It has been said that the only changing factors in our lives are the people we meet and the books we read. While that might be slightly overstated, it’s only slightly. We are tremendously impacted by our friends, family, coworkers, neighbors—and books.

Whether factual or fictional, stories transform all of us. Here are a few people you may have heard of who felt their life’s trajectory changed by a story.

Joni Eareckson Tada has lived as a quadriplegic for over fifty years, after a diving accident changed her life forever. Her ministry has brought hope and awareness for many families of individuals with special needs, though Joni’s early years after the accident were far from hopeful:

The year 1971 marked four years in a wheelchair for me. Although my diving accident was in the past, the quadriplegia was not. I was still a little shaky living with total and permanent paralysis, plus I was still struggling to understand how God was going to use it for my good. It did not help that the world around me was unraveling at the seams.

Somewhere in the mayhem, a friend gave me a copy of The Hiding Place. The back cover explained that it was about the life of Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of Nazi death camps. I was intrigued. As I said, I was into surviving. Perhaps this gutsy, gray-haired woman wearing a coat like the old raccoon thing in my mother’s closet would have something to say to me.

The first chapter had me hooked. Although Corrie was from a different era, her life reached across the decades. World War II was far different from my own holocaust, but her ability to look straight into the terrifying jaws of a gas-chambered hell and walk out courageously into the sunshine of the other side was—well, just the story I needed to hear.

For years to come, when I would occasionally fall back into my own pit of fear or depression, the Spirit of God would tenderly bring to mind her well-known phrases: “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” “Only heaven will reveal the top side of God’s tapestry.” And, probably the most poignant and powerful of all, simply “Jesus is Victor.”

John Piper is well known for his ministry, Desiring God, which is often summarized in the phrase “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” Piper found his life’s passion and the source of that phrase in a oft-overlooked, antiquated book by Jonathan Edwards:

Outside the Bible this may be the most influential book I have ever read…But the central, life-shaping impact was the sentence: “In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged.”…If not being supremely happy in God means robbing him of his glory, everything changes.

That has been the unifying message of my life: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. — “Books Don’t Change People, Paragraphs Do,” Desiring God

C.S. Lewis, today renowned as a Christian scholar and author, was a committed atheist early in his life. While God used several means to bring Lewis to faith, at least one book was critical to the process, as he writes in Surprised by Joy:

It was here that I first read a volume of Chesterton’s essays. I had never heard of him and had no idea of what he stood for; nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some ‘second cause’ of a very obscure kind, quite over-rules our previous tastes when It decides to bring two minds together.

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere—‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

Just as Lewis found himself impacted by reading another’s words, so his own words would go on to impact others just as deeply. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, shared a list of books that have impacted his life. First on the list was Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

This book probably, by God’s grace, saved my faith. At age fifteen, I moved into a time of profound depression. Some of that was due to disillusionment with Christianity. I saw a cultural Christianity all around me that was often cynical, manipulative, racist, and filled with rage. I wondered if the gospel was just another prop for southern culture or mere power politics. If so, I wanted out.

I came across a copy of this book in the mall bookshop, and flipped through it, but didn’t buy it immediately. I recognized the author’s name from the Narnia books of my childhood. I asked an older friend with a driver’s license to pick up a copy for me. Lewis connected me to a larger, broader, joyful Christianity, one connected to the creedal witness of the church across two millennia. Most important of all was Lewis’s tone. He seemed to be someone who wasn’t trying to sell me anything or bully me into his viewpoint. He was bearing witness to a person, to Jesus. That made all the difference. — “7 Books That Changed My Life,” RussellMoore.com

Moore was not the only one changed by Lewis’ writing. Sally Lloyd-Jones, author of multiple books, including the bestselling The Jesus Storybook Bible, writes:

“Where do you begin? I fell in love with Aslan. I lived those books as a child. My mother was one of those children sent away on the train from the blitz with the label. The story felt real and close and like it could actually happen at any minute—you just had to be on the lookout. My Mamgu (Welsh grandmother) had a huge wardrobe in her bedroom with a fur coat in it. I checked it every time I went to her house. Actually, I still check wardrobes, just in case.” — “On My Shelf: Life and Books with Sally Lloyd-Jones,” The Gospel Coalition

Lloyd-Jones realized the power of story, especially the greatest Story, as she later wrote in The Jesus Storybook Bible:

The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne—everything—to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this story is—it’s true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

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