Testimonies

You always hear about people giving their testimonies. I used to think that I didn’t have a testimony…I didn’t have an “ah-ha” moment where I magically turned to Christ. My story wasn’t and isn’t “When I was 13 years old, I trusted Christ and turned my life over to God.” If that is your story, that is fantastic, in fact there are days that I wish that would have been my testimony. My story/testimony is complicated, ugly, dark…you name it. But it’s beautiful in the fact that it led to me turning my life to Christ and accepting HIM as my savior.

The more I started thinking about my testimony, the more I realized I did have one…a lot of ugly, dark, events where I doubted God, denounced God, attempted to “make it on my own” and ended up falling short every single time. I started a note on my phone where I blueprinted these events and how I ended up where I am today. Partly because I kept feeling from God that one day I was going to be called to share my testimony…I just didn’t know with who or in what environment and I needed to have some sort of organization to my thoughts or it was going to end up as a 4 hour testimony.

Little did I know that it would sort of end up being a 4 hour discontinuous testimony and that I didn’t really realize I had shared my testimony until after it had already happened.

Enter Saturday night. Saturday night my friend and I had gone to a church service together that we had both been wanting to try. It was amazing! After the service, I had invited her over because I had some things I no longer wanted to give her and I wanted her to see what I had done with my house. Long story short, we ended up on my patio talking to almost midnight.

I shared things with her that I did not necessarily originally plan on sharing with her…the deepest, darkest things. But things kept coming up and out the more we talked. And it felt good in so many ways…to share my whole self with someone even the ugly parts, to realize how far I’ve come, to realize that I have in fact healed from those bad, bad things and that I am able to talk about them without it hurting, and to be able to trust someone enough to be emotionally vulnerable.

It wasn’t until she had left and I was laying in bed that I had realized that I essentially shared my entire testimony with her. It wasn’t all that night; over the last month or so I realized I had been sharing bits and pieces of it with her, and that Saturday night was just the missing chunks…the biggest ones. When I was laying in bed that night, I opened my blueprint on my phone and went through my checklist and realized I had shared about 90% of my testimony and that the things I hadn’t shared were minuscule.

God works in mysterious ways. I never dreamed that would be the fashion I would first share it in or that my friend would be the person I’d share it with. It definitely won’t be the last time I share it.

I’ve previously debated on sharing on it here but I haven’t received clarity yet. Partially because the purpose of this blog is to not cause harm to other people; especially the people who have wronged me. Nor is its purpose is to share other people’s stories that they may not want shared even if I was involved and if it affected me. Thus, parts of my testimony I do not want to share publicly and will not share publicly. So I have to figure out how to words things so that they are vague, pain the general picture, and so that they will not harm someone else and I haven’t quite figured out what that looks like yet.

Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”

Ephesians 4:31-32 “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.“

I want to leave you with one last thing to think about. Your testimony never quits growing. Your testimony doesn’t end the minute you give your life to Jesus….it is about what you do with your life after that. Do you live your life for Christ? Have you given up control? Are you sharing the gospel? How is HE working in your life? How has HE been there for you in your darkest times? How does HE continue to lead you to the light? How are you leading others? We make a decision to not only accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, but we make a decision every day of our lives to keep trusting him and to keep living our lives for HIM and each day we do that, our testimony grows. When you open your eyes, you will see the way HE works in every moment of your life.

Life with Christ is beautiful and perfect. Your testimony is beautiful and perfect.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.“

Love and prayers to all of you my sweet friends 🥰.