Testimony

another long one...

"And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death." Revelations 12:11


Too often I hear testimonies that end when someone was "saved." I used to pray with all of my heart as a boy that God would take my life and do with what He wanted. I read the bible here and there and it shaped my way of thinking. I had a lot of seeds that were scarcely watered with a good church. When I came into contact with BASIC and New Covenant I was painfully aware of the water I needed. I always say that this was always part of who I was and it was, it just had never been watered. I used to blame my father but as I look and consider his life I realize that he is definitely an example of radical transformation. His abusive father died when he was nine, he grew up poor in a bad neighborhood, his older brother used to beat the daylights out of him, his mother was an alcoholic, he ended up becoming an alcoholic. After being kicked out of his house by my mother he decided to earnestly pray for God to take his life because he didn’t know what to do with it anymore. Today, he is drug free, he rebuilt his marriage, and he is a dedicated Christian, at his worst he can be abrasive, judgmental and negative. Even despite his tendency towards anger, I’ve seen him soften through the years, I’ve even seen him cry while praying, I’ve seen him struggle to try and approach people better. I joke a lot at his expense but I really thank God for what He did in my father and it brings me great joy to be able to connect with him.


Sometimes I don’t like being asked the question, "how long have you been saved?" I had a sense of God my whole life, I had felt convicted before, I knew instinctively to avoid certain things and I attribute that to my very early experiences with God and His word. The fateful evening at BASIC was a long time coming and I knew it. When the seeds I had began to get nourishment by being around Spirit-filled Christians and having a few key conversations I began to not just seek God but now I was looking for Jesus, the stumbling block, the one who I heard would allow me to have a personal experience with God. That night I really felt God say something along the lines of, "You’ve always known Me, the past few years you’ve really walked away from Me. I’m here to offer you not just to come back but to put both feet in and to really know Me." Too often people look for the key moment, but approaching Jesus is often a long, hard but unbelievably rewarding experience. God’s grace is working everywhere in every living person’s life, knocking on every person’s heart seeking to free them from the bondage of this life.


We pray a lot of lofty prayers. ‘God give me a heart for this or that’, and I’m not downplaying the importance of those prayers. Pray them, but understand that you’re not just going to wake up one day and suddenly feel more love for people. To some extent, yes. However, Jesus told to love others as we love ourselves and we can’t very well love others the right way unless we have the correct view of ourselves. You can’t help anyone with their burden unless you can carry your own first. It starts by learning how the grace of God has worked throughout your life, not just until you prayed the sinner’s prayer. No one prays the prayer and lives happily ever after, your testimony builds as your understanding of God and His love deepens. That will allow you to understand others on a deeper level. It starts with what Christ did and then how that worked in your life and that understanding only comes from your devotional time with God. To see God we need holiness, the more of God you see in your life, the more holiness that you’ve got. The more holy you are the more people are drawn to you, the less you do things by your own effort, and, consequently, the more you will be attacked by the enemy.

The point here is that it starts with you. You don’t pray the prayer to sound holy at a meeting and then not follow up with God by reading the bible and praying every day (yes, every day). It doesn’t matter if it’s 15 minutes or three hours, different days lead to different things but be open to it. This is how your everyday things are transfigured - by preceding them with the word and prayer. This allows you to do even the most mundane things with an attitude of worship. How do you feel looking back on mistakes you’ve made? Times you’ve turned away from God? How do you see yourself when you look back at the years you didn’t know Him? Are you angry? You shouldn’t be. Lack of patience, lack of the right heart for people is there because you don’t evaluate your past with eyes cleansed by holiness, you don’t meditate with the mind of Christ. Somewhere along the line the enemy says to be a good Christian you have to berate yourself and you can’t love yourself. Love who Christ is in you, remind yourself that you’re under the blood of the Lamb. If you’re looking back at your past or the mistakes you’ve made and kicking yourself for them then you’re not having faith in the blood and then you don’t build your testimony and then you don’t overcome he who is in the world.