Testimony

I gave my testimony at recovery on Tuesday.  It's been a date I've wanted to avoid since September when I found out I was giving it.  It's not that I'm not comfortable in front of a room, I mean I am kind of chicken and I get nervous almost all the time when in front of people, but the Lord has given me calm whenever I get up there.  I think it's more like I didn't want to share the gritty with everyone.  That's my fear of man coming out again when the truth of a giving a testimony is that it's not about you (me).  It's about God's way of capturing me.  It's a chance to show all the times where I was unfaithful, He was faithful.  That is a good thing.

Testimonies give hope to people that struggle the same (or different really) way you do.  Joel was absolutely right after when in prayer with our group of guys, that my story is all our story.  We fall, God saves.  I love hearing a lot of short testimonies in a row, different stories, same ending.  God wins (so do we).

As much as I didn't really enjoy writing the testimony, it confronted me with many things.  Bitterness and unforgiveness that I still felt in my heart, seeing patterns of my failure, seeing God repeatedly love me.  I wrote about my relationships and how I continually let them get in the way of God in my life.  I don't blame any of the girls, but myself for putting them on a pedestal or for making them my source of happiness (they are doomed to fail b/c they are not God).  Through this writing process I realized that I never, never submitted my relationships to Jesus, not fully.  I didn't make him my happiness, joy, and contentment first.  I never obeyed.

That word, obey.  What a dirty word in our culture.  It shows you are weak, a fool, not a free thinker, and a sheep.  Wait, a sheep?  But I am a sheep and Jesus is the shepherd.  Unfortunately, in today's society to obey seems to be borderline dictatorship.  But the Bible has a different take on it.

1 John 5:  By this we know that we love the Children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

I had this love of Jesus that had everything to do with me, and nothing to do with him.  I loved him, and would sing it all day, but when confronted with a situation where I had to obey a teaching (mind you because I'm sure what I was about to do was wrong or selfish) I would do what I wanted.  I never showed Jesus that I loved him in my actions, that he was worth more to me than anything else.  I've been dwelling on that a lot, as a matter of fact I wrote on my bathroom mirror, "obey Jesus because you love him".  I do love him and it's time I lived that way.