God continually puts individuals in my path, to whom I believe He desires I touch through my personal testimony. I firmly believe in the notion that your testimony should precede your witness, meaning: the joy and light of Christ within you, should precede you, thus drawing those toward you, with whom God intends you to share.
There has been a person in my life whom I believe is as such, in fact I realized a while back how our lives somehow seem to mirror one another. I’ve had to decide in which moments the Holy Spirit wanted to do the talking and in which moments to show my heart. This person has asked me how it is I understand them so well. I sat on this, trying to figure out the better way to answer because honestly, there were two versions of the truth: one from which I operate in the Spirit and the other drawing from life experience. I first offered the spiritual explanation to which I received nothing in response. I was then moved to share what was an outpouring from my heart, to which the person did respond and thanked me. I’m not sure what exactly they were thankful for but after I reread what I wrote, I found it quite interesting.
Below is what I shared, and if this helps anyone else understand what God can and will do, and what he WANTS to do, when you’re staring at a mess…I pray it moves another person closer to revelation or understanding:
I have walked through much in life – so much that really nothing shocks me, at least not for long. The difference perhaps between me and other people may be that through it all, I paid close attention and documented it along the way.
I internalized my pain for so long that these things through which I crossed, I grew to know so intimately because I was bound to them but I never allowed them to truly define me.
I lived through them and now I allow GOD to live through them, meaning I know he let these things happen in my life to be used for the greater good. The moment I came to that realization, I accepted that they’d occurred and that they didn’t belong to me, but God. I became the fruit of his labor. It is now my responsibility to set it free to benefit others. If that is my one contribution to this world before He takes me home, then I am completely fine with that because I have relinquished my life to him to do with what He pleases. It is the most freeing thing in the world and I pray you’ve experienced our God on that level! ~Stacey R. Louiso, February 17, 2014