Some days it seems we’re better off staying in bed. The children of Israel had their own storms and floodwaters to deal with. After God divided Israel into two kingdoms, things went from bad to worse. According to the Bible, during this 208-year period, the combined kingdoms had thirty-eight different kings, and only five were good; the rest were described as evil.

Over and over we read tragic words like these, describing Israel’s kings: “But you followed the ways of Jeroboam and caused my people Israel to sin.”

So for 208 years, he patiently waited for his children to return to him, but he didn’t wait passively. He sent special messengers, or prophets, to call them back to his ways.

In the northern kingdom alone, God raised up nine prophets during this 208-year period to try to convince the people to turn from their wicked ways. One of these prophets, Elijah, challenged the wicked king to a supernatural duel of sorts.  Elijah’s challenge to Ahab: Gather all the prophets of your pagan gods (he had 450 of them), and let’s see how they do against me and the God I serve.

The plan is for each side to build an altar, slaughter a bull on it for a sacrifice, and then call on their god to send down fire and consume the sacrifice. Ahab goes first, leading to the first biblical record of trash talk. The prophets call out to Baal. Nothing. No matter how loud they shout, nothing happens.

Then it is Elijah’s turn. When Elijah calls out to God, fire rains down from above, turning the watery mess of an altar into an inferno. The flames burn and burn, consuming everything. Even the water in the trench vaporizes in a fiery blast from God. When all the people see this dramatic demonstration of God’s power, they cry over and over, “The Lord — he is God!”

If Ahab’s story gives us an idea of how God will use supernatural events to call his people back to him, Hosea shows us just how far God will go to reclaim us. As one of God’s prophets, Hosea pleads with Israel to return to God, but to no avail. But then God does something that seems strange to us who live in the Lower Story. He asks Hosea to marry a prostitute.

So what could God be up to in his Upper Story? Despite her marriage to Hosea, Gomer keeps her night job. And despite her brazen unfaithfulness, Hosea continues to support her, even as she leaves him for days at a time to practice her trade.

Can you imagine? Such love and forgiveness are almost too hard to believe. It just doesn’t make sense. Hosea has every right — according to Jewish law — to divorce his wife because of her serial unfaithfulness.

The relationship of Hosea and Gomer mirrors God’s relationship with Israel, and with us. Despite their covenant with God, Israel had been unfaithful. They had pledged their loyalty to God, but snuck out at night to worship other gods. God not only knows this, but catches them in the act. And what does he say?

Come home.

Nothing is so hurtful to a lover as to discover infidelity in the one you love. Israel left the God who had sustained them for another god. Many of us who once invited God to rule our lives have set him aside for another god. Any other spurned lover would take you to court, divorce you, and make you pay.

Regardless of your sin — regardless of how far you have strayed from God — he whispers his Upper Story message in your ear.

Come home.

If I were the devil, I’d so distract you with possessions and problems that you’d never have time to read the Bible. Especially the story of Jesus in the wilderness.

What a disaster that day was! Jesus brought me down. Coldcocked me. I never even landed a punch. Looking back, I now realize what he was doing. He was making a statement. He wanted the whole world to know who calls the shots in the universe.

Jesus was fresh out of the Jordan River. He had just been baptized by John. He stepped out of the waters buoyed by God’s blessing. Yet he began his public ministry, not by healing the sick or preaching a sermon, but by exposing the scheme of Satan. A perfect place to begin.

The Greek word for devil is diabolos, which shares a root with the verb diaballein, which means “to split.” The devil is a splitter, a divider, a wedge driver. He divided Adam and Eve from God in the garden, and has every intent of doing the same to you. Blame all unrest on him. Don’t fault the plunging economy or raging dictator for your anxiety. They are simply tools in Satan’s tool kit.

