Rewriting Your Broken Story By Kenneth Boa - EXCERPT

8/17/2019 Rewriting Your Broken Story By Kenneth Boa - EXCERPT

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K E N N E T H B O A

T H E P O W E R of an E T E R N A L

P E R S P E C T I V E



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R E W R I T I N G Y O U R

B R O K E N

S T O RY T H E P O W E R of an E T E R N A L

P E R S P E C T I V E

K E N N E T H B O A

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InterVarsity PressP.O. Box , Downers Grove, IL - [email protected]

© by Kenneth Boa

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Boa, Kenneth, author.Title: Rewriting your broken story : the power of an eternal perspective /Kenneth Boa.

Description: Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, [ ] | Includesbibliographical references.

Identiers: LCCN (print) | LCCN (ebook) | ISBN (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN (digital) | ISBN (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian life. | Storytelling—Religiousaspects—Christianity. | Suffering—Religious aspects—Christianity. |Future life—Christianity. | Life—Religious aspects—Christianity. |Eternity.

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P Y




Contents Your Broken Story /

Investing in Eternity /

Te Reversible Paradigm /

Dening Life Backwards /

rusting Eternity or Cursing ime /

Poets, Saints and Heroes /

Inside Out, Upside Down and alking to Ourselves / Flight Plans, False Goals and a Life Uncommon /

Out of the Woods and Into the Light /

What Do You Seek? (Your Heart’s Intention) /

Becoming a Permanent Marker /

From Teology to Doxology /

Epilogue /

Acknowledgments /

Notes /

About the Author /




- -

Your Broken Story

Maybe you were fourteen years old when your parentsdivorced. Up until that time, you didn’t have much to

worry about, aside from keeping up your grades. Next thing you

knew, you were being asked to decide where you wanted to live!Now you’re twenty-eight and alone. It’s taken you this long torealize that you never quite recovered from the trauma that hit in

your rst year of high school. You lost the budding faith you hadin God, relationships and the goodness of people. You wonder ifthis is all there is for you and if you will always feel alone.

Or maybe that’s not it. Perhaps you enjoyed a good childhoodwith no trauma, or you overcame the few obstacles you faced. Abeautiful family picture hangs over your replace mantle, and

you have a job that you love. You are busy and productive and“on the right path” to reaching all your goals—but lately you haverealized something that is plaguing you. Your responsibilities areincreasing, as are your skills, knowledge and salary. But yourphysical capacities aren’t what they once were. ime seems topass faster than it ever has before, and you realize with clarityand force that many of the hopes and dreams that you’ve only

just recently been able to dene are going to go unfullled. You




R Y B S

stand face-to-face with your mortality. But why? Couldn’t youachieve more if you didn’t know that your life would one dayend? Life is good, but you’re beginning to see that something iswrong with the bigger picture.

Maybe you’re an addict. You can’t stop taking prescriptionmedications or looking at pornography or drinking or yellingat your wife. Maybe you can’t keep a job or a spouse. Maybe

you aren’t welcome in a lot of places anymore, or maybe

everyone welcomes you and thinks you’re brilliant because noone knows the truth about you. You are trapped in a cycle ofaddiction that you cannot seem to escape—the same story,over and over. When wisdom brings a moment of clarity, yourealize that you are broken.

Maybe you’re a mom, and since your children are old enoughto think and do things for themselves, you feel like all you everdo is manage their schedules and drive. And clean house. Andcook. And drive some more. And make lunches. And checkhomework. Plunge a toilet and fall into bed exhausted. You canremember dreams you used to have, but you gave them up forthis. You love your family, but this is not the story you imaginedwhen you were younger. Tere are moments when you wonder

why this is your life. Somehow, you feel a little lost.Realizations like these can be devastating for people whose

expectations are limited to this planet and its offerings, but theyare only moments, not the whole story. Everyone has a brokenstory, and everyone has a choice. When moments like thesecome, you can embrace your broken story and repair it bysetting it in the context of a greater story, one that begins andends well. Your pain can bring redemption when it forces youto reexamine what you believe. An eternal perspective canchange everything, and it can help you to make sense of thestory you are living right now.




