SERIES INTRODUCTION
We all tell ourselves stories. These stories define how we see ourselves and the world around us. They define how we relate to the world around us. They are the stories of us. In these stories, we are many things: winners, losers, victims, heroes, the popular person, or the nobody. These stories, whether fact or fiction, become the truth of how we see ourselves. We make them our reality.

Sometimes these stories are told to us by other people and we allow them to define us; we believe them. The problem with those stories is that while they may be powerful and even life-changing, they rarely speak the truth. There is really only one story about our lives that matters.

That story is the story of Jesus. I don’t only mean the story about Jesus, but the story Jesus tried to tell us about us. How did He see us, and what does that mean for our lives? Where all the other stories told to us or by us can lead to depression, despair, and shame, the story Jesus tells points  toward something that no other story does: Hope.    

BIBLIOGRAPHY 
I Used to Be Perfect: A Study of Sin and Salvation by George R. Knight.
I Thought It Was Just Me by Brené Brown.
Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer.