Sometimes all it takes to make someone uncomfortable is to ask about their faith, or how they came to know Christ.
And yet, that is one of the most essential starting points of truly knowing someone who calls themselves a convicted follower of Jesus — when you can see the fruits of repentance in their life.
Some faithful pastors still dare to preach the hard sermon of the “scandal of grace,” but many of us keep our eyes, ears, and mouths sealed by what I call the syndrome of perfectionism. It is similar to being “gifted”: everyone on the outside may see the high abilities, but only the person living with it truly knows the conditions and comorbidities they must manage in secret.
Sharing our testimony can carry deep, even therapeutic, results for the soul. Sometimes it is the very thing that sets us free. Some believers are ready to speak out the good news; others may still struggle, walking through a sanctification process that makes the heart question, “Am I truly saved?” This is why I treasure Proverbs 4:18:
“But the path of the righteous is like the dawning light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
(Funny enough, this reminds me of our college years — that age when we crawl on our quatro patas toward the temptations of our flesh, ready to worship ourselves in the humanistic temple of knowledge and forget the omniscience of God.)
And yet, it was precisely there — in my “Egypt” — that God allowed me to see my misery as a human being compared to His perfect holiness, despite the flaws and frustrations I saw growing up in religion itself. Being the first “redneck” on both sides of my family to make it not only into college but into one of the most prestigious federal institutions in a developing country made me realize that God was not joking when He said He would do it for the glory of His own name. I knew it in my heart, even when others suspected otherwise. He knew me when others could only see a small spectrum of the Spirit that He was regenerating in me during that season.
Growing up in church doesn’t mean much by itself, because the Bible says God already reveals Himself through nature (Psalm 19:1). Either in my first semester of college, or around 19 years old, I began to see glimpses of God’s truth in Anthropology as a social science — even though it was, at the same time, a human testimony of our idolatry (Romans 1:23).
I think around 23, the clue became clearer. And by 25, I finally understood why:
“It is the glory of man to discover things through science, but the glory of God to conceal them.” (Proverbs 25:2)
By then, my life was already entering its second chapter.
Being born again does not always look like speaking in tongues or emotional experiences. Some people find those expressions far more interesting than salvation itself — the actual gift. Many brothers and sisters love to play with the wrapping paper around the big gift. Sounds familiar, right? Who hasn’t enjoyed the gift wrap as a child more than the gift inside? It takes a mature brother or sister to gently remind the child of the real treasure. How much more should we do that for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are still in their spiritual toddler years, while we claim to be the older siblings?
My salvation was a gift from God after He broke the yoke of my pride and self-sufficiency, allowing me to see my flaws beyond the perfect image I held of myself in comparison to the “outsiders” whom God also intends to save.
Shame can work in two ways: toward condemnation or toward genuine repentance. The difference between Judas and Peter is that one carried the image of the calling until his death sentence, while the other discovered along the way that there is no other way but Christ.
So when the walk gets heavy, we need each other as the church of Christ — forgiving as we want to be forgiven, carrying the marks of Christ daily, whether we work in visible earthly careers or in invisible heavenly callings. What truly matters is whether the Spirit of God confirms in our hearts that we are children of God.
Let us fulfill our holy calling together, Church.
V31 Ministry 