Your Broken Story

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for usan eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we x oureyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since whatis seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ( Cor-inthians : - )

An eternal perspective is one that sees that while life on earthis important, it’s not all there is. Tis perspective is anchored inthe faith that what the Bible says about eternity is true: Godknew us before we were born, he is with us while we are on earth,and Jesus has prepared a place for his followers to one day livewith him forever. Tere are better things for us that we cannotsee yet. Te Bible says that God has set eternity in our hearts(Ecclesiastes : ). And C. S. Lewis says, “If I nd in myself adesire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most

probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” 1 Aneternal perspective acknowl-edges these longings and be-lieves that God gave them tous as a reminder to set ourhope on him and on things

that will last forever. When webegin to develop an eternalperspective, we take on ournew life in Christ and we seeeverything differently. With this new perspective, we can see thetrue story about us; it is a far better story than we could haveever imagined.

W Y V

Tere is a riveting scene in the lm Dead Poets Society .2 On therst day of school, English professor John Keating (played by Robin

Temporal Perspective: This world is all there is.

There is no life after death.

Eternal Perspective:Life on earth is important,

but there is more than this worldhas to offer. We were made

for eternity.




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Williams) directs his students’ attention to an old trophy case in adramatic attempt to communicate to these adolescents the truthabout mortality—a virtually impossible task because most adoles-cents have no consciousness of mortality. In the case are picturesof graduates from seventy or eighty years before. As he gathersthem around the case, Keating asks one of the students to read apoem, Robert Herrick’s “ o the Virgins, to Make Much of ime”:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old time is still a-ying:

And this same ower that smiles today omorrow will be dying.

He tells them that Herrick was right: “We are food for worms,lads. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this

room is, one day, going to stop breathing, turn cold and die.”He’s right in one sense. From a human perspective, we are

food for the worms. It’s a grim thought, but we must hold inmind that we believe there’s something more than this.

Keating goes on. As they all stand looking at the faces in thecase, he moves behind them. Te camera moves in closer, andhe says:

Tey’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts,full of hormones just like you. Invincible, just like you feel.Te world is their oyster. Tey believe they’re destined forgreat things, just like many of you. Teir eyes are full ofhope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late tomake from their lives even one iota of what they were ca-pable? Because, you see, gentlemen, those boys are nowfertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you canhear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on; lean in.Listen, you hear it?




Your Broken Story

Te students don’t know what to do. On this, their rst daywith this teacher, he seems like a total nutcase. But the boys leanin, and Keating whispers in an eerie, rasping voice:

Carpe. . . . Hear it? Carpe. . . . Carpe diem. Seize the day,boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

Te following day, he quotes Walt Whitman’s “O Me! O Life!”:

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities ll’d with

the foolish . . .Te question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid

these, O me, O life?

Answer.

Tat you are here—that life exists and identity,Tat the powerful play goes on, and you may contributea verse.

Looking away, Keating asks the students, “What will your verse be?”Tis was not a bad way to try to communicate mortality to

kids. Keating’s desire, inspired by Henry David Toreau, was

that they begin to “suck out all the marrow of life.”Te problem with Keating’s speech, though, is that it stopsshort. It’s insightful, but it’s fundamentally awed because it’sbased on a temporal perspective—the proposition that oneshould gather all the gusto one can get because after death, therewill be no more.

While that scene is very moving, it only presents part of thepicture. An eternal perspective invites us to come to an experi-ential awareness of the brevity of life, just as Keating invited hisstudents to do. But followers of Christ don’t stop there. Teydon’t see themselves as “food for worms”; instead they understand




R Y B S

that this life is incredibly important in context . o Christians,eternity does not begin when we die but at the moment wechoose to live in Christ, usually right in the middle of our brokenexperiences. We do not gather rosebuds with the futile attitudethat we will be food for worms; instead we embrace the fact thatwhat we do now has ripple effects into eternity, and our time ismeant to be invested.

