A New Testimony

Numbers 16:41-18:32

Mark 16:1-20

Psalm 55:1-23

Proverbs 11:7

Growing up in Christian Education, going to church, listening to faith stories, conference speakers, and fellow Christians there was a lot of talk about loving Jesus and seeking Jesus and focusing on Jesus. I heard a lot of talk like, "Jesus changes your life," "if you are a believer you won't be able to help talking about Him," etc. And I think that was something I already knew, it was already something I was experiencing.

A lot of the times when people share "their testimony" it's about when they first come to Christ. I don't have a strong memory of the moment I first came to Christ...I remember what it felt like to kneel and pray and close my eyes and know in my heart He was it, the one thing I wanted. I don't remember how old I was, or where I was, or what else happened. I think I was just a little girl alone in my living room, but I don't even remember.

I believe though that the longer one follows Christ the more and more testimonies they are given. I may not remember very well my first testimony, but I feel in my heart I've already hundreds more. And this project is at least one of them.

Today on my lunch break I remembered how I used to feel when I heard speakers talk about "going out into the world," "preach the gospel." I know some people would feel manipulated and guilt-tripped, and sometimes I felt that, but most of the time I felt a longing. I longed to have that much focus. Because even though throughout the years I had only been accumulating more testimonies of Jesus being real and faithful in my life, I still found myself only partially given over to Him.

I had wants, I had daydreams, I had distractions.

I would hear people talk about how important it was to read the Bible every day and I knew it was but I felt like it was so out of my reach. And I struggle now to explain why I felt that way and I think it's because there isn't a single reason why I felt that way except it was a bunch of lies.

Today I remembered how I used to feel...the longing I used to feel when people talked about living for Christ with such abandon...I wanted it.

But now, it seems the mere 15 minutes a day feeding myself the Word has made me entirely more determined to follow Jesus. He's consuming me more and more....I'm obsessing over Him. It's the thing I've longed for because He's the only thing worth obsessing over, and obsessing over Him is the only thing to do.

So many of my desires are quiet. I don't know if I've desired necessarily bad things, but they used to be so loud and so distracting. But now my desires seem actually less desirable. Like for example, the desire to have a boyfriend. It's not a bad desire, but it used to torment me so much. And try as I might I couldn't get it out of my head. But the Word of God has drowned it out so much that while it's still a desire of mine, it doesn't press, I hardly ever think of it, and when I do think of it I see so much more clearly, it doesn't derail me, it's hard to care for too long about the fact that I'm single when I read about Jesus raising from the dead. Jesus raising from the dead has always been a more important thing for me to think about, but now I can say it actually feels like a more important thing for me to think about.

I know I have so much more growing to do...Lord, I know that very much...but today I got a chance to just enjoy the fact that I see that God is changing my heart to be the heart I've always prayed for. I see that my heart is that much more given away to Jesus than it was almost 200 days ago.

I'm seeing that indeed the Word of God has changed my life forever.