part of the story. It’s where the true essence and power of your story will be uncovered. And only after you uncover it yourself can it ever be discovered by a world that needs to hear your story of hope and redemption.

This is something we will re-visit throughout the course of our journey. There is no more powerful discovery than learning that God can use a part of your story you thought was worthless to transform a life or change the world.

God is not interested in a Cliffs Notes version of your story. He never intended for your life story to be summed up by a few bullet points. He wants to use all of your story. The joy, the pain, and all the pages in between. Find the essence of your story. Revisit your finest hour and your weakest moments.

Just as I discovered by finally reading the full story of Romeo and Juliet, and just as Kristen discovered by addressing her troubled childhood, sometimes our most significant steps forward are the ones that take us back.

The Group Experience• If you have the DVD series, please watch the first session.

• If you have the CD The Story of Your Life, please listen to the song “The Story of Your Life.”

Questions for Discussion:1. What are the books you most enjoyed as a child? What did you

particularly enjoy about these books? Which ones also had an impact on you as an adult?

2. Some of the best stories are the ones passed on to us by family, parents, grandparents, etc. What are some of the more memorable stories you were told about your parents and/or grandparents?




3. What are some of the stories that you have been told about yourself as a child?

4. Who are some of your heroes? Why do you admire them?

5. Can you think of a Bible character you most identify with? Why? Are there similarities between your story and theirs?

6. What does it mean to you to think of your life as a story? What value could it have?

7. When you listen to “The Story of Your Life” or read its lyrics, how does it affect the way you think about your life?

8. The song talks about this being “your chance…to redefine what kind of legacy you leave.” What comes to mind when you think about the legacy you would leave if your life ended today? What would you like to change about that legacy?




9. Can you think of a time when you have been made to feel as if your story really didn’t matter? What made you feel that way?

10. How do you feel about digging deeper into your own story—about going beyond the Cliffs Notes version? Excited? Scared? Tense? Why do you think you feel that way?

11. Read John 10:10. What type of life does Jesus promise to each of us? In what way does taking a deeper look at your story help you discover this kind of life?



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INTERACTIVE JOURNEY MATTHEW WEST - Harvest Houserelaxing evening filled with his usual activities: playing video games and eat - ing Cheetos. All of a sudden it hits him. The book