TESTIFY OF GOD’S GOODNESS
This week, American athlete, Sydney McLaughlin, smashed the world record in the 400-meter hurdles and the new Olympian champion wasted no time to testify of God’s goodness to the world. Fresh off the track, she posted on her Instagram account: “My faith was being tested all week. From bad practices, to 3 false start delays, to a meet delay. I just kept hearing God say, “Just focus on me”. Even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it doesn’t seem possible. He will make a way out of no way. Not for my own gratification, but for His glory. I have never seen God fail in my life. In anyone’s life for that matter. Just because I may not win every race, or receive every one of my heart’s desires, does not mean God had failed. His will is PERFECT. And He has prepared me for a moment such as this. That I may use the gifts He has given me to point all the attention back to Him.”
In Jesus’ time, there was another woman with a compelling story to tell and she, too, did not hesitate to share it. John 4 recorded that this nameless woman met Jesus when she was at a well to draw water. He had found her alone because presumably, she had picked that time of the day to avoid running into other villagers – especially the women who loved to talk. Yet, she had a riveting conversation with Jesus, after which, she abruptly left her water jar and right off the bat, told everyone in town about Him.
Here’s what’s noteworthy about her: she was a woman with a checkered past that supplied fodder for town gossip, but she didn’t keep silent about her encounter with Jesus. Though she had had a string of short-lived relationships with men before, she didn’t wait for Jesus to first prove His trustworthiness. She also didn’t wait till the next village town hall meeting for a platform to speak. Or till she was finally invited to a proper dinner where at last, she would join polite dinner conversations and talk about Jesus.
Strikingly, she also didn’t wait till her messy life was all cleaned up and she became an accepted member of society before she ran into town with her new ‘tell-all’ that literally became the talk of the town. In fact, right after she met Jesus, she ran back to her village and told everyone who’d listen to her about Him (v28).
“Only God can turn a mess into a message, a test into a testimony,
a trial into a triumph, a victim into a victor. “
(Anonymous)
God made us for meaningful, horizontal relationships that are life-giving and uplifting. The quality of our relationships are always almost as good as the conversations that we have or don’t have with each other. Testimonies give glory to God, and are personal stories that bring encouragement to the hearers. Among believers, they also stir up faith.
Personal testimonies renew conversations, deepen connections and enrich relationships. Our testimonies are not meant to be kept in Christian echo-chambers, because they are stories of hope for all people.
What is your story today? We may not be Olympians or gold medalists, but we can all identify with what McLaughlin shared about having a trying week, and not having all our desires fulfilled. Hers is a human story, not a story about Olympians. We don’t rank God’s goodness according to the world’s standards of achievement and recognition. Rather, we find God’s goodness when a heart patient finds the will-power to return to the pool and experiences improved stamina each time. We see God’s goodness when we can no longer run like before yet we can take long walks with a troubled friend. We are touched by God’s goodness when we misjudge situations, take painful detours yet find His hand guiding us back to Him.
We can be sure that when the unnamed woman went back into town after she met Jesus, she had to stop people in their tracks, interrupt gossip circles, jolt many out of their hum-drum existence to start a new conversation with seven words: “He told me everything I ever did!”
Who is your village? While we may not have a million followers that McLaughlin has on her Instagram account, there are people outside our households who are our ‘village’. God has placed them in our lives for a purpose. They are the neighbours who invite us over for meals, the baristas who know our coffee preferences, the eatery owners working hard to keep their businesses afloat, the worried faces sitting around us in the patient waiting room, the parents we meet daily outside the school gate, the coworkers we rarely see in person anymore, the elderly neighbours who live alone, and the unmarried ones and single parents living quietly among us.
Within the village, is also our family – the people we have blood relations with. Psalm 145:4 emphasized the importance of sharing our personal testimonies with our immediate families, from generation to generation and across hierarchies – from the younger generation to the older generation and vice versa. In particular, we are not to hide our faith from our own children.
Few of us will ever take part in any sports, but all of us have a race to run: it’s the race to push back the despair and hopelessness that is silently drowning some people in a pandemic-stricken world; the race to uncover the hidden sadness and isolation of people in a society that is happier to text than to talk; and the race against running out of time to share our stories for we never know when our time is up.
Our testimonies are stories of our personal experience of God’s goodness. Our lives are our pulpits. The newly-crowned track and field Olympian may be far away in the highly restricted Tokyo Olympic Village but followers instantly read her testimony on Instagram. The nameless woman who met Jesus turned the gossip mill on its head with her testimony and changed the lives of many in her village. Both did not sit around waiting for the ‘right time’ or the ‘right opportunity’, but seized the opportunity to share their testimonies.
Have you kept the goodness of God in your life a closed book? Or are you keeping your testimonies on the conversational back burner out of a fear of criticism or of offending people’s sensibilities?
Don’t delay giving God the glory when you have a new testimony of His goodness in your life. For all you know, your village could be just one conversation away from discovering the goodness of God and believing that for themselves too.
