I wrote the post below on May 7, 2020. A day after my unc’s bday and also the day the hospital called my grandmother to come say bye to him. He fought for another month and two days before God granted him entry to eternal life.
It took me awhile to log back in to this site but here we are. Although this entry is full of optimism for my uncle’s recovery, I trust and believe that he has received the ultimate healing being reunited with the maker. My prayers may not have been answered in the way I had hoped, but I still have a testimony that regardless of the outcome, God is in control.
Firsthand Testimonies Hold More Weight (May 7, 2020)
I want to write a personal letter of gratitude to Mark Batterson, author of Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge, a book which I am reading now. My sister-in-Christ Lillian gifted me this book last month and I decided to read it the 40 days leading up to my birthday. Little did I know these 40 days would be some of the more challenging of my almost 33 years.
My Uncle Joe has been in the hospital during a global pandemic which means no family visitation. We’ve had to, and to our luxury, rely on the nurses and a couple of family friends who work in the hospital to keep us connected to him, putting the phone to his ear so that we could pray for his healing. Needless to say, it’s been tough.
My uncle has been my road dawg since my birth. Just 16 years my senior, we’ve always been super close. He taught me how to cook and how to drive. He’s run to my rescue when I had issues at school, he’s taken me sneaker shopping for the new school year. He’s the one that I moved in with when I relocated to Atlanta, making that transition a much easier one. Our birthdays are nine days apart. We’re just connected.
So it’s no coincidence that as I’m learning how to go to war in intercession for my family that I would be given a book on the subject of circling your needs/desires in prayer. I felt charged at the beginning of the year to make consistent prayers. God showed me that in order for me to recognize change, I would need to be consistent in making my requests known to God and to not give up on praying for them until I saw them manifested. Then, I would remember these specific prayers were answered and give God the glory He is due.
In yesterday’s chapter Get a Testimony, day 32 of the 40 day prayer challenge, Batterson wrote something that resonated with me:
Nothing can compare to the power of first-person testimony. The most educated and erudite second-person testimony still can’t compare with a first-person witness!
I earnestly believe that believers of Jesus Christ have to endure suffering so that once we overcome and share our testimony, others will believe in Him as well, receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and gain the gift of eternal life. Faith is enhanced by the hearing of testimonies. Faith is put to work by the enduring of trials. We overcome those trials, we share how God brought us through and the cycle continues. Before you know it, a multitude of believers have formed because of the boldness of our faith.
Batterson mentions the Samaritan woman in the Bible who was totally transformed by a single encounter with Jesus at the well. This story is found in the book of John, chapter 4. After Jesus offered the woman living water and brought up some very specific details of her life, she ran to tell the people of a man who had to be the Messiah because He told her everything she’d ever done.
“She went back to her village and shared her testimony. That testimony sparked faith in those who heard, but their faith was second-hand faith. They needed their own encounter with Jesus, and that’s exactly what they got” (Draw the Circle, p178-179).
“Many of the Samaritans from that town believe in Him [Jesus] because of the woman’s testimony.” John 4:39
They, then went to find out about Him for themselves.
“They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.'”John 4:42
It’s one thing to see God do something great for someone else but it takes an encounter of your own to believe it for yourself. We hear stories of radical healing and think wow, God is good. But until He allows you or someone close to you to be touched by calamity, delivered and permitted to tell the story, it’s hard to believe on that level. Sure, we always say God is a miracle worker, that He has all power, and so on, but until we are forced to believe that He can do all things, our faith is not truly activated.
Even if we pray prayers of healing or deliverance for others, do we really go as hard as we would for our child or our sister, mother or father? Will we fast for our neighbor’s deliverance? Will we lay prostrate for the peace of Ahmaud Arbery’s parents? I pray that we do, but chances are we will add them to our prayers for a week or two and then resort back to prayers more close to home. God knows this about us and thus trusts us to endure hardships so that we can see the full extent of His power, His love, and increase our faith in Him so that we may cause others to believe.
I know God to be the master healer. I know Him to be the provider of everything that I need, and it will be my firsthand testimony that will lead others to Christ. I cannot hold back from sharing the testimony that will save your life. Your life has just as much value to me as my own. I share this gift of eternal life with you so that your thoughts can be eternal rather than temporary.
I want us to all see the bigger picture that God is clearly trying to show us. Possessions, our relationships, careers, they are all temporary. But when we invest in people, that is everlasting. Invest in someone by sharing your story so that they too can encounter life transformation and share their testimony. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Disclosednativeblog.com 