Nothing thrills Satan more than the current skepticism with which he is viewed. When people deny his existence or chalk up his works to the ills of society, he rubs his hands with glee. The more we doubt his very existence, the more he can work without hindrance. Jesus didn’t doubt the reality of the devil. The Savior strode into the badlands with one goal, to unmask Satan, and made him the first stop on his itinerary.

The next time you hear the phrase “all hell broke loose,” correct the speaker. Hell does not break loose. God uses Satan’s temptation to strengthen us. Times of testing are actually times of training, purification, and strength building. God loves you too much to leave you undeveloped and immature.

You don’t have to face Satan alone. You know his schemes. He will attack your weak spots first. He will tell you to meet your own needs. When you question your identity as a child of God, that is Satan speaking. If you turn church into a talent show, now you know why. Even more, now you know what to do.

Pray. We cannot do battle with Satan on our own.

Arm yourself with God’s Word. Load your pistol with Scriptures and keep a finger on the trigger.

And remember:

“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

God never wanted to be separated from his people, so he promised to provide a way to get us back. To reunite with his people in a perfect community. He put a plan in place — a plan that has been unfolding throughout history. It appeared to the Jewish people who lined the streets of Jerusalem waving palm branches that this plan had culminated in a triumphal entry by Jesus.

But what next? What is Jesus, the Son of God, going to do to provide a pathway back to God? He is going to die. Not fight the Romans. Not set up a power base from which to rule as David or Solomon did. Not create a kingdom like they expected.

It begins with the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, one of the twelve disciples. For a mere thirty pieces of silver, he tells the Jewish authorities where they can find Jesus. Jesus’ captors take him to Caiaphas, the high priest. At one point, the high priest asks Jesus if he is the Messiah. Jesus responds by saying from now on he will be sitting at the right hand of God in heaven.1 That’s all it takes. The high priest charges him with blasphemy as the Jewish teachers and elders begin hitting him and spitting in his face.

Crucifixion was a gruesome form of capital punishment reserved for the vilest criminals. It was designed to ensure a slow and painful death. The accused is nailed to a wooden cross, the cross is raised and set into a hole in the ground, and then everyone waits.

After a few hours of torturous pain and brutal suffering, Jesus dies. To his followers, it is now over. “Maybe he wasn’t the Messiah after all,” they must have thought to themselves. “How can he possibly save us if he is dead and gone? Was this whole thing just a farce?”

When Jesus was in Gethsemane the night before his death, he prayed to the Father, “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”4 In the Lower Story, Jesus knew what tomorrow would bring. Pain and humiliation. A torturous physical death. But the bigger deal, the climax of God’s Upper Story, would occur when he was hanging on the cross and all the sins of mankind were transferred to him.

From the Lower Story, defeat; but from the Upper Story, victory. Jesus knew he had accomplished his mission on earth. As God’s Lamb, he had been slain — the ultimate sacrifice to pay for everyone’s sins, including yours and mine. Not just for the Jewish people, but for Gentiles too; slave and free, men and women, everyone.

Have you ever met someone and known almost immediately that he or she was somebody special? I’m talking about someone you meet for the first time who has an extraordinary personality — a commanding presence that draws you to them magnetically.

This is the effect Jesus had on people when he entered their towns or homes. It became clear early in his ministry that, even though he was the only child of a humble carpenter from Nazareth, he was special. And one of the qualities that stood out and attracted attention was the way he taught people about God.

When Jesus taught, he told stories, or parables — stories that communicated truth in ways that the reading of the law could never match. For example, Jesus wanted his followers to understand that to be part of God’s nation, they had to live differently than those who belonged only to an earthly nation — in this case, one governed by Caesar.

In his only recorded sermon in the Bible — the Sermon on the Mount — Jesus literally turned the world upside down for his “congregation.”

Jesus stands up to speak, and a hush falls over the throng of people sitting on the side of a large hill that formed a natural amphitheater near the Sea of Galilee:

 Blessed are the poor . . .

Blessed are those who mourn . . .

