Who, Me? Yes, You!: Bible Stories Like You've Never Heard Them Before

By Roy Good

You have heard these stories over and over again. But - since we know the stories so well, it may be hard for us to really put ourselves in the shoes of the story teller. For instance, what thoughts raced through Joseph’s mind when he was hustled out of prison early one morning? Certainly not that he was about to become Pharoah’s right-hand man.While these characters tell their stories as they may have happened in their time (with some hopefully sanctified imagination added) they are able to jump across the centuries to tell them to us in our time and setting. So they may quote a song that is found in one of our hymn books. Or we will hear Jonah tell his listeners to “Fasten your seatbelts, we’re going for a ride.”

These are real stories of real people (and a few animals) who faced real dilemmas and real temptations. Sometimes they make wrong choices. But God is able to show His strength in our weakness. To turn our sorrow into joy. He can accomplish His purposes in spite of our failures.

May God use these stories for our encouragement. Hebrews 12:1.2.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973676423

Roy Good

Roy has served as a pastor, bus and truck driver, and a creator of beautiful wooden writing pens. He has a quick wit and a ready smile, but he can comfort a family who has lost a loved one... or as he says “graduated.” He enjoys riding his three-wheeled motor cycle while his wife of sixty years, Kathy, crochets on the back. They are parents of four children, plus nine grandchildren and nine great grand children. Roy sees things that others do not see, and creatively shares his insights with others.

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Copyright © 2019 Roy Good.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7643-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7644-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7642-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915560

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/16/2019

Contents

Preface

We have heard these stories over and over. We know them from beginning to end. We already know exactly how each one turns out.

But since we know the stories so well, it may be hard for us to really put ourselves in the sandals of those at the heart of the stories or those telling them—to see their dilemmas as they might have seen them, or to wonder how an event was going to play out. For instance, how did Joseph feel when, after years of imprisonment, some guards suddenly showed up one morning and hustled him out, bathed him, gave him new clothes, then hurried him to the palace? If that had been you, what would you have thought? Probably that you were about to be hanged, as the chief baker had been. Certainly, any possibility that you were about to be installed as Pharoah’s right-hand man would never have occurred to you.

While these storytellers relate the stories as they happened in their time (with some hopefully sanctified imagination added), they are able to jump across the centuries to tell them to us in our time and our setting. So they may quote from a song that is found in one of our hymnbooks. Or we will hear Jonah tell his listeners, Fasten your seat belts; we’re going for a ride.

Let us not forget these stories are of real people (and a few animals) who faced real dilemmas and real temptations. Sometimes they made wrong choices. But God is able to show His strength in our weakness. To turn our sorrow into joy. And to accomplish His purposes in spite of our failures.

May God use these stories for our encouragement.

Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about

with so great a cloud of witnesses,

let us lay aside every weight,

and the sin which doth so easily beset us,

and let us run with patience the race that is set

before us,

looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our

faith;

Who for the joy that was set before Him

endured the cross,

despising the shame,

and is set down at the right hand of God.

—Hebrews 12:1–2 (KJV)

Acknowledgments

Thanks:

… to Donna B. Suter for her encouraging words.

… to the Shenandoah Christian Writers club for valuable suggestions.

… to daughter Trish Eckard for helpful editing.

… to my wife, Kathy, for her computer skills, showing me how to do what I wanted to do.

… and thanks to God for giving us these examples for our admonition

About this book: Chapter before the first

Pastors and lay people will have new ways to show and tell The Story.

Readers will be challenged to contemplate and revisit the Bible. A new generation will understand it has relevance to the modern world, and everyone will enjoy the way the stories are told.

What the author won’t tell you:

I’ve had the privilege of hearing these stories as Roy wrote them. At our writers’ meetings, Roy would share a new story each month. While we were enthralled by them, Roy looked for no accolades, nor did he believe he deserved any. In fact, this book is in your hands because we badgered him repeatedly, saying, These stories will impact lives. They need to be shared!

There’s something the author won’t tell you, perhaps because he doesn’t know. Or perhaps he is too humble. The truth is that the author, Roy Good, is a master storyteller. When we think of storytelling, we often think of tales of a blue ox or a giant beanstalk. Basically, whoppers, exaggerations … fiction. But that’s not what Roy tells. His stories are based on truth, wild as it may be.

This is a collection of powerful stories. That’s easy to say because each one was first told in the Bible. Now they are narrated in first person as though the characters live and speak today. They are sitting in our living rooms or attending our churches, telling their personal encounters—sometimes making the story more real or sometimes more humorous, and sometimes challenging us to see from a different perspective.

