I've struggled with my testimony for years. Not because I thought it was too big or too much to handle, but because I thought it was too small. I can count the amount of people I've shared my full testimony with on one hand (i.e. three...) and half of that is because I have a really hard trusting people with myself fully. But the other half is that honestly, even though I've struggled with all kinds of sin in all areas, I just haven't felt in the past that my "I was raised in a Christian home and accepted Jesus at 4 years old" testimony measured up to those who had been redeemed out of a LIFETIME of sin.
Mine just isn't as powerful a testimony. BUT.
I had breakfast two mornings ago with a dear and precious friend, one who knows me a little better than most. And we were swapping pieces of our stories, and it got me thinking.
We place so much value on testimonies that can go on stage and move people to tears. Stories of people who wandered in darkness for years and years before God reached down and saved them, and we applaud how great of a God that we have that He could save fallen people from being fallen people. But isn't that just it? Fallen people who were doing all they knew how to do...be fallen people. Depraved. Broken. Completely unaware of the healing, overwhelming, all encompassing redemptive power of a love soaked Gospel. And God saved them from that. As a testament to His power.
But how much MORE of a testament is it to God's love to say "I've known Jesus all my life. I know that He loves me. I know that He died for me. But I continue to choose my sin over and over again because I'm selfish, and would rather have what I want that surrender my will to the Father. And HE STILL LOVES ME."
Maybe I'm not making sense. And I'm not bashing on those powerful testimonies, because I have seen them move and it is AMAZING. I guess I'm just encouraging people not to feel inferior because God has given them a testimony that starts with "I've been going to church all my life, and I've never struggled with [blank]."
Because while one is a testimony of God's power to bring life from death, your testimony is a living, breathing story of a love SO FAITHFUL and SO PERFECT, He continues to redeem a broken heart that rejects Him time and time again for insignificant things that don't even BEGIN to matter in eternity.
And I think that is powerful indeed.
Oh, girl I have struggled with this. Growing up a preacher's kid in a Christian school doesn't call for a blatantly sinful life. I didn't know how to have that "my life before" and "my life after" speech, because my life before was six years. What do you say? "Well, I ate a cookie when my mom told me not to and now I don't do it anymore." But over the past couple of years I have come to realize that it wasn't necessarily my actions but my HEART, my motive behind those actions. So on the outside it really looked like nothing had changed, but on the inside so much had changed, because the reason that I was doing the things I had always done had changed. It wasn't about pleasing other people anymore, or for a duty or obligation. It was because of the love of Christ, because he FIRST loved me. And I agree, that is powerful indeed. :)
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