Cyle Harless: Every great story you ever loved, whether it's a Hollywood blockbuster, a classic novel, or a Sunday sermon, is driven by a desire. Think of Joel in The Last of Us. On the surface his visible goal is simply survival and smuggling cargo. But underneath his brutal exterior runs a deep, haunting psychological weight. It's the devastating loss of his daughter, his identity, and his home. Think of Din Dajarin in The Mandalorian. His external goal is collecting bounty slips and following an elite, rigid warrior code. But his true character transformation only begins when he vulnerably sacrifices that code to protect a child, stepping into a messy, dangerous, and beautiful journey of fatherhood. What are these characters actually chasing? They aren't chasing survival or bounty slips. They are chasing desire. They are looking for a place where they are truly seen, fully safe, and deeply known. In the language of story, we call this the protagonist's ache, and it is the internal need that they don't even know that they have. When we write, it can be easy to focus on the want of a character. Here's the main character's goal. We make sure to put in a few obstacles in his or her way, and that gives the story some conflict. But deeper than a character's want is their need. Focusing only on the character's want results in shallow and cliched characters and storytelling. And if you're writing or stories have landed there, please hear me. No, I'm not calling you out. I am naming something that we can all fall into and that I've actually fallen into before. A character's need, their internal need, is the universal human ache, and it's not random or trivial. It is the direct subtext echoed in the grandest story ever told. Today we are diving down the rabbit hole into the first great subplot running beneath the entire biblical screenplay. This is the subplot of presence. Now here's the good news. If you learn how to master this subplot, you will unlock the ability to write characters and preach messages that hook an audience's soul. Because you will be telling the absolute truth about the human condition. Let's be honest, the Old Testament, it can be confusing. It confuses people. And that is without diving into the book of Leviticus. But once you go there, it just really messes with people. But then Jesus shows up in the New Testament and everyone asks about the law. Does Jesus defend the law? Does he abolish the law? Does he contradict the law? What does the law look like now that we are in Christ? The meeting in Acts 15 is all about how to handle Gentiles joining the church and being baptized into Christ's family. Paul, Paul's writing to the Galatians is him arguing against circumcision being required for salvation. And there are even parts of Romans that deal with laws and rules. And these passages, sometimes they bring clarity, sometimes they seem to further add to the complication that the questions of the questions we have, rather than actually answer them. You honestly, you can hear ten different sermons and get ten different answers on how believers deal with the old testament in the law. But if you read scripture as a story with a main plot and subplots, you will see and understand the subplot of presence. And once you see it, it will transform how you read, approach, teach. And preach about these very questions. Okay, so to understand how the subplot of presence actually operates narratively, we have to realize first that it's a two-sided coin. It features two completely different questions that crash into each other in every single act of the biblical screenplay. First, on the one side, we have humans who choose autonomy in the garden. They don't just break a rule, they swallow a rival script. The serpent doesn't tempt humanity with fruit, he tempts them with autonomy, the belief that they can define good and evil without God. And the moment humanity chooses self-authorship, the immediate cosmic sentence is exile. Humanity is removed from the sanctuary garden and forced to move east. Cherubim are stationed at the entrance to the garden to guard it and to stop anyone from entering it again. From that exact moment in Genesis 3, the human side of the subplot becomes a desperate wandering question. Where is God? Why do I feel fundamentally lost? And even even when I'm physically safe, why am I not satisfied? This is the ache of presence. It is the longing of identity, intimacy, belonging and home. This is the ache that Joel carries in The Last of Us. It's the ache that Din Dajarin carries in the Mandalorian. It is the ache Eurydicus carries in Hades Town. It is the ache, the ache of presence is the ache that every character carries in every story you've ever heard. And we relate to this ache because it's the ache every human carries in every moment of their lives. But presence is more than just human ache. There's also another side of the coin. Presence is also a divine problem. Okay, so God is the main character of scripture, right? It is his actions that drive the plot. And when presence is fractured, a question, a problem arises that God must address. And the question God must solve is this: now that humanity is separated from God, how will he dwell with his people without his holiness consuming them? I mean, think about it. How is a holy, righteous God gonna dwell with his creation without destroying them? There is sin, there is separation, there's corruption. This is the narrative question that the subplot of presence introduces. And it is the tension that drives the entire Old Testament. It is why we get a tabernacle. It is why there is a holy of holies that only one person can enter. It is why Moses, of all people, cannot see God's face, otherwise he'll be destroyed. Humanity is separated from their source of life, their identity, their home, from God. And if he gets too close to them, His righteousness, his holiness, his glory, it will consume them because God is pure and holy and good and we are sinful. This is the problem the subplot must solve. God's distance in the Old Testament was never be because he was cold or indifferent. It was because he is pure