R FWhen we are older, the brevity of this earthly sojourn is mucheasier for us to grasp than it was for Keating’s students. But theinvitation the world offers us is to disregard what starts tobecome obvious, and with that invitation come the tools to doit. While our bodies are demonstrating for us that we are clearlynot meant to live here forever, the responsibilities and pressuresof this world clamor for our attention over seizing the day in anyway. Tey promise the reward of fullled dreams and provideample distraction from the realization that could be leading usinto a deeper trust in God’s promises. At this point, when we arebusier and maybe more productive than ever, we must force ourattention toward what lasts. Reminders of our mortality need

not shake us. Instead, we can welcome these interruptions asinvitations to reassess our focus.

Te apostle Paul attempted to interrupt us with his eternalperspective: “Tough outwardly we are wasting away, yet in-wardly we are being renewed day by day” ( Corinthians : ).Tis “deepest you” will go on unharmed by the world into thepresence of our loving Father. If we anticipate this, it can help toincrease our hope and give us a new quality of existence.

So how do we maintain our eternal perspective? In A es-tament of Devotion, Tomas R. Kelly says that God has orderedour minds in such a way that we’re actually capable of thinking




Your Broken Story

on two levels at one time. 3 It requires practice and willfulness.We all suffer from abby wills, but we can make a consciouschoice to be aware of God’s presence, meditate on his word andpray without ceasing while we go about our ordinary tasks. Teamazing thing about thinking in this way is that the ordinarybegins to take on the character of another plane. As our mindsdwell on the spiritual, we begin to see God in everything andeveryone, whether we’re driving down the road, sitting at a res-taurant or inging out the trash.

One simple and practical way to set this “eternal perspective”in motion is to keep Scripture with you, perhaps by writing a

verse on a piece of paper and wrapping it around your debit card.Use a verse such as: “For we are God’s handiwork, created inChrist Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance

for us to do” (Ephesians : ). Every time you use your card, youwill be reminded that your business is not your own. When youare making wealth, it’s God’s wealth. When you’re with people,they are his people, relationships he’s given you, people whom

you can serve with eternal values at heart. Everything is sacredif you have grasped this principle.

Te context in which you view life will determine if these re-alizations turn you toward crisis or process. A temporal per-spective will inevitably lead you to a crisis. If the world is allthere is, becoming less able to do things at exactly the time whenwe are becoming responsible for doing more can become a col-lision course. But an eternal perspective helps us avoid that col-lision and realize that all of life is a process, divinely ordained todraw us ever closer to God and his purposes. Tose limitationsthat may have seemed like a curse are a gift! Trough this divineprocess, God weans us from friendship with the world and buildswithin us a desire for our true home.




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C P

An old Pennsylvania Dutch adage contends that we grow “toosoon old and too late smart.” Is it true? If it doesn’t come to ourattention sooner, by midlife there will be no getting away fromthe realization that some of the dreams of our youth are disap-pearing, and along with them the supposition that we’ll have allthe time in the world to accomplish our goals.

So now a choice is at hand. We can simply listen to the voicethat says we are destined for more, or we can act on what itwhispers in our ear. We must evaluate our activities and respon-sibilities in light of the “something more” for which we are des-tined. We might need to make adjustments to our lives, but oncewe have taken our hope off the world’s promises and put it rmlyback on Jesus, we may nd that our faith grows and our trust in

him increases. Tese moments of realization, then, are no longercause to fear; instead, they are cause for joy and permission to rest.

