Things They Don't Tell You When You Follow God Closely — Your Testimony Will Require Your Worst Chapter

This is post 11 in Things They Don't Tell You When You Follow God Closely, a weekly Sunday series from Alpha VI Battalion.

They Did Not Tell You the Dark Chapter Has a Purpose

The chapter of your life you are most ashamed of. The one you have edited out of the version of your story you tell in public. The one that, if people knew, you are not sure they would still be in the room with you. The one you wish had never happened and have spent significant energy trying to outrun.

That chapter is the most valuable part of your testimony.

Not because the things that happened in it were good. They were not. Not because God caused them. He did not. But because the person who is sitting in that same darkness right now, the one who believes their chapter disqualifies them from anything God could want to do with their life, will only believe you when you tell them there is a way out if you have actually been in the dark they are in.

A Polished Testimony Reaches Polished People

If your story is cleaned up, curated, and presented without the actual cost of where you came from, it will reach people who did not need much reaching. People who are basically fine and needed a nudge in the right direction.

The person who is not basically fine, who is in the version of the dark that nobody talks about in church, who has done things that make them believe they are beyond what God can work with, that person does not need a highlight reel. They need someone who came out of the specific dark they are in and can tell them with authority what is on the other side.

Your worst chapter is your authority to reach them.

God Wastes Nothing

Every mistake. Every season of destruction. Every choice that cost you and the people around you more than you ever intended. Every rock bottom that you did not think had a bottom until you hit a lower one. God wastes none of it. He does not cause it but He redeems it. He takes the evidence of what you survived and makes it the proof that someone else needs to keep going.

The enemy used those chapters to break you. God is using them to build something that can reach people the enemy thought he had permanently.

Your Shame Becomes Someone Else's Permission

When you tell your story honestly, including the parts that cost you everything, you give someone else permission to believe that their story is not the end. That the chapter they are in is not the last chapter. That the God who reached into your specific kind of darkness can reach into theirs.

Stop hiding the chapter that God is going to use most.

Stay in it, Light Bringer.

Continue Reading in This Series

Previous: God Will Promote You Out of Comfort

Next: Humility Is Not a One-Time Decision

Also read: It's Not Believe or Burn. It's Guilty But Rescued.

Wear What You Believe

Your story is not over. The Blood Bought Tee carries the declaration of what it cost and what it produced. Or wear the redemption with the He Still Rose Tee. Browse the full Spiritual and Inspirational Collection.

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