and holy and righteous. And if a pure, holy, righteous fire enters a contaminated environment, it will physically incinerate everything that is unholy. C. S. Lewis nails this so well that In ⁓ in the Lion Witch in the Wardrobe, when the Pevensey kids ask Mr Beaver about Aslan, they ask, Is Aslan the Lion safe? And Mr Beaver responds, Safe, of course he isn't safe. But he's good. So what does God do? God is brilliant in this. He designs a brilliant, costly, and temporary architecture that allows him to dwell with his people without destroying them. First we get the tent, then the tabernacle, then the temple. There's the sacrificial fences, the holy of holies, the veil. These aren't religious red tape. They are boundary lines. They are dangerous, they are protective, but they are necessary. They are designed to let a loving king, God, camp in the middle of his rebellious children without consuming them. Presence is near in the Old Testament, but it is locked behind walls of cloth and stone. And the veil, it becomes this tragic reminder that the sentence of exile is still in effect, and even though God is close, he is closed off to most. Only one person once a year can enter his presence. And when we trace the subplot of presence throughout Scripture, We see in the biblical screenplay that it starts in Eden and moves to a tent, then the tabernacle, then it's Christ, God dwells among us. It's God's spirit in the new humanity. The people that put their faith in Christ, God's spirit dwells in them, the new humanity, and then the new creation, where the new Jerusalem comes down and God's presence is there in the city. Every moment in this biblical narrative is God saying, I'm coming closer. Every moment is God solving the subplot. Every moment is God healing the ache. And scripture shows us this visually. ⁓ in in the biblical imagination, east is the direction of exile. Adam and Eve are driven east. Cain settles east. Babel marches east. So when God designs his temple, the front gate faces east, a permanent architectural reminder that humanity is living on the wrong side of the gate. And to repent is to turn back in your exile. To return is to walk west towards presence. The ache is built into the architecture. For centuries the tension escalates. Humanity Builds false sanctuaries, Babel, Babel towers of control, political empires, religious systems, humanity fails, every partnership that God offers, every attempt to solve the ache collapses, and then Act Three arrives, where God Himself steps onto the stage as a biological human being in Jesus Christ. He is the walking, breathing tabernacle. He is the temple in the flesh. He is Eden walking among us, walking among his creation. And on the cross, all Lines of the screenplay collide. See, to serve the full legal sentence of exile, Jesus is taken outside the city gates. He experiences the terrifying depth of spiritual banishment when he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He absorbs the consuming fire of God's holiness into his own flesh. And the exact moment he cries out on the cross, it is finished. The temple veil rips wide open from top to bottom. It is torn in two. It is it is ripped. The engineering problem is solved. The boundary is dissolved. Exile is over. Presence is restored. But not in a building. It's no longer behind a veil. It is not through a priestly elite anymore. It is in us. It is in the new humanity who put their faith in Christ. Just as God's glory filled creation at the beginning. Just as God's glory fills the tabernacle, just as his glory filled the temple, and just as his glory was revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that same glory Now fills us who put our faith in Christ. Paul says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And he says that we are being transformed to glow from glory to glory, the same creative, generous, and victorious glory that hovered over the waters, that descended in the fire, that shook the thresholds of the temple, that raised Jesus from the dead, it now dwells in every single human heart that believes in Jesus. The temple, the presence, Eden, now dwells in the hearts of new humanity. So just think about that, what that means for a moment for your teaching, all right? Think about what that means for how you write characters and their need and their ache. Think about what it means to live as God's temple, radiating his glory to the world. Presence is not a building. Presence is now a people. Because of Jesus, God can dwell in his people through his Holy Spirit. God actually restores the vocation of humanity that was lost in Eden. He restores the priesthood. But it's not a few priests, it's not just a select family group or a few out of that. It's not a spiritual elite class. It's not, it's not the educated. It's not a robed class. It is every baptized believer. They become a priest, a living carrier of God's presence. Presence is not something that you or I search for. It is something that we carry. It is not a ritual. It is a vocation. It is God in us. It is not found in a building. It is found in people. This brings us to Act 4. Jesus does all this in Act 3. So this brings us to Act 4, the world that you and I live in right now, the new covenant. is launched, and presence now dwells in us a flat, horizontal, equal community of new heart partners who all humbly submit to one another in Christ abiding love. The head of the church is Jesus. All believers we submit to one another in love, but Babel still whispers. The powers they still resist, and institutions still rebuild veils. As the church moves throughout history we see a tragic mid-act twist. As the original apostles die out, fear reenters the script. Terrified of the Roman crackdowns and the internal heresy that is spreading, early church leaders stop trusting the horizontal guidance of the indwelling spirit in every believer. They they panic. They reach for the babel impulse of human control and they marry the top-down political architecture of Rome. They marry the structure of Rome in their day. And over the next 400 years, the institutional church systematically sews the