A short thought inspired by my friend Darren…

The other day, my friend Darren posted this on Facebook:

”If you ever feel the need to exaggerate your testimony, or exaggerate what God has done for you in order to bring Him glory, you need to question whether it was Him or you in the first place! Do you really want the reality of God or are you happy to continue exaggerating? Jer 29:13…

My reply was this:

Agreed. I also recall the painful times in our old Youth Group back in the early 80’s, when they went round the circle asking each person for a testimony. I never thought that was right because that pressured people into making things up. Most of the time, my testimony would have been something like, ‘God’s doing a deep work in me but I can’t describe it’, which wouldn’t have gone down too well! And sometimes, just the miraculous Presence of God in my life all the time was a constant and so I didn’t really see anything particularly noteworthy of testimony because for me that was the norm. Nowadays, of course, I would not testify publicly – well, except in my blog – because nowadays the reception has shifted to the sad reality that most Evangelical Christians feel the need to challenge everything and try to prove it’s not of God or something. Judging when a testimony would only be ‘pearls before swine’ is an acquired skill! 😁