Testimony

Each time our care group meets, someone in our group shares their testimony. I shared mine tonight, and since I had written it out ahead of time, I figured I might as well post it, seeing as how it might be awhile before I have time to write again. It's fairly short and lacking much detail, but here it is in its unaltered format:

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Several months ago, Nate asked me to share my testimony. I said no. I simply didn’t feel like it, I would have claimed at the time. I have thought about my response a lot since then, and I have come up with no good reason why I should not have then shared it. I was allowing, as I so often do, my present feelings to determine my view of my eternal condition. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I was saved, or that my faith was not genuine; it was that my comprehension of the Gospel in that moment was lacking. That’s my testimony is really about: seeking a constant and complete understanding of the Gospel.

I was raised, like many, in a Christian home and accepted Christ at some point along the way. And also like many, it was not until several years later, when I was twelve, as I recall it, that I understood that believing in Jesus meant more than simply saying I believed in Jesus. I continued to follow after God throughout middle and high school. I grew in my love for the Savior and in my pursuit of God in His Word. Though it was always difficult for me to pick out one specific point in time when Christ turned my life around, there was no doubt in my mind that I had been saved from my sin through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. My testimony, as it relates to my actual conversion, is boring by comparative standards. But yet it is equally as amazing as any dramatic turn-around there ever was, because my dead soul was made alive by Christ.

Why then, I ask myself, should I, now well into my college years, have any reason to question my understanding of the Gospel? I’ve been doing this for years, I tell myself. I guess what I’m getting at here is that I’ve come to realize that discouragement and despair over sin and circumstances is not sufficient reason to question my grounding in the Gospel or the genuineness of my conversion. In fact these things should do the very opposite and push me ever deeper into the glorious Gospel which alone provides hope. Several months ago I was hesitant to share my testimony because my mind was full of doubts and fears. I feared sounding fake. I told myself, “nobody is going to believe a word of this… they know the kind of person I am. For that matter, I know the kind of person I am. Who am I kidding?”

Even now some remnants of those fears remain, but I’m learning to harness those fears into a reverence for what it really means to be a Christian. Many of you know, to varying degrees, that this past year has been difficult for me, to say the least. I say this not because I have been the victim of any great hardship or suffering, but because this past year, though I have reached the lowest points of my life so far, and I hope ever again, has been one in which God has revealed more to me than ever before. My faith a year ago was genuine, but it was riddled with sin, and I wasn’t growing. I did not understand how to live with the Gospel constantly in view. And as eventually that sin overwhelmed my life and drove me away from God, for the first time my eyes were opened to just how incredibly vulnerable and weak I am. To paraphrase Jerry Bridges: I am not, and have never been nor will be, so strong as to be above my need for God’s constant mercy. And though God was faithful not to let me go as deep into my sin as I might have, I was sobered by how quickly I fell from a spiritual place I would have at the time called “good” to a place that was without question, “bad.” I stopped attending church. I cut myself off from interaction with my friends. I did what I wanted without a thought for consequences. I had convinced myself I was doing what would ultimately make me happier, though it was painful for a time. But I was deceiving myself and nobody else. Eventually, God indeed was faithful to draw me back to Himself, reassuring me of His continual love for me as demonstrated at the cross as well as in every day of my life through manifestations of common grace.

And so I went from a prideful and self-interested faith to a sin-wrought lack of faith, and by the grace of God I am finally arriving at God’s intention for my faith – to believe in the Gospel not out of pride but with an appreciation for how far I can fall if left to my own devices; and to believe in the Gospel not on the basis of my current level of despair but with a knowledge of my unchanging standing before God as a result of the work of Christ. My conversion is simple – God crushed His Son to save me, a sinner. My testimony is not yet finished, but so far it is primarily defined by the overwhelming grace of God drawing me into an ever-deeper relationship with Him and an ever-deeper understanding of and appreciation for the Gospel.