Why Stories Matter (& Nathan's New Movie!)

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I recently released my latest book Giving Your Words (if you haven’t already, be sure to order your copy today!). With this book, I sought to explore the power that words have in shaping the souls of our children.

One of the most powerful ways words can affect the hearts of children is through the amazing art of story. God used his words to breathe all of scripture, which we use to shape and guide us, and all of scripture is filled with stories. This reality of God loving and speaking to us through story is something I took to heart when my children were very young. So from the time they could understand, I began filling their minds and hearts, reading to them day after day, year after year, from great and wonderful stories. Each word of every great tale of history, fantasy, fiction, and more, poured into their hearts giving them an understanding of who God is, visions for the heroes they could become, and wonder for the world they live in.

Stories have the power to shape, move, and create us. Unfortunately, now we live in a time when the stories that are being told today are void of the life-giving beauty that God intended and are instead displaying narratives of anger, dysfunction, immorality, despair, and shallowness. As a result, a tired and broken world is so often left without tales that would draw them closer to their creator and stories that can show them who they were made to be.

Nathan was always my story-boy. As he struggled with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, and mental illness like OCD, his heart was always drawn to great stories of heroes that served as a salve to the pain he experienced and an inspiration for who he could become. I would spend endless hours reading aloud to Nathan as a child, as he would lay sprawled out on the floor drawing the scenes I would narrate. Then he started writing his own stories and acting them out in the backyard with his friends. Fast-forward to today, Nathan is now a professional actor who has not only acted in TV shows and movies but also writes and produces his own movies. It should be no wonder to me that my little boy who was so drawn to great stories as a child, would grow up with a desire to tell them himself.

Nathan has a deep desire to tell great stories that have the power to change lives, inspire hearts, and draw people back to their creator. Nathan does this by writing and producing movies about faith, family, and redemption. Something our world desperately needs more of right now. Which is why I am so excited to tell you about Nathan's new film project...

The film he's making is called Bright Sky. It's a modern faith-based western, taking place in a small town, following a single mother, a young boy, and an outlaw, each reaching for redemption. The movie is filled with romance, redemption, faith, and family, the things that hearts need more of from their stories today.

But Nathan needs help in making this beautiful script into a movie, so he's created a crowdfunding page with amazing incentives/rewards to support the film like staying a night in our family home in Colorado, getting an acting lesson from Nathan himself, or even getting a line in the movie!

The world is a dark and broken place — it always has been, but now more than ever we are seeing how very needed telling good stories is. Stories have the power to change and inspire us in ways nothing else does. I hope you'll join us in this journey of bringing a good story to life that just might be the thing to help a world in need.

To support the movie and find out more about the project CLICK HERE or on the image below:

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