Using monologues, each Bible character (person or animal) shares their testimony as an eyewitness. It’s like turning on the six o’clock news and hearing the event explained by someone who just watched Jesus ride into Jerusalem or who recently witnessed a miracle. But even more incredible is that the characters share what’s going on in their minds, how they feel, and how it impacts their lives. They are forever changed.

Roy is a humble man who has served as a pastor, a school bus driver, a creator of beautiful wooden pens, and much more. He has a quick wit and a ready smile, but he also comforts families who have lost loved ones—or, as Roy says, whose loved ones have graduated. He has been known to ride his three-wheeled motorcycle while his wife, Kathy, crochets or reads on the back. He sees things others ordinarily do not see and then creatively shares his insights. Roy is a servant, the man next door, and a friend. Most of all, he is a man who loves God.

No, Roy doesn’t tell fairy tales. He tells authentic, life-changing stories. Each is a gift from God. Enjoy.

Kay Walsh

Leader

Shenandoah Christian Writers

*Why Chapter before the First? Because everyone skips the introduction.

Noah

Don’t Myth the Boat

Though None Go with Me

Genesis 6:1–8:22

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Noah!

Yes, Lord?

I have an important job for you.

Yes, Lord?

You are going to build an ark.

Yes, Lord. Uh, what’s an ark?

It will be a large boat that will float on the water. Its dimentions will be seventy-five by 450 feet, with three stories and a roof.

Yes, Lord, but… there is not enough water around here to float a boat that size.

There will be. I am going to send rain, lots of rain! The earth will be completely covered by rain.

Yes, Lord. Uh, what’s rain?

So God explained. He told me that the wickedness of humans had become so great that all humankind would have to be destroyed, and that in less than two lifetimes, His pristine creation had become totally messed up. There is only wickedness as far as the eye can see, God said. Every thought humans have is totally wicked. Even their genes are messed up. The whole earth is filled with corruption and violence. I’m sorry that I made them. I am going to destroy both humans and beasts from the face of the earth.

Imagine, if you can, raising a family in a world where everybody is as wicked as it is possible to be. Many times I had to lay down the law to my sons when they wanted to run with their friends and do what they did. I would give them a very firm no!

But, Dad, they would grumble, everybody else is doing it! At no other time in the history of the world was their complaint more true. Everyone else was doing it.

And my comeback was "But you are not doing it."

He went on to tell me that He was going to send a flood that would cover the earth, and everything that moved and breathed on the face of the earth would die.

God told me that I was to build a boat big enough for my family and a pair of every animal and bird (more than a pair of some). He told me that those who did not take refuge on the boat would perish in the flood.

God gave me the blueprint describing exactly how the boat must be built: the kind of wood, the dimensions, three stories, the window, the door, the roof, and how to seal it against leaking.

So my boys—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and I got to work. At first they wondered how we were going to eat, seeing that I didn’t have a paying job. But we soon discovered that when you work for God, He supplies all you need.

Early on, my sons tried to work out of sight of the prying eyes of our neighbors so as not to have to answer their questions. But help they did.

First we had to clear and level enough land. Then we had to find or make the necessary tools. Sometimes mid-job we found that we needed to invent yet another tool. We cut down gopher wood trees by the hundreds, and we used horses to drag in the timber. Then we began to build. We followed every detail of the pattern that God had given us to the letter.

As we worked, I preached. I warned all who would listen that God was fed up with their wickedness, and He was going to completely destroy every living thing on the face of the earth. I told them that the boat I was building would be the only way of salvation.

People began to come from miles around to see this strange thing. We were the most popular tourist attraction on the planet. We were besieged with questions. We could have used a full-time public information agent.

People wondered,

What are you doing?

Why are you doing it?

"Do you really believe that this God of yours is going to destroy the earth with a flood?"

How are you going to catch all those animals?

Where will all that water come from?

Have you seen your psychiatrist recently?

But still we worked. For 120 years, we worked and warned. And still the people laughed and joked.

(What did Noah say when he put the animals into the ark? Now I herd everything.)

Then they went back to their business. Or pleasure.

Some say I was not a very good preacher—120 years of preaching without a single convert. But at least I saved my family, which in that setting was a notable accomplishment.

Finally the boat was finished and loaded with necessary supplies. And the animals? God Himself brought them to the ark. Some people in your day wonder how so many creatures could get into a boat that size. They don’t realize that there was more than a hundred thousand square feet of floor space. And the animals didn’t have to be fully grown. Young elephants were quite able to fill the bill.

You would think that when all these animals started showing up, the people would take notice.

But they didn’t.

