“Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.” – 1 Timothy 4:12
I hate to break it to you, but at the end of your life, it doesn’t matter what other people thought about you. It’s only God’s opinion that truly matters and has an effect on your eternity. If you live your life for people, you will only end up living out the calling that other people have for your life- instead of the calling that God has created only you to uniquely do. The apostle Paul knows this lesson better than anyone. As a man who went from persecuting the church to having a radical encounter with God, he lived on both sides of the spectrum- striving to please God and also contending with and striving to please man. He explained it like this:
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” – Galatians 1:10
Paul realized that we cannot serve two masters and that it was futile to worry about pleasing people first. We must choose who our master will be and Paul chose God.
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” – Matthew 6:24
Paul also realized that his testimony was everything to his life, because it was the evidence of his encounter with God. His life-lived in a transformed way was the inalienable evidence that he had met God, God had changed him from the inside out and that he was now not the same person that he had been before. He was not the same person that he was before he met God, after he had met God!
Isn’t that still true today? When someone has met God, the true God, the only God, the real God; they can never be the same. That is how amazing God is. Our testimony is our own personal story of who were were before meeting Jesus Christ and who we are after our encounter with Christ. A testimony is a powerful and beautiful story because it is the revelation of how God pursued each of us in His own way, uniquely fit to our personality and situation. No two testimonies are identical because there are no two people in this world who can live out an identical life or have an identical personality. Our walk testifies of the goodness of God and also proves His perfect existence. That is why consistency in our walk is so extremely important to continually prove the love and work of God in your life.
“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.” – Philippians 3:12
We must walk in the power of God as a Christian and live and walk out a set free life. If we continue in bondage or return to the same bondage that we were saved from after meeting God- our testimony is not effective for drawing others to Christ. That is how Christians get labeled as hypocritical. It takes a lot of faith to walk out the Christian life in a way that is pleasing to God. We cannot worry about how it will look to others. We cannot always please those around us. We strive to live in peace with our brothers and sisters. Sometimes (dare I say almost always) God will call us to do something that is counter-culture, edgy and outside of our comfort zone. That’s because God operates in the impossible! That is where He is taking us to achieve great things. Within His realm and with His power, we are able to accomplish all that He has for us. We should not fool ourselves to think that we can ever be perfect- only one is perfect and that is God. However, we should press on towards the goal and the high calling that Christ has given us.
Amen!
Lifted Vision Ministry 