Episode 20: What Story Are You Living?
Moving from Self-Reliance to Partnership with God
Allen Arnold has spent the last fifteen years as Executive Producer of Content with Wild at Heart, the ministry founded by John Eldredge. Prior to that, he was the publisher of more than 500 novels in the decade. He is the author of The Eden Option (the book that gave StoryOne its name), The Creativity Glitch, and four other acclaimed books. Most families who love God are doing a great deal FOR God. Far fewer, however, are doing any of it WITH Him. That is the distinction between Story One, the story God intends for your family, and Story Two, the life built on the culture’s terms with God set aside. The difference isn’t trivial. It is revealed in our view of risk, how capital is deployed or buried, if we are creating a future that has deep roots by making what matters and creating a legacy for our future generations, and whether a family’s charitable giving is just a line item or a joyful participation in something God is already doing. In this faith at work conversation, AllenArnold, John Christensen, and Cameron Bond sharpen the framework the StoryLens podcast has carried since Episode 2. That is, knowing which story a family is living in isn’t a matter of guessing but of looking honestly at what the family keeps choosing.
Show Notes
GUEST INFORMATION:
Allen Arnold. Executive Producer of Content, Wild at Heart. Author, speaker, and creative coach. Author of The Eden Option, The Story of With, and The Creativity Glitch. Co-host of the weekly Wild at Heart podcast. wildatheart.org | Allen’s website
EPISODE FOCUS:
Business exit readiness, valuation, competitive sale processes, recapitalization, buyer selection, and transaction terms
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
- The difference between doing life for God and doing it with Him, and why for can be performed at arm’s length while with cannot.
- Story One and Story Two, the framework behind the StoryOne name, and the test that removes the guesswork about which one a family is living in.
- Imagination as the precondition for creation, and why projecting fifty and one hundred years out is a planning discipline rather than an exercise.
- Kryptonite: how a childhood experience of scarcity or abundance continues to govern financial decisions long after the balance sheet has changed.
- The parable of the talents read for freedom rather than yield, and the structural point that money can be buried alone but never invested alone.
- The snowmobile ruts, and why an inherited pattern gets harder to leave the longer it runs.
- The Table of Strategic Alignment, the final document in the StoryLens process, and the three columns that make the gap between intention and behavior visible.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- The Eden Option, Allen Arnold. The book that gave StoryOne its name. Story One is the story God intended; Story Two is the life built on one’s own terms.
- The Story of With, Allen Arnold. On pursuing what matters actively with God rather than for Him.
- The Creativity Glitch, Allen Arnold. Names the seven patterns that keep people stuck and unable to make what matters.
- A Spirituality of Fundraising, Henri Nouwen. Reframes the ask as an invitation to participate in what God is already doing.
- Psalm 27:14. The verse that opens and closes on the same instruction, because we forget.
- Wild at Heart, the ministry founded by John Eldredge. wildatheart.org
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- For God and with God produce different decisions. One is a transaction and can be run alone. The other is a partnership and cannot.
- Story Two is rarely a rejection of God. It is the quiet assumption that this part is handled.
- Scarcity is a formation, not a financial condition. Substantial wealth does not dissolve it.
- Freedom without coordination produces nothing. Capital can be buried alone but cannot be invested alone.
- Momentum is not direction. Inherited patterns persist because they are in motion, not because anyone chose them.
- Results follow the system that produced them. A different chapter requires a different story first.
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