Blessed are the meek . . .

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. . .

Blessed are the merciful . . .

Blessed are the pure in heart . . .

Blessed are the peacemakers . . .

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. . .

The word blessed can be loosely translated as “happy,” and in the Lower Story, being poor or meek is never associated with being happy or blessed. No one wants to mourn or be persecuted, and purity is for prudes.

But Jesus is trying to demonstrate what life is like in the Upper Story. He wants to give them, and us, a vision of how God’s kingdom is different — how character is more important than possessions and circumstances.

These “blessings,” which we call the Beatitudes, were just the introduction, but it was enough for everyone to realize that there was something extraordinary about this man Jesus. Jesus wants his followers to live in such a way that others are drawn to them, just as they were drawn to him: “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

It is not enough to think of Jesus as just a great man. In the Lower Story, we may meet many great men and women — celebrities, politicians, actors, professional athletes. If we want to rise above the day-to-day circumstances of our lives, however, we must be prepared to meet someone who redefines the word extraordinary. We have to make the same commitment Jesus asks of all his followers.

Believe in the one the Father has sent.

Just before Moses died, he appointed a man named Joshua to succeed him as the leader of the nation God was building. Some forty years earlier, Joshua was one of twelve spies whom Moses selected to sneak into Canaan (the Promised Land), check it out, and report back.

The native people were big, tall, scary-looking warriors. The spies said they felt like grasshoppers compared to the gigantic people in Canaan and gave this recommendation to Moses: “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”

Two of the spies — Joshua and a man named Caleb — vehemently disagreed with this hopeless assessment. But the people wouldn’t listen. So the stubborn Israelites got their way, and then some. Not only did they not cross over into the Promised Land, as Joshua recommended, but they stayed in the wilderness for the rest of their lives. He banished an entire generation of his people from entering the Promised Land, except for two people — Joshua and Caleb.

Now, with Moses dead, God told the courageous captain Joshua, “Get ready. It’s time to go in.”

God’s battle plan for their first conquest — at the walled city of Jericho — had to give Joshua pause: march around the city, blow your trumpets, and shout. That’s it.

God knew exactly what he was asking Joshua to do. He also knew that Joshua was human, so to encourage him in this task of leading the Israelites into a dangerous battle, he gave him a little peptalk. Three times he repeated these words: “Be strong and courageous.”

During this pep talk with Joshua, God asked him to do something else that on the surface doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the battle ahead:

Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you;

do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be

successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of Law always on

your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful

to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous

and successful.

The law — the guidelines God established for his unique community — had nothing to do with fighting a battle. The key to victory was found not in superior weapons and conventional strategy but in obedience. God was essentially saying to Joshua, “Don’t be afraid. Trust me. Do exactly what I ask you to do. Live according to the guidelines I have given you, and you will defeat anyone who stands against you.”

It worked.

For six days they march — once around the city each day. Then on the seventh day they circle the city seven times before the trumpets blast and Joshua gives the command:

“Shout!”

And the walls come a tumblin’ down. Just as God had promised.

Just like the Israelites, we will need to be brave and courageous if we are to live the way God wants us to live. We will need to become people of the Word so that we know God’s ways and can follow his guidelines for getting along with him and with each other.

We all face battles in our own lives. Like Joshua and the children of Israel, we need to be faithful people. We need to look intently into God’s Word to discover his will for how we should proceed — so we can find courage and strength. We need to remember that more is unfolding than what we can see.

Just as Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, God allows us to fight our own battles, in our own unique circumstances, knowing that he is in charge. His promise to us stands sure: “I will be with you.”

As Paul traveled throughout parts of Asia, southern Europe, and the Middle East, he wrote letters to the new believers he left behind. Paul knew that if they simply professed a belief in Jesus but did not live according to his values, none of their friends and neighbors would be particularly motivated to join them in adopting their new belief system.

