Blacking Out While Telling Your Testimony

Today in Sunday School we had the privileged of hearing the incredible ways God has loved and directed certain people in our church. My heart has a longing and hunger to know everyone's story. God is so great. The time was so encouraging and definitely a great way of glorifying God. When I get ready in the morning for work God gratefully calls to mind the first catechism question. I think, "What is the chief end of man?" And then I tell myself "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." I am eternally grateful that God puts these thoughts in my mind, because it encourages me that He is changing my heart. I was reading our "Words of Assurance" in the bulletin this morning and it read from Romans 5, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him." The incredible thing as I read this passage was how inordinately beautiful I think it is. The gospel of Christ is beautiful and I never could have seen it that way without God's grace. I never saw the beauty of the gospel before I gave my life to Christ. I never imagined I would ever think it truth, much less, "beautiful." I stood up to share some of my testimony and immediately I began to shake. I remember bits and pieces of what I said but am fairly sure that anxiety can "black you out." For the life of me I am not sure if I said everything that I wanted to say or was clear about the things I did say, so I will continue here. One thing I thought of that makes His work in me so incredible is that not only do I remain clean and sober, I am forced to deal with reality full force in the face. I can't numb it. I can't take a break from it with a beer or a joint. Reality was something I never could have handled without God, as evidenced by my past. Reality was something that had hurt me and I never wanted to return to again. Now, I can not run away from it or I will most definitely lose my life. I have to say that it does make life hard many times. It can even cause me to resent people who are able to "take a load off" and escape from the stressors and reality of life. At the same time I am broken when I see my friends who manage to escape from their entire lives with drugs and alcohol. They are completely missing life and never giving themselves the chance to think about the ultimate of important things in life: God. Something else I will mention here regarding what God has done in my life is what He has done with my heart. I could never have fathomed that my heart was capable of loving all the people it does. Not until I committed to a church did I realize that I had finally given God the opportunity to increase the size and capability of my heart. I have a love for the people in my church that is not from me. I boast in this in Christ sometimes because the change is a marvel to me. I ponder it and roll it around in my head. My old heart never could have fathomed that it would ever be capable of so much love; it was not big enough. It was so small in comparison and much of what love I did have in my heart I wanted to focus on me, me, me. I couldn't get enough love from others or myself. It never felt full. It had not been miraculously changed by Christ. I hope that 10 years down the line my heart is formed more and more by Christ. As much as I may boast in a change I know too well the selfishness and stubbornness that still resides there. Embarrassingly enough, I know it so well that at times I have even feared the changes that God is doing in me because I feared that I would lose myself. I actually feared that my heart would be so changed that it would forget about saving some love for me. So I am aware of the sad struggle that can creep up in my life even now. God loves me so much more than I even know how to love myself. All I need to do is look upon my past to see that there was no other way in this world to love myself other than losing my life to Christ. I had tried everything. I had left no wordly ways of self love unturned. As I sit in church thinking about Romans 5 I am humbled to realize that my sinful nature is still alive and crafty. Matthew 25 "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done."