“We don’t put our business in the street.” I heard that often growing up. Maybe you heard that too. Or perhaps it was, “We don’t air our dirty laundry.” Whatever the variation, the message was clear: sharing too much was a no-no. There are some things we just don’t talk about. What will people think if we share that?
So, you got a messy backstory? Okay. Who doesn’t? I know I do, but I was content for years with looking like I had it all together. I didn’t want or need folks looking at me thinking, oh, she did that? But, honey, I was messy boots, in a closet overflowing with junk, from a life that God still chose to redeem.
I was saved by grace through faith over 20 years ago, and I just shared my testimony publicly a few days ago. No, seriously. Like this past weekend.
It’s not that I never actually “shared” my testimony before. I did. Well, kind of. I just didn’t give details. No one actually knew what I was saved from. I gave the quick and clean version of my testimony, instead of the quick and dirty. I wasn’t about to share the dirty. Oh no, they weren’t ready for the dirty. And I wasn’t ready for anyone to know how dirty I was. But God didn’t save us, so we could keep it to ourselves. We can’t help lead others to Christ by being mum about what He delivered us from.
When the Apostle Paul admonishes the church in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, he reminds them from whence they came. He goes in. He calls a spade a spade, and punctuates it in verse 11 with, “And such were some of you…” Take a sec to go back and look at that list. Paul covered all the bases. Everyone can identify with one of those labels, and some folks (like me) can check off several. Yes, I know, “idolater”, “adulterer” and even “greedy” sound bad, but if that’s what you were, that’s what you were. Were is past tense.
Who are you now, though? Paul continues by telling the Corinthians (and us) that we “...were washed,…sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God,” when we accepted Christ. All those labels that applied to us no longer stick, because we’ve been made clean by the blood of the Lamb. We’ve been forgiven. There is no shame in talking about who you used to be, because you are no longer condemned. You are justified by the work that Jesus Christ did for you on the cross, and He wants you to tell somebody!
In Luke chapter 8, after Jesus heals a man with many demons, the man who had been naked and living among tombs for a long time, is clothed and content to sit at Jesus’s feet. After all he’d been through, he probably never wanted to leave the tranquil feet of his Savior, and he begged Jesus to stay. But Jesus told him, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” (Luke 8:39)
Talk about a messy backstory! People had seen this fellow in his birthday suit. They knew all about him- where he camped out and what he had done. Yet, he was still commanded to go and share. He couldn’t hide from his past, because most had witnessed it anyway.
Maybe your story played out on stage for all the world to see, too. Or maybe you were quite good at hiding who you really were, like I was. It’s hard to leave the comfort of being at the Savior’s feet to go out into the streets and tell our business. But our dirty laundry has been made clean, and like the psalmist, we can say, “ “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul.” (Psalms 66:16)
