Re: Testimonies

I’ve heard a lot of testimonies in my life. I’m sure you have too, so many of us have attended so many youth conventions and church conferences and etc. that we basically know the shpeel (sp?). Until very recently I don’t think I’ve questioned our format for “testimony giving,” which mostly follows a diagram of:

1.name
2.background
3.specific sin struggle
4.evangelistic experience
5.life change


Maybe that’s not what you’ve heard, but it is what I have. In fact, most often what I have heard focuses on #3 the most. I’ve heard drugs, sex (both homo and hetero distortions), porn, pride, occult, gang, murder, pain, and so many other things spoken on in my life that it sometimes seems that the “problem” becomes the emphasis of the testimony. This is what I’ve been thinking through and what I felt like God was speaking to me last week some friends were discussing testimonies at a local Bible Study.



Depravity is not a thing, it is an absence. When we speak of God’s grace, we always speak of it covering over something- that’s not the point. It’s filling life back in- there’s an absence of something VERY important, a relationship with God Almighty which every person on the face of the earth was created to participate in with ever increasing intimacy. If that relationship is missing- it doesn’t matter what is filling it in, the point is that the relationship with God is not there. I resolve here to not emphasize the coping mechanisms that I used to alleviate that depravation, but rather to declare that there was once an absence in my life, it matters not what was used to attempt filling it in, God alone would fill the void and He will always have grace enough to push the faulty filler out.



We are depraved from birth, meaning we lack something. That something is a relationship with our Abba and Creator and Redeemer and Friend. If we emphasize the sin or what-not which we participated in our attempts to ease that absence, we miss the point that we all have the same testimony: I once did not know God and existed in death; I now know God and live a life of abundance. The struggles are part of the testimony, I will not deny that- but they are not the point or even the emphasis, the emphasis is the love of God which is so great that even a __________ like me can still know Him even after all I’ve done to increase our separation. I know God. The same grace which is extended to my former drug dealing brothers is the same grace extended to my former brothers who were disobedient to their parents or who cheated on their schoolwork. That same grace is extended to those who still live in the absence of His presence and love. I hope I and maybe you also can learn to focus on the fact that people around us don’t know God rather than what it is that they do know. I want to not care if someone has known umpteen men or women in their bed, known almost every drug on the street, known every drink behind the counter, known every tax law avoidable, etc. I want to care that that someone doesn’t know God, and that’s what He wants for them… it’s not that they would stop X, Y, or Z- it’s that they would know Him. He’s not emphasizing the action… no, He’s emphasizing the lack of relationship. He’s emphasizing their lack of life.



Now, as a simply brief disclaimer: I am aware of the parable which Jesus tells Simon the Pharisee while dining at his house (Luke 7:36-50) of the parable was to emphasize one thing: the appropriatey of the former prostitute’s display of gratitude and how she knows a depth of forgiveness which the Pharisee does not yet know.



36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat.[h] 37 When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. 38 Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.
39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”

40 Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”

“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.

41 Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver[i] to one and 50 pieces to the other. 42 But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”

43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”

“That’s right,” Jesus said. 44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon,“Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.

47 “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” 48 Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49 The men at the table said among themselves, “Who is this man, that he goes around forgiving sins?”

50 And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”



-Luke 7:36-50, NLT



Does she know more grace than the Pharisee can know- I do not believe so, because it doesn't seem to me that grace is quantifiable, but she has experienced something which Simon has not experienced- a forgiveness based on faith alone which has enabled her to freely love God and know Him rightly. She can tell a story of her encounter with Jesus, but I do not think that story would emphasize her sinful life prior to that encounter, rather, I think that it will emphasize the encounter and belittle the life prior, for it is now a small thing compared to the life she knows. It is a very small thing compared to what she has. It is the expression of depravity vs. fulfillment, and how emptiness feels so much emptier once you’ve been filled, the same way a dark room seems so much darker after you’ve gone outside at noon. She has life- why would she speak about her death?



Why do you and I?



Let’s emphasize the beginning and continuing of our life, and maybe only throw in that death part in reference to its END, sound good?



Live on.