temple veil back up. They move out of living rooms and houses into Roman law courts. They turn the interactive family table back into a sacrificial altar. They erect physical altar rails separating the sacred elite cleric on a stage from the passive silent laity that sit in the seats. Out of a desire to guard, for predictability, for safety, to guard the church from failure, the church moves away from presence indwelling every believer, performance being by a select. Chosen few. They built new, human made veils, telling ordinary believers that they needed a building, a ritual, or an elite human priest to access the king. The institutional church resurrected the architecture of exile and the structure of the old covenant, both of which had been resolved in Jesus' death on the cross. And the old familiar human ache returned, and now we feel it again, because we are discipled into institutions, into doctrines, into denominational camps, into hierarchy instead of into the upside down. Kingdom of Jesus and his story. We live in this tension where presence is already restored in Christ, but presence is not yet fully restored in new creation. This is the ache your audience feels. This is the ache your characters feel. This is the ache that humanity feels, and it's the ache your stories must honor. Every human longs to fill this ache of presence, and in scripture, in cultural stories, and in the ordinary, everyday lives of people, they we seek to fill this ache with something other than Christ. That's the story. See, friends, when we finally see the subplot of presence, we begin to understand why so much Christian storytelling feels thin, shallow, or disconnected. Because we have inherited doctrines instead of narratives, principles instead of themes, scenes instead of arcs, safe stories instead of honest ones, fear of culture instead of discernment, biblical facts instead of biblical story. So we try to reveal Christ through these disconnected pieces, and our storytelling it loses the weight, the clarity, and the coherence of a unified story. This is why our audiences are experiencing a vocational crisis. They are trapped between secular stories that name the ache but don't have a lasting offer. And Christian stories that offer cliches instead of clarity. Understanding the plot of presence changes that. The subplot of presence gives us a new way to design characters, because every character is chasing a false sanctuary, a place they hope will quiet their homesickness apart from God. So we need to write in a way that lets that false tower crack. Presence gives us a new way to write breakthrough because in a fallen world the veil is always felt, and true transformation is never easy, magical, or instant. It is always costly, it is always cross shaped. Presence gives us a new way to write endings because we live in Act IV, where victory is real but scars remain. Frodo, he saves Middle Earth, but he cannot stay in Middle Earth, and he will carry the scars of that journey for the rest of his life. We can write endings that honor. The already and not yet of the world we live in, where their honest victories are won that carry the beautiful weight of a world legally redeemed but not yet fully restored. See, presence gives us a new way to teach and preach because it's not about obeying the old covenant. Jesus finished that, Jesus closed that chapter, he fulfilled it. The old covenant is done. Now it is about being in new humanity. It's about being portable Eden's being being God's temple through Jesus. Being this new human humanity that is in Christ, that is walking, a walking temple filled with his spirit. Presence is not just theology. It is the emotional engine of every human story. And when you align your narrative architecture with the main plot of scripture and you weave in the subplot of presence, you stop writing shallow cliche stories. You start creating prophetic masterpieces where you can show human behavior in its rawest, most authentic form. And you can make the audiences' hearts burn for the ultimate new creation city, where the veil is gone forever, where union is the very air we breathe, and the entire world is the holy of holies. This presence is not just theology, it's identity. When you write Christian characters, friend, don't portray them as moral performers or religious rule keepers. Portray them as walking Edens, portable temples where God's spirit dwells, characters who carried the same glory that a that hovered over the waves, characters that They carry the same glory that filled tabernacle, that shook the temple, that raised Jesus from the dead. Characters who bring pockets of heaven into every room they enter. Characters whose ache is healed not by behavior, but by union. Because presence is not something we search for, it's something we carry, something they carry. This is what happens when you make story your lens. You see the main plot of scripture of God pursuing and restoring humanity and creation. You see the subplot of presence that says, God, where are you? That says, How can God dwell with humanity now? And you see the action God takes to restore presence through Christ. Make story your lens. Start communicating the kingdom today. Friend, if this helped you see the story beneath the story, if it awakens something in you, if it made scripture feel unified, cinematic, and alive, then you are already experiencing what is possible when you see the Bible the way Jesus tells it. But if you want to see how scripture, culture, and humanity intersect. As one unified story with Christ as the protagonist, then come to the See the Story Masterclass. As of this recording, the next one's coming up in a few weeks. It is a 60-minute live experience where you'll begin to communicate the story of Christ with clarity, depth, confidence, and Christ-centered narrative power. If that's the storyteller you want to become, join me for the next See the Story Masterclass. You can register at cinematicscripture.com. I hope to see you there. Until next time, I'm Kyle. This is Cinematic Scripture. Watch attentively. reflect spiritually and lead from story. I'll see you next time.