Humans love stories, and the main places we tell stories in our modern culture is through movies, TV shows, and increasingly, video games. In our ordinary lives movies, video games, and TV shows are some of the places we go to find something special, to find, as actress Nicole Kidman says in a well known AMC Movie Theater ad, “magic…to laugh, to cry, to care, because we need that. To find that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before, not just entertained, but somehow reborn.” The stats bear out the feeling Kidman is describing. Various studies all say the average American watches around three hours of TV a day, and that doesn’t include time spent watching movies or playing video games. We come to stories looking to be inspired and find meaning in our own ordinary lives.

But what if the hope of finding some magic in the stories we tell indicates a longing in the human heart for a greater story, one as old as time put there by God? In this message, Pastor Joel walks us through Acts 17 to show us how this is the case, and encourages us to be thoughtful about the stories we take in.