What if I don’t have a dramatic testimony?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/something-needs-to-change-matthew-9-35-38/

Well, friends, we’re coming to the end of our this is my story sermon series that we’ve been in this summer, and I don’t know about you. For me, it’s been so encouraging to hear faith stories from some of our leaders here in the church, staff and elders, people I’ve known for a number of years. And it’s so refreshing to me to recognize what we have been saying from the pulpit each and every Sunday during this series is that God works today in much the same way that he worked in the past. He is still drawing people to himself.

He is still working to reveal himself to people so that people can enter into a relationship with him.

And it is neat to see the different means and methods and timelines that people have shared. If you missed any of those sermons from this summer, I encourage you to go back and to listen to it. But I want to just have you think about your own faith story. One of the benefits of hearing other people’s faith story is to reflect on our own and to say, well, I wonder what my faith story would be. And here’s the question for today.

What if you don’t have an overly dramatic faith story? What if you are like me, for instance, and you don’t have a conversion, say, similar to the apostle Paul, who we knew was persecuting Christians and trying to arrest them and get them in trouble? And then God revealed himself in this dramatic way to Paul, who was then Saul at that time. And you can read about this in acts, chapter nine. God met him on this road on the way to go persecute people.

God caused Paul to fall to the ground and revealed himself with a voice from heaven and this bright light. And it was just this dramatic before and after kind of testimony. My testimony is not like that. Maybe you can resonate with that and say, well, your testimony isn’t like that either. Or maybe your testimony isn’t like that of, say, someone like Joseph in the Old Testament, who had this dramatic rescue from all of these awful things that had happened to him in his life, and God somehow brought good from those difficult circumstances.

Maybe your testimony isn’t like that. Maybe your testimony is a little bit like mine, where I think the character, one of the characters that I tend to resonate with in scripture is someone like Timothy, who grew up in a home where his mother and his grandmother helped bring him to a place of faith. And from an early age, Timothy felt a calling on his life to follow God. And we don’t know all of the circumstances of Timothy’s life but it’s clear he had goddess godly influences in his life and that Timothy was seeking to follow those influences in a really amazing way.

That’s my story.

I had numerous people in my life from my family, my parents, my siblings, and my church youth group and all of those things. There’s so many things I haven’t done in my life. I don’t have a dramatic story, and maybe you don’t have a dramatic story. Here’s my encouragement to you is whatever your faith story is, is to recognize that God starts where we are. He doesn’t start with where he wants us to go.

He always starts with where you are today. And if he gave everybody the exact same testimony, well, that would not reflect the creativity of God and the wonder of his spirit, as God’s spirit draws us to himself. Here’s what I can say every single time. Every time that a person makes a profession of faith, that is a miracle. It’s a dramatic miracle.

We may not understand what a miracle that is, but it’s a huge miracle when a person, as Ephesians two, talks about, is dead in their sins and their trespasses, and their eyes are open to understand, I need a savior, and Jesus is that savior who is sufficient to save me and to rescue me and to make me right with God. That is so dramatic. It doesn’t matter all the other circumstances around that, but you’ve been brought from death to life, from darkness to light. God has adopted you into his family. That is significant.

Please don’t ever, ever underestimate the power of your story and the need to share your own story, your own faith journey with others. Maybe you’re just starting off on your faith journey. Maybe you’ve been following Jesus for a number of years. But whatever the circumstances of your life, God is always laying next steps in front of each of us, that he wants us to take that next step, and then he’ll reveal the next step after that as we take that first next step. But we don’t want to compare ourselves with others, because then that can cause us to feel either superior to others or inferior to others.

All faith stories are dramatic, and they’re miraculous. Only the spirit of God can draw a person to himself. So please never underestimate that. I’ll just close with one, Peter 315, which says to all of us who are followers of Jesus to always be ready, always to give an answer to anyone who asks, to give a reason for the hope that you have, what a miracle that is. I hope that you’ve been encouraged by this series as I have.

Let’s keep reflecting on the miracle of our faith stories. Thanks for joining us today.