The Story of Your Life — By Greg Albrect
Friend and Partner Letter from May 2026
The road is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where, who knows when. —Opening lyrics to “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.—Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
I am the way and the truth and the life. —Jesus Christ (John 14:6)
As Christ-followers we often speak of walking with him during a journey we often call The Jesus Way. We have a choice, as Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14, between a narrow road of Christ-centered faith that leads to life, and a broad road of Christless religion that leads to destruction.
We choose Jesus. We choose his narrow way—The Jesus Way—the way of grace. We yield to Jesus, setting aside goals and objectives on an easier, wider road, and instead surrender to him, trusting in him that he has been down this road and knows exactly where the Jesus Way takes us.
He is the way and the truth and the life. As we follow Jesus our spiritual path is far more than merely getting from one place on a spiritual map to another. The road we take, the path we follow, the Jesus Way comes to define the story of our life. The road we take on the story of our life does make all the difference, it is long, and filled with many a winding turn.
Our life in Christ involves picking up our respective and individual cross (Mark 8:34) and following Jesus. We are not, as Christ-followers, who we used to be.The story of our life in Christ is all about where we are going rather than where we have been.
We are pilgrims, aliens and sojourners in this world—no geographical location charted on maps of this planet is our final destination. We do not look for riches that corrupt, or treasures that moth and rust will eventually erode and destroy, but we lay up treasures in the kingdom of heaven, a spiritual reality we live in now, in part, as we move forward, in Christ, into eternity. Though we walk through dark valleys shrouded as the shadows of death, we follow Jesus toward our eternal home with God, in his house, sitting at his table, resting in his green pastures.
Picking up our cross and following Jesus is not a price tag Jesus places as the cost of being his disciple. Picking up our cross and following Jesus does not involve purchasing a ticket in order for him to allow us to take the road less taken, the Jesus Way.
Picking up our cross does mean denying the life we would rather lead, in our flesh, as we surrender our desires, denying who we used to be and accepting the new life Jesus offers.
When Jesus invites us to travel with him, on the Jesus Way, for he is the way and the truth and the life, we are not charged a price, but invited by the grace of God. The Jesus Way is not a toll road where we must pay and pay and pay at many tollbooths, with our good deeds, works and performances.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, my emphasis).
Paul adds another element and facet to our spiritual journey in Christ, on the Jesus Way. He speaks of fixing our eyes (spiritual sight) on what cannot be seen, because what we can physically see is temporary, while our spiritual destination and home is eternal. It’s the same concept he speaks of in 2 Corinthians 5:7, For we live by faith, not by sight (my emphasis). The author of the book of Hebrews describes this same foundational truth of life in Christ: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1, my emphasis).
Life in Christ is movement, it is action, it is going forward. As Christ-followers we are not spectating, watching others, but we are being renewed in Christ day by day(2 Corinthians 4:16). We are growing up, maturing in Christ—because he lives his risen life in and through us we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).
Following Jesus is not a sequential, to-do-list, checking off one requirement after another, but rather it is more like a river that flows, in many ways—fast and slow, meandering and straight—often unpredictably toward its final destination. He is living water, not stagnant. He lives in us and his love flows within us.
Our former life, the life we once led before we accepted the invitation to follow Christ, is often characterized as and contrasted with, in comparison with our new life in Christ, as death. We were dead spiritually, but now we are alive in Christ, by the grace of God.
The past is prologue—the past made us what we are now—and God, by his grace, is making and transforming us, into his new creation. We are his workmanship—his handiwork (Ephesians 2:10) and as the Master Potter (Jeremiah 18:1-4; Romans 9:21; Isaiah 45:9, 64:8) he is shaping us, the clay, on his potter’s wheel, into instruments of his peace, joy and grace.
As we yield to God, and as we follow Jesus Christ, God is helping us write the story of our lives. The more we mature in Christ, and grow in his grace and knowledge, the more the story of our life becomes the story of Jesus. When we are on The Jesus Way we are following in his footsteps, focusing on him, and his living waters are flowing within us.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).
In order to live in Christ, our former self—our “old man” as Paul often speaks of our pre-conversion, pre-new-spiritual-birth—that old way of life we once lived must die. Thus we are crucified with Christ and who we once were no longer lives, but Christ is the power, the love, the goal and the direction of our new life.
As we yield to Jesus, as we surrender to him, the story of our lives leads us to eternal life, the life of the age to come. Time, as measured by our past, is the record of events that will one day decay and die, including ourselves. Time, as we live it in the present, is defined by our past, and what we once were and are no longer. What we once did is now forgiven by our merciful God, and what we shall be in eternity future is what he is producing in our new life, his new spiritual creation.
Dear friends, now are we the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is
(1 John 3:2).
You may know that Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite authors. In his book Wishful Thinking he offers the follow thoughts about eternity:
Eternity is not endless time or the opposite of time. It is the essence of time. If you spin a pinwheel fast enough, then all its colors blend into a single color—white—which is the essence of all the colors of the spectrum combined.
If you spin time fast enough, then time-past, time-present and time-to-come all blend into a single timelessness of eternity, which is the essence of all times combined…
Inhabitants of time that we are, we stand on such occasions with one foot in eternity. God, as Isaiah says (57:15) “inhabits eternity” but stands with one foot in time. The part of time where he stands most particularly is Christ, and thus in Christ because he is with us and in us, we catch a glimpse of what eternity is all about, what God is all about, and what we ourselves are all about too.
God, in the person of Jesus, wrote himself into our story. The kingdom of God means that a new way of life, a new way of being, a new covenant if you will, had arrived in the person of Jesus. God’s love, grace and mercy were born into our story… he lived in our time, becoming one of us, with us, inviting us to live a new life, a new story.
Jesus is not just a past historical person whose life we read about whom and from whom we learn wise lessons for life. Jesus was then alive—he was born, he lived and he died. But his past is not just past. For he is our risen Lord, and he lives now. He lives now in and through us, and we in and through him. Jesus Christ will come again—and by the grace of God, because of our Lord and Savior, HE IS OUR FUTURE!
Paul’s words in Philippians 3:12-14, as translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message Bible, conclude our discussion about our life story in Christ (my emphasis in the last sentence):
I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
Your brother in Christ, by his grace, off and running, following Jesus, and not turning back!
Greg Albrecht
President, Plain Truth Ministries
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
