What if receiving a new identity from Jesus isn't the same thing as learning to inhabit a new world?
When we first drew the Story Maps, they helped us see something we couldn't name before: two very different stories are available to us. One is shaped by scarcity, certainty, perfection, competition, and the exhausting responsibility of trying to be our own source. The other begins with a very different reality: God is our Source, the Kingdom of God is at hand, and we are invited to receive and participate in the life He is already giving.
But we've kept living with the maps—and they've kept showing us more.
In this episode, we return to some of the discoveries that first surprised us and explore what we're noticing now. What happens when the governing assumptions of a story actually create the problems we then spend our lives trying to solve? Can we put new characters—God as Father, ourselves as beloved children—into the old story without realizing we're still living by its assumptions? And can a good outcome tell us whether the terrain that produced it is actually good?
We talk about scarcity and Source, open and closed systems, freedom and manipulation, performance and identity, interventions and terrain—and why sobriety, obedience, academic achievement, organizational growth, or any other desired outcome may not tell us the whole story.
Maybe the invitation isn't simply to find better solutions.
Maybe it's to notice the story in which we've been trying to solve the problem.
Continue the expedition
The companion Field Notes for Episode #176 continue this exploration and include a new Story Maps downloadable resource—not simply a repeat of the maps we shared with Episode #174, but an invitation to notice more deeply what each story assumes, what kind of terrain those assumptions create, and what they make possible.
Find the Field Notes and download the new Story Maps at janetnewberry.substack.com.
There are two stories.
The Kingdom of God is at hand.
Let's go see.