The goal for us as followers of Christ is to let the Master Artist chisel away anything in our lives that doesn’t look like Christ. Paul put it this way: “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

In at least one way, Paul’s time in prison was a blessing because it gave him time to write. One letter, called Philippians, offers practical guidance about attitude and behavior and includes nuggets such as these:

Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Shine among them like stars in the sky.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

How could anyone in jail write from such a positive perspective? Paul could, because he had been chiseled to look like Christ Jesus.

In another letter to the believers in the city of Ephesus, Paul addresses a problem that plagued the early church and continues to create problems for us today: getting along with each other. We are all part of the same body — the body of Christ. We are to come together as one, in complete unity. We are to value each other and use our unique gifts, like a body uses its different parts, to accomplish God’s Upper Story purposes.

Therefore, we need to be like the church of Ephesus. We need to be one. We need to be united in the common mission of Christ. We need to individually and collectively live out our role in God’s Upper Story plan.

And we need to be like Timothy — standing firm in our beliefs despite the efforts of others to discredit us and our message. Like the mentor Paul, we need to be able to say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel,” and boldly live according to God’s values, always prepared to explain the gospel when people ask us why we are different.

Most of all, we need to grow. We need day by day to become more like Jesus. We need to let God chisel away anything in our lives that doesn’t look like Jesus until others will be able to see him in us and decide to follow him too.

Ralls, Texas, was a weathered tumbleweed of a town in 1965. The city center consisted of a two-story courthouse framed by a weedy lawn and bricked roads. One drugstore had gone out of business; the second was not far behind.

Someone had pressed the pause button and forgotten to release it. Which was just fine with my grandparents, God bless ’em. It was my mom’s idea for me to spend a week with them. Let ten-year-old Max get to know his grandparents’ and mom’s hometown.

My grandparents had no bicycles, baseballs, or basketball hoops. They knew no other ten-year-olds and lived too far out in the country for me to find any. Dullsville. I would have accepted an invitation to watch paint dry.

But then came the story.

Over lunch one day I asked my grandmother about the photo that hung in her bedroom: the sepia-toned picture that was professionally taken and handsomely set in an oval-shaped walnut frame. Who was this mystery man who occupied prime real estate above my grandmother’s side of the bed?

So Grandma set out to tell me. Within a couple of sentences, I was lost in the story, bouncing in the cab of the 1929 Chevy pickup with Grandpa Levi, Grandma, and an eight-year-old version of my mom. They were migrating to the Texas Panhandle from Cherokee, Oklahoma, in search of an affordable farm and fertile soil. They found both. But then a drought took the crop, and tuberculosis took Levi’s health. Macey drove the truck back to Cherokee, where Levi died in her arms. He was buried at the age of thirty-three.

Why do you suppose, now forty years removed, I remember the day in such detail? I still see Grandma spilling photos out of a box and details out of her heart as if neither had been taken off the shelf in quite some time. We love to know where we came from. We need to know where we came from.

That’s why God wants you to know his story. Stories about Bethlehem beginnings and manger miracles. Enemy warfare in the wilderness and fishermen friends in Galilee. The stumbles of Peter, the stubbornness of Paul. All a part of the story.

But they are all subplots to the central message: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This is the headline of the story: God saves his people!

We can easily miss this. Life keeps pulling us down. The traffic, the troubles. No prelude or sequel. Just tumbleweeds and dust and birth and death.

Everything changes when you know the rest of your story. As David discovered, “God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes” (2 Samuel 22:25 MSG). But what is the text of our lives?

Your story indwells God’s. This is the great promise of the Bible and the hope of this book. Above and around us God directs a grander saga, written by his hand, orchestrated by his will, unveiled according to his calendar. And you are a part of it.

What is it about us that makes us tend to ignore warnings until it’s too late?

Apparently it is an age-old problem, because no matter how many messengers God sent to warn his special nation, they repeatedly ignored them. As he had done before, God continued to warn the people of what would happen if they didn’t turn back to him.

