I. Introduction
A. Epic – heroic, majestic, impressively great
a. It was the word of 2010.
b. Used so much it was put on the list of one of the top 5 most overused words in 2010.
B. But what is epic, and why am I wasting time describing it?
a. Epic, historically, is a word that is used to describe heroic adventures.
b. Like Homer’s Iliad or the Odyssey.
c. It would describe the story of William Wallace in the movie Braveheart, or Maximus in the move Gladiator.
d. It would describe the journey of the fellowship in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
C. The greatest epic of all is God’s story, the Bible.
a. And it’s a story that includes us.
b. Take a look at this: VIDEO
D. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 3:2-3
a. NIV
b. Message
c. PRAY – Father, it is truly a privilege to approach the Word of life today. Make it real to us as we delve into it. As we mine its riches help us to see that your story is our story. Help us to live the adventure that is your Word. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen!
II. Epic – live the adventure
A. Life is a story
a. God’s story.
b. We are players in the story God is writing.
c. But it’s not any old story.
d. It’s an epic adventure.
e. With heroes and villains.
f. With adventure and excitement.
g. Unexpected twists and turns.
h. And, as with any epic tale, sorrow and difficulty.
i. Life is a story that is being written by the master author.
j. 2 Corinthians tells us our story is being written by Christ himself through God’s living Spirit.
k. Hebrews 12:2 tells us Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith.
l. Life is a story that’s being written by a great author.
m. The greatest author.
n. But there’s a problem.
B. We’ve lost our story
a. Every story is great so long as you trust the author.
b. I’m a prolific reader.
c. I read all the time, and I’m one of those crazy people who believes that every good story should be read more than once.
d. But I like stories that have a decently happy ending; and if I think the author is going to kill off all the main characters at the end I don’t want to read it.
e. The reason we’ve lost our story is because we’ve been taught to distrust the author.
f. We’ve bought into the lie the world teaches that nothing is certain.
i. That nothing can be known for sure.
ii. That all life is is a shot in the dark.
iii. We can think we might be right, but we’ll never know for sure.
g. As a result we don’t trust God.
h. And if we don’t trust God we don’t trust the story he’s writing.
i. So we try to write our own story with us as the main character.
i. The result is a mess (epic FAIL), because you can’t write a story if you don’t know how the story is going to go.
j. My hope this month is to convince you that the story God is writing is a good story with a good ending.
k. In between the beginning and the end is epic adventure.
C. The story can be recovered.
a. The good news is the real author of our story can take the mess we’ve created and work it beautifully into the story he’s writing.
b. Have you been trying to write your own story?
i. Live life your way?
ii. Think you know better than God?
c. There are a lot of reasons why we should want to recover our story.
i. The biggest is that God knows how the story ends.
ii. He even knows the result of every possible decision we could ever make, and knows how to write it into the story for the good, if we trust in him.
d. Example: magic trick.
III. Conclusion
A. Trust the true author.
B. Realize he’s writing a good story.
C. Accept that you are not the main character, but you are an important character.
