I've been asked to share my testimony for the first time. I guess it was something I always knew would come, and it is certainly something I have a lot of preconceptions about.
I was quite resistant to the idea at first, because in my head I thought I was being asked to pretend like I had it all together to inspire a bunch of youth. I wasn't being asked that at all. Testimony is just your story and how that looks. I can't stand the idea of getting up and faking something in front of people. So sharing all the hurt, the trials, pain, joys and inspiration that is on the journey is what I have really been asked to do.
But I have been aware of religious roots within me for a long time. It continues to surprise me how deeply rooted they really are. How controlled by fear I am, how superstitious I am. Part of this is actually coming to light as I try to articulate my story. What really comes out is a recap of all the bad things I did, now all the good things God does through me, without really any inclination as to how any change happened. All I can describe is what I did, and do - because I don't know what God has done in my life, or what He's doing. I feel as though I don't really know God, that my understanding of Him, His love, His grace, His glory, is all shallow and quite dry to be honest. It's not deep, it's more of something in my head, than it is in my heart.
A friend told me that our testimony is really God's story, not ours. I didn't understand at first, but I get that now. A relationship with Christ, Christianity, is a submission to allowing God to do what He will with your life. It's not entirely external, I believe we have desires within us, and that we are the way we are for a reason as well. It's easy to slip in to the idea that anything you would enjoy or want, God wouldn't ever want that, and that it gets in the way of what God is really trying to do. All of those thoughts are just fear.
It's hard to really truly know that, however. Even harder, it is for me to begin to comprehend this idea of how irrelevant my decisions were, and even are in some ways. I think there's value in good decisions, that we still choose and learn and fail and live with God each day. But the idea that grace transcends my actions almost throws everything I call "my testimony" out the window.
I picture myself as a small child whose teacher just smacked their workbook out of their hands, and I'm standing there baffled. "What do you mean God? I had so many right answers. Or more right answers than the other kids any way. Did you not see all those decisions I made? Did you not see how much worse I could have been if I didn't make the choices I did? How open to correction and humble I was?"
Humility is something I know almost nothing about. I really struggle with pride, and that's hard to deal with. There's a lot of pain in taking a step back at how you look at other people and think each day, and feeling powerless to change it. It makes you want to turn your brain off, it drives you to shame and can be an easy foothold for the devil to convince you that you're too messed up for God to save you.
I underestimate God and how much He knows about me. He's known all this time that I was short of of His grace, and He still loves me despite. But pride still soaked in to me deeply because I felt I wasn't as bad as others. I still made choices and thought I was better. My eyes were glued outwards, just trying to find some kind of light in myself by reflecting myself off of other people's darkness that I thought was...well, darker.
The very thing I've been told 1000 times since I was young, that I could only be saved by God's grace, that I am forgiven, that I am loved - in some ways they feel as though they are hitting my ears for the first time. Many things are in my head, many I even feel I have a good understanding of. But until these truths sink deeper than just something I say, and become something I express deeply from my heart, I don't know where I really am.
In times like these, times of being undone and broken, emotions make me think dramatically. Thoughts like "you were wrong this whole time, and it's just starting now". But I believe these are dominated by fear as well. It's more of a journey, and God's message to me isn't to doubt every time I've felt His presence before, everything I feel He's spoken to me, shown me, taught me, I think His message is that He wants to do more of these things I've tasted, and for that to happen some things have to die I think He wants to change me and that's not always easy or comfortable.
God doesn't speak to us in fear, and what the bible describes as dying to your old self and being made new, I suppose it shouldn't surprise us that that isn't a quick, easy, nice, painless thing.
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