Are we testifying or storytelling?

Php 3:13 I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

So many times I hear people give testimonies. They tell of who they were before God saved them, they talk of the bad things they have done, the misspent lives they lived. Normally these stories are told without any scriptures connected to it. What bothers me about this is that they call it “testifying”. This is not testifying. Testifying is when we tell people about the wonderful works of God. When we compare our lives to the wonderful things that God has done, our lives are not even worth mentioning. We “testify” with the hope that it would draw people closer to God, but I dare say that if that “testimony” does not include scripture, it cannot fulfil that purpose. Paul says he forgets what is behind, should we not do the same, and by telling people who you were, is that not remembering over and over what is behind? Why do I say that if you tell your story and there is no scripture with it, it is useless? It is nothing more than a story and has no power whatsoever to draw anybody closer to God. It can do nothing more for the hearer than stirring their emotions for a short while. There are no lasting spiritual affects. To prove my point, we need to look at what is it that causes lives to change. Is it interesting stories about other people’s lives that cause us to become God’s children, or is it something else? Well, according to scripture it is something else. 2 Tim 3:15 says that it is the Word that makes us wise unto salvation. 1 Cor 1:21 says that it pleased God to save people by the foolishness of preaching. Rom 10:17 says that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. I think scripture is pretty clear on the fact that no man will be saved if he did not hear scripture. Acts 1:8, 1:22, 4:33 and 1 Pet 5:1 speaks of people giving witness or a testimony and not one of them mention themselves, they speak of the Lord Jesus Christ and His suffering and resurrection. So when we testify, do not play around with it, make it worthwhile, testify about Christ, not about your past. In Acts 2 the people heard the men speak about the wonderful things of God and many were saved. Let us stop focussing on ourselves and draw people’s attention to a wonderful, loving, merciful God

We are like the Cedars of Lebanon

Psa 104:16 The trees of Jehovah are full, the cedars of Lebanon which He has planted;

We as Christians are like the Cedars of Lebanon. God has planted each one of us. No man who follows Christ is doing so because of his own will, but only because God wanted it so. Rom 3:10 says that no man seeks after God, and therefore no man can find God. It is God who seeks us out and then brings us to life and places us in right standing with Himself. In this whole process there is nothing that we do ourselves. Even our repentance unto salvation is a gift from God. Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The Cedars of Lebanon are not watered by any man, and they are growing on rocks. In like manner God waters us and cause us to grow, as we too are firmly planted upon the rock. It is God’s grace that saves us, even when we were His enemies and it is God’s grace that causes us to grow in Him. It is God’s grace that keeps us until we die or Jesus comes back, and even then we will experience God’s grace as He releases us from the bondage of this earthly sinful nature, these corrupted bodies. We have so much to be thankful for. Rejoice in the Lord for He is good. Live lives that show the joy of your salvation clearly to those around you. God is glorified and honoured most when we are satisfied in Him.

Let the pigs run off the cliff

I was reading that scripture today in Math 8:30-33 where Jesus chased the demons out of the one guy and they went into the pigs, which caused the pigs to run over the cliff. I started thinking about this and my train of thought went in a whole other direction in the end. We entertain sin in our lives and it is causing us to go over the cliff. The reward for sin is death and if we entertain sin, it is death that we will reap. The real question should probably be; “why do we see so many Christians today who are caught up in wrongful things? Why do so many Christians look the same as the world? Why is there no distinction?” We are called to be separate from the world, to be a peculiar people, to be different, but we aren’t. Why? Well, my personal opinion is this. Society has camouflaged sin. Over the years the devil has been very successful in hiding sin. If sin is not recognized, then sin do not have to be dealt with. So let me share with you how he has been doing this. We have been giving sin nice names so that it is not sin anymore. If it is not sin, we do not have to deal with it. We do not have to get rid of it. We do not have to send it over the cliff.

James 1:2 says that we should count it all joy when we fall into trials and tribulations. The beatitudes in Math 5 says that the people of God will be blessed, that means completely happy. There is no reason for any Christian to be unhappy. Luke 6:22-23 says you must leap for joy when things are going bad. Are we? Are we as happy as the Word tells us to be? No we are not. We see people committing suicide because life got to hard for them. We see people drinking pills to deal with depression. If the Word tells us that we should be happy when it is going bad, then it means we should be even happier when things are going well. So we are being disobedient to the Word when we are always moping around and feeling bad, and we call it depression. By calling it depression, we can drink a Prozac instead of repenting. We can get counseling instead of begging for forgiveness. We have an illness instead of sin. So we try to deal with it in a worldly fashion, instead of taking it to a merciful God. Being happy is a command, so it is a choice, not an emotional state. Renew your mind!

Gal 5:23 says that self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit. 2 Tim 1:7 says that God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of self-control. So a lack of self-control is a sin. But we go and call a lack of self-control an addiction. In that way we have a disease. We need help and we go to AA meetings, we use nicotine patches, we go to rehab, we do anything to deal with the “illness”, but we forget that we actually need to deal with the sin.

And so we can go on and on and on. Sin has been camouflaged and we are falling for it. Greed and materialism are called prosperity and is preached in nearly all of our modern day churches. Idol worship is called religion by the Roman Catholics. We watch movies with revenge instead of forgiveness, hate rather than love, we laugh at sinful acts and call it comedy instead of renewing our minds by not filling it with these things. By watching it, laughing at it and calling it entertainment, we condone it and we should not. We are in the world but not of the world. We should be different, not partakers, but shining lights in a dark and desperate world.

What are the sins in your life called? Are they camouflaged? Do you care for the pigs in your life? make a choice today to chase them over the cliff so that God might be honored and glorified through your life. If God is honored here on earth He will draw people to Himself through us. Do you not want to be used by God?