God gives the people he loves one final warning. With most of Judah in captivity in Babylon and Jerusalem about to be attacked, God calls another prophet: Jeremiah.

God wants Jeremiah to tell the people in this bleak and dangerous city of Jerusalem that they are a bunch of sinners, that God’s patience is running out, that if they don’t turn back to him, their city will be destroyed.

He gives Jeremiah these words to pass along to the rebellious remnant of Judah who are living in Jerusalem:

A lion has come out of his lair;

a destroyer of nations has set out.

He has left his place

to lay waste your land.

Your towns will lie in ruins

without inhabitant . . .

“Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,

look around and consider,

search through her squares.

If you can find but one person

who deals honestly and seeks the truth,

I will forgive this city . . .”

If you do not listen,

I will weep in secret

because of your pride;

my eyes will weep bitterly,

overflowing with tears,

because the Lord’s flock will be taken captive . . .

All Judah will be carried into exile,

carried completely away.

The people of Judah squandered their one last chance. It was time for God to make good on his promise.

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, began his final assault on Jerusalem. It wasn’t pretty. Nebuchadnezzar’s army broke through the walls of the city even as the king tried to flee. They chased him down and brought him before Nebuchadnezzar, who doled out a severe sentence. King Zedekiah’s sons were killed in front of him. Then they gouged out his eyes, shackled him, and took him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar then set fire to the temple that Solomon had built to the glory of God. Soon the entire city was ablaze, just as Jeremiah warned them on behalf of God: “He will destroy it with fire.”5

From our Lower Story perspective, the destruction of Jerusalem seems harsh and unnecessary. If you love your people so much, why treat them this way?

God is trying to implant a vision that the kingdom to come, which will be made possible through faith in the Messiah, is going to be restored. If he let Judah get away with their horrible behavior, who would ever want to live in God’s community? His love for us is so great and his holiness so pure that he cannot compromise either.

The entire point of God’s judgment of Judah was to get their attention and remind them of his promise. A King would come from their tribe, so they had to reflect the character of that King.

Can you imagine how many people today long to hear God’s tender invitation to come home? And what is amazing to me is that God uses us to reveal his heart and remind people that he is always waiting on them, eager to forgive them and restore their lives in ways they can’t even imagine. If they will let him.

Many have ignored the warnings and are longing for someone to throw them a lifeline. Frightened. Confused. Worn-out. Lonely. Yet precious in God’s sight. The reason he came to earth in the first place.

Could you be the soft and tender voice of God that they hear?

Have you ever felt that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t win? You can’t get ahead financially. You are in sales but can’t make a sale. You can’t finish your education — even through those special degree-completion programs. If you’ve ever felt outnumbered, unqualified, or disadvantaged, you will be encouraged by Gideon’s story.

It begins at a time when Israel had been living in the land of Canaan for nearly three hundred years. God has given them everything they need to be a great nation: a set of guidelines on how to live, his presence in the tabernacle, a way to atone for their sins, and land he had promised their ancestors. But it isn’t enough. They are addicted to worshiping other gods, a blatant violation of the very first guideline God gave them.

During one of those periods when the Israelites are suffering under an oppressive regime — in this case, the Midianites — they again repent and cry out to the Lord. This time God chooses a guy named Gideon to deliver them from their oppressors.

Once Gideon is firmly convinced that God has chosen him to lead Israel out of its oppression, he gathers the Israelite army — thirty-two thousand strong — at an encampment overlooking the valley where the Midianites are entrenched.

No one knows for sure the size of the Midianite army, but historians agree that it was quite formidable. But God knows his children well. He knows that if the Israelites defeat the Midianites with their full army, they will become boastful and think their superior military strength and strategy saved them. If the Israelites were to pull off an upset and defeat the Midianites with just three hundred men, they would know that their salvation comes from God, not from their own hands. Not only would they know, but so would everyone else.