We let eternity inform our present day and live each day inlight of the fact that we will one day see Christ. Tis is an eternal,biblical way of seeing. It runs contrary to the idea that cominginto contact with our mortality is a bad thing; instead, it offers

hope. Pain and sorrow, disappointments and shattered dreamsin this world get contextualized into God’s bigger picture whenwe begin to see that the story is not over at the end of this life.

When we watch a play and all the important characters die inthe end, we call it a tragedy. Hamlet is a tragedy. If we see a playand it looks like it’s all going to go completely awry, but somehowthings turn out well at the end, as in Much Ado About Nothing ,it’s called a comedy. It’s not always funny, but it has a happyending. We are in something not far removed from Dante’s Te

Divine Comedy ; trouble may abound, but paradise is at hand. Allthings will end well.




Your Broken Story

And that is what God wants us to see. All of the pain, sorrow,disappointment and brokenness in our lives can be used to drawus to Jesus. Tese times can actually become, as we look back,moments of grace. Tey can shatter our autonomy, our indepen-dence and our arrogance. Tey can cause us to walk in depen-dence on God and in humility. We can learn to help others outof our own weakness instead of out of our own strength, de-pending on God’s strength instead.

Wisdom will help us loosen our grasp on the illusory hope inthe promises of this world. Instead we can embrace the hope ofthe promises of God’s Word—the hope of something better. Andthis will become the radical difference in our lives. “Te hope ofglory” (Colossians : ) will be manifest in our lives. When ourstory is part of Christ’s story, we have no beginning and no end.Our life goes on forever. Because he lives, we will also live; be-cause he rose from the dead, we will rise from the dead. Hisdestiny is now our destiny; his inheritance is our inheritance.

In light of this, God’s plan for us is an incredible concept! Andwe ain’t seen nothing yet! “‘What no eye has seen, what no ear hasheard, and what no human mind has conceived’—the things Godhas prepared for those who love him” ( Corinthians : ). We just

don’t have the imagination to begin to fathom all that God has instore for us. But he promises that any pain we go through is to beconsidered as nothing compared to what he is offering us!

R W W L

ell me what you love, and I will tell you who you are.

A U

Tis saying was so popular among European writers from thenineteenth century that it’s impossible to determine who said it




R Y B S

rst. Perhaps it’s so popular because it’s so insightful. We havebeen in this world so long that we may be unaware when ourattachment to it is growing stronger. We are cautioned againstloving the world or anything in it, but we frequently forget. “Ifanyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them”( John : ). John tells us what is in the world: “the lust of theesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” ( John : ). Weare to avoid the allure of these because they cause us to suppose

that temporary things are treasures and that we will always havetime at the end of our lives for getting right with God. Teworld’s promises mislead us, and its goods are destined to passaway. “But whoever does the will of God lives forever” ( John

: ). We are destined to live forever!Te book of James also tells us that “anyone who chooses to

be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (James : ).Tese are strong words, but as we become more aware of andmore serious about our relationship with our heavenly Father,we take them to heart. As eternal beings, this is the perspectivewe must maintain: we can only love one or the other, and we arebeing called to make a choice.

Jesus spoke strongly about what is important: “You are the

ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’ssight” (Luke : ). As we become intentional about our rela-tionship with God, we avoid the foolishness that once caused usto disregard these words. If this text from Luke is true, then itshould have a huge impact on the way we live our lives. Ourgoals should begin to be less oriented toward impressing people

and more toward pleasing God. Tis takes maturity and strengthof will; it also takes faith to believe that pleasing God is worththe effort. Tat is why this shift can only come in the context ofa growing relationship with the Father as we remember how




Your Broken Story

much he loves us and wants what is best for our lives. Te deci-sions we make will tell whether or not we believe it.

A R -L E

Tough Payne Stewart was a nominal Christian when he rstgained notoriety as a professional golfer, those who watched himplay would not have known it, and neither would the players hemocked for attending Bible studies. Stewart was as well known

for his egotism and surliness as he was for his signature uniformof knickers and tam-o’-shanter cap.

