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What is my testimony? How are others influenced to believe about God when they read my blog or hear my words? It cannot be a matter of faking a good front – that is dishonesty. But what am I dwelling on?What is my underlying perception of reality that I paint? Am I only going part way by being hones about my feelings and struggles with my attempts at more self-disclosure?
Maybe that's it. I am trying to be honest in self-disclosure but I am not giving Jesus enough air time. When my testimony takes on the attributes of being clear and strong for God, others will be refreshed. I will speak of His love without hesitation. I have to admit, I am not doing that now.
When darkness and unbelief is in my heart it is manifested in my testimony. The answer is NOT in changing my testimony to sound more appropriate and in line with the rule; the answer is to have more light and faith and joy in my heart.
“Do not gratify the enemy by dwelling upon the dark side of your experience, but trust Jesus for help to resist temptation. If we thought and talked more of Jesus and less of ourselves, we should have much more of His presence.”
“When we make our Christian experience appear to unbelievers, or to one another, as one that is joyless, filled with trial, doubt, and perplexity, we dishonor God; we do not correctly represent Jesus or the Christian faith. We have a friend in Jesus, who has given us the most marked evidence of His love, and who is able and willing to give life and salvation to all who come unto Him....
“It is not necessary for us to be ever stumbling and repenting and mourning and writing bitter things against ourselves. It is our privilege to believe the promises of the Word of God, and accept the blessings that Jesus lives to bestow, that our joy may be full.” (RH 7-20-1886)
“We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus, to get out of” our narrow, self-focused, depressed view “of our own experience into abandoned devotion to Him.... Think of the meanness of the miserable faith we have” in contrast to what Jesus can do for us. “He can present us faultless before the throne of God, unutterably pure, absolutely rectified and profoundly justified. Stand in implicit adoring faith in Him.
“Jesus Christ wants our absolute abandon of devotion to Himself.... Our Faith must be built in strong emphatic confidence in Him.
“It is along this line that we see the rugged impatience of the Holy Ghost against unbelief. All our fears are wicked, and we fear because we will not nourish ourselves in our faith.” (My Utmost for His Highest 11-13)
The Spirit impressed me with these important messages of conviction and then led me to Eze. 37. This chapter is closely linked with 36 and is wonderful good news for all of us struggling these issues, with darkness in our hearts and a shell of external faith that is internally infected with subtle unbelief.
I, and most of the people around me, are very much like dry bones. We are devoid of very much spiritual vitality, we are in many ways disconnected with those around us and often confused inside. We are the whole house of Israel in verse 11 that feel like “our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.”
The wonderful message is, since we fit the description and we are also the ones who have profaned God's reputation with our sorry, weak testimony (chap. 36), then we qualify perfectly to have God do to us everything promised and described in both these chapters.
But one thing sharply caught my attention in 37:9. It is what I see as the “rugged impatience of the Holy Ghost” I had just read about in My Utmost. God is urgent when He says, “Prophecy to the breath, prophecy, son of man...” The Lord was speaking directly to me, urging me and reminding me that the words of my testfying become self-fulfilling prophecies to a great extent. This is why it is important to dwell largely on the goodness and beauty and power of God, not just my struggles and confusion.
I must be willing to be honest and open about myself, yes. But I must go beyond that and prophecy to the breath as well as to the bones. As shown in the first prophecy in this story, prophesying to the bones may result in wonderful reconnections, reconstruction and getting things back to their original functions. But their was still no life there in all these reassembled bodies. The prophecier must turn his attention beyond the reconstruction of our messed up lives to the Source of life itself.
And then I remembered the prophecy about me received twice over the last year or two and impressed deeply upon my heart each time. God's plan for me is along these very lines and described in 1 Sam. 10:6,7. “The Spirit of the Lord will come on you with power, and you will be acting like a prophet with them and will be changed into another man. And when these signs come to you, see that you take the chance which is offered you: for God is with you.”
For God is with me. That is the ultimate definition of joy, and the joy of the Lord is strength.
