Thunderstorms and Change in the Air

It rained so many times today. The skies were absolutely dark in the direction ahead of me and I was driving  to a nearby town to pick up my brother. I called him and asked him if it was raining where he was. He assured me it was not and I hung up. A few moments later, it started pouring where I was driving.
It rained again when I missed my turn and took the back way to get my brother, this time a more gentle rain. My windshield looked like it was covered in tiny jewels.
Then it rained once I got into town and began helping for my mom's program. We moved everything for the reception upstairs into the cafeteria just in time before a huge storm hit. The lights flickered and the windows shook and we could barely see out of the windows.

My roommate-last-year loves the rain because to her, it is God telling her he's got everything under control and he knows what he's doing. I am not sure if I am remembering right, but I am pretty sure it rained at her grandfather's funeral, and that is why it means so much to her. It was like God was saying, "Hey, I've got this..." Recently, butterflies have been telling me the same thing. Rain often still gets to me in a beautiful way, but God has been using butterflies, too. For example, over the weekend I was nervous about a friend's spiritual life. I was putting my insurance information back into my glove compartment, half of my body in my car and half out, when I glanced out the windshield. Right as I looked up, a gorgeous blue butterfly flitted by. And God said, "Hey, I've got this..." 

I know it sounds a bit sacrilegious to an American Christian to rely on "signs and visions," although the Bible tells us that in the end days, people will prophesy and see visions and dreams (Acts 2:17). However, I know that God is a patient lover who is pursuing his bride, the church, both corporately and individually. And I know that one of the ways God pursues us is with things that have meaning to us, like the right song at the right time. Or a kind word right when we need it. Or a butterfly.

Believe me, God is here. And active. And he is working. We just have to listen.

From Flickr - US National Archives

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Your Testimony

Look at your testimony, your story of faith. Describe it. Look at where you've been and how far you've come. What has God taught you?

Too often we have this mindset that the only good testimonies are the ones where we can see some spectacular sign of God's immediate and powerful work. We live like the only good testimonies are the stories of desperate, wicked sinners being radically and emotionally changed into God-fearing, loving saints.

...Wait a minute! Aren't we all desperate wicked sinners who need God? And aren't all Christians radically changed by God? And aren't all of us called to radical obedience and crazily giving everything back to God and letting him love others through us?

Well, yeah, actually. But we tend to play the comparison game, even when it comes to our testimonies. We say, "Oh, well, I accepted Christ when I was 6 and I've always lived in a Christian home and I never did drugs or slept around, so my life and testimony is boring" and we hear someone who lived an immoral life and who didn't listen to God until they were adults and have overcome such supposedly vast sins... And we think that their testimony is so much more important and special and influential than ours.

But the truth is that we are all sinners saved by grace through faith. My story is no more important or amazing than yours, because it's my story. It's what God said to me and did in me. Likewise with your story.

I see this in the two stories of changed lives we find in Acts 9:1-22 and in Luke 5:1-11. In Acts chapter 9, Saul is going to Damascus when God does something incredible. If you know the story, you know that a bright light shines down, Saul is blinded, and Jesus asks, "Saul, why are you persecuting me? ... I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." (v.4-6). It's a pretty amazing story. But God works in many different ways, and we see a slightly different faith story in Luke chapter 5. Jesus climbs into Simon Peter's boat and asks him to take the boat out a bit into the water so Jesus can preach from the boat. It is a seemingly ordinary move - a guy stepping into another guy's boat. Jesus called Peter, a simple, uneducated man who worked as a fisherman to follow him. And Peter didn't leave behind a life of massive, growth sin (in human standards), he left behind his own life. And he took up his cross and followed after Jesus. It changed his life.

So whether or not your testimony sounds "cool" or seems to compare with others' testimonies, it really doesn't matter. Because God has and is and will continue to work in your life. And God will use your struggles and your testimony for his glory. Because that's the purpose, that's the end result: That we are conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others.