What is your "story"

This coming Sunday is an off week in our series "Sent" because we will be welcoming a team from Boise Bible College who will be leading us in worship.  So I don't have anything to share here regarding the coming weeks passage, but I'd like to share something that I see as related from some time that I've spent in my own reading in John chapter 4.  This passage, shared during or Summer series "Encounters with Jesus", shares the life of a character long known as "The Woman at the Well".  At the end of her experience with Jesus and his revealing of the depth of his insight into her broken life, this woman runs back to her village with these words: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”.  Focus on the words "everything I ever did".  No doubt the people to who she was speaking already new the life to which she was referring.  It was her life of brokenness.  Previously fearful and not really wanting to publicly deal with her poor choices, as is evidenced by the time of this encounter, she is willing to now offer it as testimony on behalf of the one who she sees as the solution to her condition.  Drawn by her story, the people of the town venture out to "discover" the source of her hope.  But watch what happens next.... the account tells us that " Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony".  Her life, dark and broken as it was, moved into the lives of her village, had a profound effect.  More than that though, her introduction of the people of her village, by way of her own story had this result.  They were introduced to him, and beyond that, from their own time in his presence came a life changing response. "And because of his words many more became believers.  They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world".   Many of us feel unqualified, uneducated, lacking answers, when it comes to living "missionally" among those we live with and love.  Sometimes, often times, it is as simple as this.  "Once I was lost, an now I am found"  Chances are that your life story is a walking illustration of amazing grace.  You may just need to tell it.