At the risk of being overly personal, I thought I’d post this little exercise that we did for our missions week this year. This is an edited version of the testimony I gave to the CY. It’s not an opportunity for pity or sympathy, rather it’s an example of God’s power doing “far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.”

“When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’ The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.”

I’d like to use this Psalm, Psalm 126, to talk about what God has done in my life. Like the author of this Psalm, I look back on my life and see great, good things God has done for me. He gave me Christian parents who raised me to know the Bible and who lived out its truths in love. He provided scholarships for me to attend university; He supplied good grades for grad school. He surrounded me with Christian friends and put me in a church where I heard the Gospel preached every week; He gave me opportunities to serve, such as the wonderful Bible studies with the college and highschool groups this year. These things might look like the results of hard work or part of Midwestern culture, but I wouldn’t have any of them without my Lord’s care. He has arranged every aspect of my life as lovingly as a gardener puts each plant in place.

Though I believe everything I just said, I don’t want you to have the wrong idea. If you want an image that sums up my life as a believer, think of a sidewalk. It’s hard, uneven, and painful to fall against. But it’s also full of cracks where grass is starting to push through.

Over the last two years, I’ve been seeing my sin more and more, and it feels like being body-slammed into a concrete slab. My life is a slow process of realizing how much I need Christ to satisfy me. This is good but painful. Most recently, during my senior year at university, events collided so that I was forced to confront the hardness inside me. I came back from a study abroad experience to an American culture where I was lonely for the friends I’d left behind. Soon after, I left a relationship that looked perfect to my community, and to crown it all, a close mentor left due to serious sin.

Those events forced me to confront the sins that remain in me despite Christ’s ongoing work. I saw that I’ve worshipped friends, manipulating them to satisfy my craving for relationship. I saw that I need to earn people’s approval, a need so strong that without an academic setting, where I normally satisfy that need, I felt naked. Even my relationship with my parents was only one more ploy to make me feel good about myself as I tried to earn their favor. I had perverted the good gifts God had given me to make them satisfy me in ways that only He should.

So at this point I’m not one of those “everything’s great” Christians. I’m raw from running into those sins that make my heart hard as concrete. I’m tired of relationships, and so more selfish than ever. Over this past year I worked in a restaurant, and I’d get angry at customers or coworkers for making simple requests. That’s only one example. Even though I take these sins to Christ and ask for His forgiveness, I doubt whether He actually hears me because I don’t feel it. Worship—public and private—feels empty. Though I know in my head that Christ’s love should satisfy me, I don’t live that way. I still work to be a good person in the hopes that in obedience or emotions I’ll finally find the fulfillment I need.

“Restore our fortunes, o LORD, like streams in the Negev! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”

In this last half of this Psalm, the author begs God to make his heart blossom like the desert, the Negev. Having looked back at God’s great works in the past, the author of the Psalm trusts that God can demonstrate His love again, even more powerfully in the future. He’s asking God for joy. Like the writer of this Psalm, I’m waiting for God to make the desert of my heart into a garden—to “restore to me the joy of Your salvation”, Psalm 51:12. It feels like a long wait. But I have hope—God has done great things for me. I’ve mentioned my family, friends, and school. Most importantly, though, His Son Jesus Christ died in my place, took my hard heart with Him, and replaced it with the fruit of His perfect life. Because of that, it’s only a matter of time until His love will make me completely like Him, satisfying me fully. Then I will be fully glad in Him.