As the passionate story poured from the man’s heart I marveled at the story of God’s grace and saving power.  The man had lived a life soaked in the darkest parts of a city’s underbelly.  Now here he was telling of how God has changed him, his life, his home, his family.  It was (is) the same saving grace and power demonstrated in my own conversion story.  But some how his story, more dramatic, more demonstrative, seemed more attractive.  I was never a gun carrying, drug selling criminal.

Please don’t mistake my thought here.  The man’s story is amazing.  His conversion is real and listening to it emotionally moving.  I am not suggesting that God hasn’t worked or that he shouldn’t tell his story.

As we left the gathering and I considered his dynamic story I did reflect on the whole experience.  What defines us?  Is it the moving story of our past, or is it of our future.  I confess that I worried a bit about this man.  I worried that the re-telling of his story might confine this man to always being known by what he had been.  I worried that a new story, a more present story might wouldn’t be told.

Paul’s conviction, told to the Church in Corinth, was that we are a new creation.  Let me rephrase that, we are not what we once were, we are now cut from a new cloth!  The old story is gone – a new story is to be told!  In fact Paul is actually reluctant to point to his past as a “Pharisee of the Pharisees” opting instead to point to Christ and his amazing grace.

As I consider my own story, and that of God’s grace, there is a point I can vividly recall when Jesus changed me.  However my story is rooted in what God continues to do and the hope I have in Christ!