So my
name is Martin and I want to introduce to you
Gerard and Chrissie Kelly and the Seven Stories.
The reason I think I can do that is I'm the chair of the board for Bless,
which is the organisation
that they established years ago, and I've known them for 25, 30 years.
So I've sort of tracked their spiritual
lives, their mission lives and their teaching lives.
And what's happened over those years is they've built up a
a store of wisdom, a store of experience.
And what this is, is them coming with all that they have learnt,
either as they've studied the Bible, as they've spoken, and certainly
as they've worked here in France and in Amsterdam
and in the UK, it's basically a culmination of all that.
What it is is looking at the whole span of the Bible story
and identifying in that one big story,
a number of significant stories.
And when we look at those, we find ourselves in the big story of God
and we understand ourselves and perhaps our struggles,
our aspirations, the things that go well, the things that don't go so well.
We understand them as we look at the Bible and these seven different stories.
So what Gerald and Chrissie do is they
they take a story from the Bible and they unpack it.
Then they relate it to who we are, who, who I am.
I've been brought up in the UK.
I found faith when I was a child.
I've kind of grown in that.
What they do though is they take the story and I make it applicable to me
and I suddenly realise that I'm not alone.
I'm I'm not just one person muddling my way through life or my way through faith.
Actually, I'm like loads of people around today
and lots of people have been around for centuries who fixed their eyes
on Jesus and have made their way in this kind of pilgrimage,
trying to make sense of life and make sense of faith and live
in such a way that there's a transformation on the inside
that then leads to a transforming kind of life on the outside.
And that's what this is.
Deeply personal course.
It's a it's a course where as they speak and as they
minister and pray and as we reflect, it's like, oh, my goodness,
God, you're speaking to me and you're changing media, challenging me.
You're releasing this.
It's very, very personal.
But also it encourages me to lift my eyes up above myself
and outside of myself to other people, to what God is doing in the world today
and how I might join him in that endeavour,
how I might use the gifts God has given me,
and even the brokenness that I'm in, and how God's transforming, healing power
might enable me to contribute to what He's doing on the outside.
So this is a it's a it's a great one big story that helps me personally.
And it's a great story that helps me make
sense of my life and interact with other people.
It's highly missional.
It's highly personal.
So I encourage you to listen carefully
to to get a sense of Gerard and Chris, his own journey
and their own personalities, what's happened in their lives
to apply it to yourself, to see yourself in each of these Seven Stories,
and to trust that God, as you listen, as you process, as you reflect,
as you pray, to trust that God will do a deep work in you.
And will magnify His Holy Spirit in your lives
so that you can bring the transforming grace of Jesus.
To other people.