Then God gave His final warning: You have seven days to get aboard. Seven days of grace. I passed the warning on to any who might listen.

But none did.

God also gave a very accurate long-range weather forecast: Starting a week from today, it’s going to rain. For the next forty days it’s going to rain.

I gave one last urgent call for anyone who wanted to be saved to come with us into the ark. But none came.

You sing a song sometimes that I could have sung if I had known it: Though none go with me, still I will follow.

So my family—my wife, my three sons and their wives, and I—went into the big boat, and God shut the door.

The next morning, we awoke to a strange new sound. It was the rain that God had promised. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, the sound of rain on the roof was very peaceful and lulling. It made me want to roll over and go back to sleep.

I confess that I did, briefly. But there was still work to do. The animals needed to be cared for.

There were also earthquakes that broke open vast underground reservoirs of water, adding to the flood. After a few days of rain, I could feel the boat begin to move.

About the same time, people on the outside began to cry out and bang on the side of the boat. Let us in, they pleaded. We believe you now. Please, open up! But God had shut the door, and only God could open it.

Before long, we could tell by the motion of the boat that it was floating. The yelling and banging stopped. We could guess why, and it was a sobering moment. I am told that the flood covered the highest mountain by more that twenty feet. All living beings, humans and land animals, died in the water.

That big boat would be our home for the next year. You would think it must have been a dull and monotonous year, but actually it wasn’t too bad. For one thing, there was plenty of work to do. Plus, Shem and his wife were good musicians. Shem played his homemade flute, and his wife was a good songwriter. We passed many evenings singing songs that she had written. Ham was a good storyteller. Japheth and his wife were good at decorating. They were able to give our quarters a homey feeling. My wife and Ham’s wife were excellent cooks. They could prepare a wonderful meal even though they had very little to work with. Remember, they couldn’t run out to Food Lion every day. So the year passed surprisingly fast.

Then one day the rocking motion of the ark stopped. We knew that we were on solid ground, and the water was drying up.

I waited forty days and then released a raven through the window to see what I might learn. The bird never returned.

Later I sent out a dove, which searched for a landing place but found none. So she returned to the ark.

A week later, I sent the dove out again. This time she returned with a fresh olive leaf in her beak.

I waited another week and sent her out again. This time she didn’t return. Now I knew that the water had dried up.

Then God opened the door and said, Go, take your family out of the ark. We didn’t need a second invitation. How refreshing it was to be on dry land again after being penned up for a year.

God also told us to release the animals. As they walked out onto dry land, they made their feelings known by kicking up their heels in obvious enjoyment.

The first thing I did was build an altar as a place to give burnt offerings unto the Lord. I led my family in giving thanks to God for sparing our lives. God received our gratitude, and He made us a promise. I will never again destroy the earth with water, even though the thoughts of people’s hearts are still evil. Anytime you see a rainbow in the clouds, it will be a reminder of My promise that as long as the earth remains, there will be seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter.

Ah, I thought, seedtime and harvest. That sounds inviting. Enough of boat building. I’m going to be a farmer.

Now, I know that some say this story is just that—a story, a myth, a fairy tale, along with the rest of scripture. But they ignore the geological evidence of a massive flood.

Many of the world’s religions, including those of some obscure tribes, have stories about a worldwide flood that was sent by an angry deity, where all but a few people perished. Doesn’t the fact that so many diverse people have such similar accounts suggest that maybe, just maybe, there really was a worldwide flood and that all their information came from the same source—an actual historical event?

Let me tell you - it did happen just as the Divine Record describes it.

And the only way to be saved was to get on the boat.

I was there when it happened, so I ought to know.

Jacob

Running from God

God Can Run Faster

Genesis 25:19–35:29

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I wish that my story had been different. But the fact is, I had lots of company: Cain and Abel, Leah and Rachel, Isaac and Ishmael, Joseph and his brothers.

It’s usually called sibling rivalry. Sometimes it’s outright sibling warfare. At least I could excuse myself by saying that I was born that way. My mother tells me that my twin brother and I fought while still in her womb. When we were born, the first thing I did was grab my brother by the heel.

So I was named Jacob, which means heel grabber, schemer, trickster. And so I was—a home boy, Momma’s pet, who preferred housework.

My brother Esau’s name means hairy. And so he was. He was the outdoor type (maybe to get away from me), Daddy’s boy, who loved to hunt, seldom came home empty-handed, and knew how to prepare what he had killed.

The older we got, the more obvious and hurtful our differences became.

One day he was out on a hunt longer than usual but came home empty-handed. I suspected that he would be very hungry. He was.

And I