Over at ThinkChristian.net, Bethany Keeley is asking her readers to consider what stories are most important to them:

I think it’s interesting that we ask people more often their favorite bible verse instead of their favorite bible story. Favorite verses tend to be pithy commands, stories are more perplexing and complicated. I wonder what you would learn about people’s lives and their callings if you asked them about their favorite stories instead. I wonder what our church would be like if we focused on telling stories more. [...]

One story that is important to me is the story of Ruth and Naomi. I like that story because it reminds me of God’s faithfulness in bad circumstances, and how sometimes God’s faithfulness is expressed through loyal friendship. I also love to struggle with the book of Habakkuk. I love that Habakkuk asks so many hard questions, and that God responds, even if he doesn’t respond the way I would like. I come back to that story a lot, in part because I don’t understand it, and I think God has more to teach me there.

Her distinction between favorite verses and favorite stories is an interesting one. It’s easy to shoehorn a verse into a nice proverb or saying, but it’s the stories behind those verses that give them their weight. For example, the story of the Good Samaritan can be summed up by saying “love your enemies”–but truly living that idea from day to day, as Jesus taught us, requires an example. For the most part, we need those stories to fall back on.

What about you? Do you have a favorite Bible story?

Three new Just Thinking articles just went up at Ravi Zacharias’ website. Like previous Just Thinking pieces, they offer challenging looks at apologetics and faith:

• Of Isms and Rabbit Trails: J.M. Njoroge wonders if there is value in pursuing knowledge, or if it just distracts us from a relationship with God.
• Hyperseeing and the Towers of Babel: “Is Google making us stupid?” “Is Twitter bad for the soul?” “Is Facebook changing the way we relate?” All questions that have been endlessly discussed by writers and bloggers lately. Jill Carattini unpacks the issues of information overload and the social web.
• Inseparable Companions: what Charles Schultz’s Peanuts and the Great Pumpkin tell us about the never-ending debate about faith and the existence of God.

There are many more excellent essays in the Just Thinking archives if you want to explore further.

Lifetime Guarantee’s weekly program is now available via podcast! Lifetime Guarantee is the ministry of Bill and Anabel Gillham and aims to help you “see yourself as God sees you and live as He intended.” (Our friends at Soulation might call that “being appropriately human.”)

To that end, Lifetime Guarantee has quite a few resources worth checking out in addition to the weekly podcast: there’s a daily devotional (that you can subscribe to via email if you like) and weekly article series that touches on topics ranging from dealing with worry to learning from failure. That’s a lot of useful information already, but they’ve got yet more spiritual development resources if you want to explore the site further.