But something happened as he watched his friend and fellowprofessional golfer Paul Azinger battle cancer with grace andfaith. It shook Stewart, and he began to attend a Bible study atthe home of professional baseball player Orel Hershiser. No onecan say what the realization was or when it happened, butStewart began to change. Tose close to him noticed rst, andsoon the public couldn’t help but notice. With a new set of pri-orities, Stewart was playing less, winning more and thanking theLord—publicly!—for the changes in his life. After his winat Pebble Beach, the press stood dumbfounded as Stewart re-sponded to their questions about golf with words about Jesus

and told them that he was taking the following fall off in orderto spend more time with his family. Tis professional athletewho had become known for his ambition and rudeness began tobe recognized for his peace and goodness. Stewart was living anew story.

British golfer Colin Montgomerie played against Stewart andthe American team on the last day of the Ryder Cup. Americanfans heckled Montgomerie all day, and things were getting tense.Stewart sacriced his own concentration several times to point outthe unruly conduct of his fans to tournament personnel. AfterJustin Leonard sealed the US victory, Montgomerie and Stewart




R Y B S

continued to play out an intense round. But the heckling of Mont-gomerie became too much. On the nal hole, just when it lookedlike Stewart would emerge victorious, he picked up the ball andhanded it to Montgomerie, conceding the match. Even years later,Montgomerie says he will never forget that day or that man.

It turns out that was not only the height of Stewart’scareer but also the end of his life. On October , Stewart diedin a plane crash. But before his death, he had safely placed his

story in the center of Christ’s story. Stewart’s transformationbegan because his friend Azinger lived a convicted life, showingStewart that eternity was worth another kind of effort. At Stew-art’s funeral, Azinger said, “Payne Stewart has nished the race,he has kept the faith, and now the crown of righteousness is his.”

When these moments come that bring you to the realizationthat you are broken, that you are lost or that your story is justnot what you hoped it would be, it is a gift. It is wisdom whis-pering for you to seize the day. Listen closely. Wisdom is notreminding you to simply make the most out of life and gatherrosebuds before it’s too late. Wisdom is telling you that you arehere for a reason, that life exists because of God, and that youridentity and story is with your Creator. God’s powerful play will

go on with or without you, but he has placed you on the stage,in his story, and you’re invited to contribute a verse.

What will your verse be?

In the rest of this book, we will look at how to set the scene for your story in an eternal context, how to nd hope when your

story hits a snag, how to return to the storyline when you’vestrayed from it, how to ght temptation, how to leave a per-manent mark and how to set your story in motion, leaving alegacy behind.




Your Broken Story

F F R

After reading each chapter, consider taking a day off fromreading to practice what you’ve learned. Each chapter is followedby a section with questions, Scripture to ponder and practicesthat will bring you closer to the heart of God. If you aren’t in thepractice of keeping a journal, now might be a good opportunityto start one.

1. If you’re reading this book, there’s a good chance that yourelate to the concept of a “broken story.” Write down what is“broken” in your story.

2. Have you ever thought about what it means to set your storyin the context of God’s greater story? If you’re trying to gureout how to get your story back into the context of God’sstory, reect on how you got off track.

3. What was the good in what Professor Keating told his youngstudents in Dead Poets Society ? What was the problem withwhat he said?

4. Has God ever “interrupted” your life with the realization of your own mortality?

5. How strong is your concept of eternity? What do you do tofeed your hope? If it is not strong, consider reaching out tosomeone who could mentor you in this area.

6. Write what you hope will change in your life as a result ofreading this book.

Scripture focus. If you have embedded your story in thecontext of God’s great story, there are truths about yourself thatwill be revealed, great things you may have never known. Read

Corinthians : . Consider committing it to memory.




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Practice. Consider reading Tomas R. Kelly’s book A es-tament of Devotion (mentioned in this chapter) and puttingsome of the very tangible and helpful suggestions from that bookinto practice.




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