You just couldn’t shake it. Shame and guilt weighed you down like a dead body strapped to your back. No matter how many times you were told that God loves and accepts you just the way you are, you couldn’t believe it. That kind of grace was unfathomable, unthinkable, unbelievable.

How does someone feel so low that there’s no getting out of the hole they’ve dug? How does a soul see beyond the wrong they’ve done or was done to them? How does a pierced heart heal?

Maybe you grew up in a home with angry outburst, violent arguments, alcohol/drug-induced mayhem, manipulation or many other vices, and you feel stuck because you’re repeating the cycle.

You’ve heard about Jesus and His redeeming power (Ephesians 1:7 ESV, Colossians 1:20-22 ESV) yet you feel God could never forgive you for all you’ve done.

You’re not alone. Many of us at some point in life felt as if we’ve done too much for God to forgive us. But praise be to God, because our story isn’t His story.

In your broken on the verge of a nervous breakdown state, God will place you in an uncomfortable situation where you will sit down with a Pastor. As you sobbingly tell all that you’ve done, the Pastor will place their loving arms around you and say, “now, let me tell you what I’ve done.”

The Pastor pulls back the curtain on their own dark past followed with the subsequent unfolding of forgiveness, redemption, deliverance and healing from Jesus.

As you sit and listen to the Pastor, you’re thinking…. wow, this pastor had done everything that I’ve done and more. And if God could forgive him and he could be a Pastor, then God could forgive me too.

That is the power of our story. The Bible tells us, “And they have conquered him{Satan} by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” Revelation 12:11 ESV.). Christ’s blood is the exemplary cause of our victory!

The words “testimony” and “to testify” in a spiritual sense mean to tell how you came to Christ or to speak about a specific work that God has done in your life. It’s not hearsay but a verbal display of what you experienced firsthand. Your testimony is your story. 

As you sit with a Pastor who isn’t ashamed of his story—who’s not afraid to talk about his past—you will be able to see healing, deliverance, forgiveness, grace-filled power of Jesus Christ up close and personal.

Your story is living proof of Jesus’ redemptive power here on earth. When we’re not ashamed of our stories but tell how God redeemed our deepest, darkest, dirtiest places, we give hope to desperate sojourners who feel all alone. Suddenly, Jesus isn’t just a man in a book or a face in a painting. He is real.

Father God, help me to never be ashamed to tell my story but use what You’ve done in my life to help other people see Jesus.

PEARLStoPONDER: The outcome of telling your story isn’t as bad as what you envision.

2 Timothy 3:16-- All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Acts 10:38-- How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

Colossians 1:13-- He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Galatians 5:1-- For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

John 8:32-- And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5-- Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵ For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

Romans 3:23-26--For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.