How can anyone consider it pure joy when we face trials? How can anything good come from the pressures and challenges in our lives?
Untested faith is unproven. How can you know if your faith holds without putting it into practice? In a story, a hero without a trial is a hero without a story. How can the hero save the day if there is no problem to confront?
We don’t like trials and tribulations. Yet, problems have benefits. We need them. So when it comes to trials of various kinds, consider it pure joy.
In a story, there is always an obstacle. Either the hero has a conflict internally or externally. Something is stiff-necked.
Proverbs 29:1 reminds me why being stubborn and part of the stiff-necked is far from admirable.
The hero learns something when they face and overcome the obstacle. They change and become a better version of themselves. Sure, they may be stubbornly determined, but they can’t be so stubborn that they are too proud to learn.
What if the hero is stiff-necked? What if they never learn and remain the same? It’s not much of a story—it’s just a long, slow-motion destruction scene.
Do you have a good story? Have you learned something that changed your life for the better? Congratulations! You have a story to tell that can transform the life of someone else who doesn’t suffer from a stubborn, stiff neck.
Last month, I was privileged to go on a short-term mission trip with my employer, OneHope, to the Dominican Republic. And the good news is I didn’t break the country! Along the way, I learned a few lessons from a mission trip.
I have been on a few mission trips over the years. Whenever I am on a new experience, I keep my eye out for new lessons. Some of them may be new. Others reassure me past lessons are still valid. On this trip, three lessons stood out to me.
A rainy afternoon in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
“If your story is too small, it’s not a story. It’s just an annoying interruption.”
Seth Godin in All Marketers Tell Stories
We’ve all endured it. We’ve all had a friend who began to tell a story that had no point. It just drags on and on. We’ve experienced the person who starts telling a joke but gets lost somewhere before the punchline. What began as a potentially good story falls flat and becomes an annoyance.
In Seth Godin’s book, All Marketers Tell Stories, he reminds me that all marketing is a story. When we think of a brand, we have a story that comes to mind. Your favorite drink sparks a fond memory. Your favorite restaurant has a story you tell yourself about the quality, the atmosphere, and the service you expect.
We tell ourselves stories all the time when we shop. We expect this place to be too busy on a weekday evening. We tolerate this store because it has the lowest price. We begin to shop online and shun a store because we find an even better price and we don’t have to endure the crowds. That story of the store you once frequented becomes small because they can’t deliver what you expected anymore. It becomes an annoyance.
We tell ourselves stories every day. What story do people think of when they think about your business? How can you be sure your story doesn’t become too small to delight customers?
Let’s start telling our customers stories that are true, compelling and so good, we have to negotiate the movie rights.
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