So Gideon lays out God’s military strategy to his ragamuffin band of soldiers. He tells his tiny army to light torches and then hide them inside jars of clay. Each soldier carries the clay pitcher in his left hand; in the other hand, following Gideon’s instructions, each carries a trumpet. They sneak up on the Midianite army at night, and at Gideon’s signal they smash the pitchers and blow on their trumpets.

The flash fires and horn blowing confuse and frighten the Midianites so greatly that they literally run around like chickens with their heads cut off! “If there are that many torchbearers and troubadours, just think how many soldiers there must be.” They try to flee, but in the darkness they turn on each other with their swords. The battle is over before it started.

You would think that after such a miraculous victory, the Israelites never would have wanted to do anything less than serve God faithfully forever. Instead of trusting that God knew what was best for them, they became resentful and concluded that following God’s ways would keep them from getting what they wanted.

Like the Israelites, we forget that the same God who saves us from our distress wants to walk with us and enjoy a relationship with us all the time, not just when our backs are against the wall. We can try it our way, until we get into such a mess that the only way to turn is toward God, and then he always takes us back. Regardless of what you have done, no matter how long it has been since you have turned away from him and followed your own selfish desires, you are never too far from God.

Like the loving Father he is, God opens his arms and says, “I will take you back. Always. No matter what you’ve done. I will deliver you because I love you.”

The story of Ruth starts out with our plot already in progress. You almost need a flowchart to keep track of the characters and dramatic events. During the period of the judges (see the last chapter),a married couplefrom Bethlehem — Naomi and Elimelek —move with their two sons to a region called Moab, which is notpart of God’s special nation. Shortly after they arrive in Moab, Elimelek dies. Eventually, Naomi’s two sons marry Moabite women— Orpah and Ruth — and then ten years later the sons die.

Naomi decides there is no reason for her to stay in Moab. Orpah reluctantly and tearfully agrees to stay in Moab, but Ruth holds fast, refusing to stay behind, with one of the most beautiful declarations of loyalty and love ever recorded: “Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will become my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.”

The two women arrive in Bethlehem during the harvest season, which offers a way for these two poor women to earn some money. As it turns out, of all the fields surrounding Bethlehem, Ruth unknowingly chooses one that is owned by a relative of the father-in- law she never knew — Naomi’s deceased husband. This relative’s name is Boaz, and when he discovers that she is the Moabite widow who accompanied Naomi back to Bethlehem, he showers her with kindness.

So the old woman takes on the role of a Jewish matchmaker straight out of Fiddler on the Roof. She tells Ruth to take a shower, splash on a little Chanel No. 5, and put on her Sabbath best. She must then head over to Boaz’s place that night and play the part of Cinderella.

When Ruth first met Boaz, he referred to God’s wings providing her a place of refuge. Ruth is now asking Boaz to become God’s wing for her permanently. And he accepts. He exercises his obligation, and they become married!

Ruth and Boaz have a little boy together. The little lad doesn’t know it, but he inherits the land of his “father” Mahlon (Naomi’s son and Ruth’s deceased husband), whom he never met. As a result, he carries on the family name because of the kind act of Boaz.

God went out of his way to include an outsider, a pagan Moabite, in the lineage of Jesus. This is a clue to us that God’s salvation will be for all people. In the Lower Story, life seemed hopeless, with no chance of acceptance for outsiders. In the Upper Story, God redeemed their lives and accepted them as his own, and he continued to carry out his plan to bridge the gap between himself and his children.

You know, right now your story may seem a little hopeless and bitter to the taste. It may feel as though you are living in a real-life soap opera, with crisis after crisis and constant relational turmoil. Just remember, though, if we love God and align our lives to his purposes, then, just as we are reminded in Romans 8:28, God is working out everything for our good. Since we know how the Story ultimately ends, we can wait patiently for God to unfold his good plan for us!