My Testimony

I was listening to a man on a Christian radio station as I drove home one day, and he made a joke about “building a testimony” and it got me to thinking that, in the way we commonly think of it, I don’t HAVE a testimony.  What I mean by that is this: I have no great story about how God pulled me out of dark times and riotous living and picked me up when I was at the end of my rope, thereby showing His great mercy and love.  In a way, one might consider this to be an evangelical handicap; who is going to be inspired by the awesome love of God in a life that He DIDN’T evidence so dramatic a change?

I’m sure nobody would actually say that in conversation, but let’s face it, the attitude is there.  We like dramatic, hell-defying stories.  That’s what strengthens faith and builds churches, after all.

But as I was driving home with this thought on my mind, it also caused me to consider that I DO have a pretty significant testimony.  The key is, I’m not the focus of it: My parents are.

The testimony that I think my past most clearly shows, given an outward look, is not the grace of God towards someone who jumped off the cliff’s edge of morality, only to be caught by God before crushing themselves against the rocks of Hell, but of someone who never made the jump, not through any act of his own virtue, but from that of a man and a woman who were determined to keep him from doing so, and by the grace of God given to them, succeeded.

Trust me, the lack of big, dramatic events of sin and moral crisis in my past is through no act of my own.  Growing up, even beyond my college years I had times when left to myself, things would have gotten pretty bad.  I have things in my past that I will not discuss here, not because they are terrible acts of wickedness, but because they were terrible acts of disrespect and disregard towards my parents, and it is to my shame that they are there.  But despite those times of rebellion against them, my parents strove always to raise me in an uncompromisingly godly manner.  Not only did they suffer the occasionally shocking times of disrespect on my part for their efforts, but they have had to put up with the scorn and mocking of friends, family and others who felt they were “too strict” as parents, in some cases even going so far as to accuse them of being the cause of rebellion on account of this strictness.

I’m going to stand up and be counted as saying that this is absolutely not the case.  I was not raised in a strict, legalistic home.  But I was raised in one that held strictly to the idea that God and sin must never be taken lightly.  I never rebelled against my parents because they were strict.  I rebelled because I hold within myself the same sin nature as every other man and at various times I desired to act upon it.  It was not strictness that spurred me on, no; it was strictness that held me back.  I thank God that my parents did not listen to myself nor the people around them with regards to this matter, because if they had, I have no doubt that I would now be telling you quite a different testimony, one about how I WAS saved from the brink of Hell, assuming that I wouldn’t have fallen in.

If my testimony is anything, it is a testimony to the grace God will give to parents who determine to live their lives and rule their households according to Joshua 24:15: “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  As Adam and Eve fell though they had the heavenly Father for their parentage, this is no guarantee that children will grow up to honor God.  But I do think that it would result in fewer “dramatic” testimonies,and that’s not a bad thing at all.