EE is a preacher, but his wife has no trouble admitting that she is not, nor does she feel called to be. One of the things she likes the best about teaching with the Heart Bible is that the pressure is NOT on her to come up with insights and applications.\u00a0 That is the part that the listeners contribute – no matter their age, education, culture etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some examples are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a remote village in Papua New Guinea, EE\u2019s wife had finished telling the story of the Creation of the Man and Woman. Through an interpreter, she opted to tell the whole chapter in Genesis 2, naming the rivers and the location of the Garden of Eden. However, in the midst of telling the story, she questioned her own judgement for not having told a shorter version of the story, since the listeners were mostly non-literate people. But she went ahead with the process and had the listeners retell the story. Next, she asked the first question, which often serves the purpose of an ice-breaker,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat did you like about the story?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A pastor quickly raised his hand and answered,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have a legend that the Garden of Eden is on an island north of us. Now I see that our legend is not true. God has shown us that it is in a different place.\u201d It seems that her choice to tell the longer story had an important cultural purpose that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When they were in Peru, EE\u2019s wife told the story of the Bronze Serpent in a church with a listeners they did not know at all, since they were simply guest speakers for that night. After asking the people to retell the story, she asked the 2nd question,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat does the story teach us about God?\u201d<\/strong>,expecting to hear comments about God\u2019s justice and mercy. But, instead, a man exclaimed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think God is mean!\u201d EE\u2019s wife did not know the man at all. Was he an important official? A hostile trouble-maker? The pastor of the church?! She did not want to correct the man so, she said, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAh, that\u2019s an interesting comment. What do the rest of you think? Is God mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Systematically, in their own context and among themselves, the people at the Peruvian church talked about how the story shows that God is Sovereign. In His love, He had saved His people from slavery and was leading them to a new land. His people did not trust Him, so he punished them. God was merciful because He gave them a source of healing if they would only look at the bronze serpent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another time, in a typical church in Midwestern USA, after telling and reviewing the story of Blind Bartimaeus from the book of Mark, EE\u2019s wife asked her Elementary School listeners the third question, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat do the characters in the story teach us about people?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe blind man had faith.\u201d \u201cThe people around Bartimaeus did not want him to shout.\u201d were common answers she had heard before. But, she was a bit surprised when a third grade girl answered,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe blind man took off his coat and jumped up to go to Jesus.\u201d The comment seemed rather random. However, instead of brushing the comment aside, like she wanted to, she disciplined herself to ask the little girl, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd what does that teach us?\u201d The little girl quickly answered,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe man was poor and, probably, all he had was that coat, but it wasn\u2019t important now because Jesus called him.\u201d Wow! EE\u2019s wife humbly admitted that this was a deep insight that she\u2019d never thought of before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 4th question is probably the most important question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat should we do or think about after telling this story?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a simple question of application and gives the listeners the chance to express, in their own words, what God is revealing to them. It also gives the storyteller a chance to see whether the listeners understand the story and whether something needs to be revisited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When EE and his wife were in a restricted-access country telling a story to a group of tent-maker missionaries who had already been using Bible stories in their ministries. After telling the story of the Birth of Moses, EE\u2019s wife asked the 5th question,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho can you share this story with?\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Often people will answer, \u201cMy neighbor.\u201d \u201cEverybody!\u201d \u201cPeople who are lost.\u201d etc. That evening, however, one of the missionaries answered, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople who want to have an abortion!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n She continued to share that she told the same story to a couple who wanted to terminate their pregnancy because they already had several children and were very poor. But, when they heard the story of Moses, they understood how valuable life is and how God has a purpose for everything He has created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With obedience and in faith, that couple chose life! And, when their baby boy was born, they named him Moses! <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" EE is a preacher, but his wife has no trouble admitting that she is not, nor does she feel called to be. One of the things she likes the best about teaching with the Heart Bible is that the pressure is NOT on her to come up with insights and applications.\u00a0 That is the part…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-teaching","category-1","category-15","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heartbible.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}