The Blessing of a Simple Testimony: A Letter to My Daughter

On Saturday afternoon, we had the great joy of seeing our oldest daughter baptized, and my husband had the great honour of being the one to carry it out. Over the past while, as she was working on writing out her testimony, she expressed the concern that what she had to say about how she came to know Jesus was "boring". Here are my thoughts for her, and for any of you who struggle with the same feeling:

My dear daughter,

I want to say, first of all, how happy your daddy and I are that God has reached into your life and called you to be his own daughter, that he is passing the faith he has given us on to the next generation. It is a joy for us to witness and participate in your baptism, and to call you not only daughter, but now sister as well!

I know that you have struggled with the feeling that your testimony is somehow lacking, somewhat boring. I understand because I, too, have a simple testimony. I remember praying "the sinner's prayer" (many times, actually) at the age of 5 or 6, and I really can't remember a time before that when I did not believe the Word of God and his saving gospel to be true. While I've had struggles (don't we all?!) and times of both lesser and greater growth, I still cannot point to a time in my life when I was not a Christian. And so there have been many times over the course of my life when I've heard or witnessed a testimony that involved great amounts of time and sin and struggle and fireworks, and I've wondered to myself why I couldn't have something more "interesting" to give as an answer to the question, "How did you come to follow Jesus?"

But the thing is, dear daughter, that there is great blessing in having such a straightforward testimony! You see, no matter how it comes and how short or long it takes, every single person who comes to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour has experienced the greatest miracle a human being ever could. Regardless of how it comes about on the surface, each and every instance of salvation is the raising of a dead person to eternal life, and that is nothing to sneer at! There is nothing simple, boring, uninteresting or weak in such a powerful working of God!

What's more, those who are called when young have the blessing of being spared the hardship of going through years of living in a fallen world without the wisdom, comfort, forgiveness and promises of God's word, without the power of the Holy Spirit, and without the assurance that in the end, all will be put right and we will live with God in a world without sin, pain, grief and toil.

Your daddy and uncle have testimonies of the more "spectacular" variety, I know. But I also know that I speak for them both when I tell you that they would far rather you have a testimony of simple childhood faith. They would not wish on you any of the hardship, struggle, sin and heartbreak (and it's enduring consequences) that carried them to Jesus at last, even though they can now rejoice that these means brought them to Jesus.

Please know that if we seem to rejoice and exult more over the stories of those whom God has saved out of deep rebellion and rank sin than over the small child who never really knows anything other than Jesus' saving work to be true and perseveres into adulthood with steady faith (and no criminal record), then it is not God's work in those simple testimonies that is deficient, but rather our inability to grasp the gloriousness of them. Fascinating stories are wonderful, and it is amazing to see how God can take people from the darkest circumstances and greatest rebellion--or hardened self-righteous law-keeping--and turn them into a people for his praise. But the rejoicing in heaven is not quieter over those whom God brings to himself through the simple means of the faithful instruction of imperfect parents who desperately need that same grace. And our rejoicing should not be quieter either. After all, there are no guarantees of salvation for those raised in a Christian home. And there is no greater heartache for a Christian parent than to see the child they've loved and taught and pointed to Christ throw it all away and run the other direction. Rest assured, as your parents pray and trust that God will persevere you to the end, we rejoice in the simplicity of your testimony, because it is God's kindness to you, and his kindness to us as well!

So do not disparage the brief simplicity of your path to salvation. For indeed, it is not brief. It goes all the way back to God's choosing of you before the foundation of the world and his loving predestination of you for adoption as his daughter. It is not simple, for it required nothing less than the blood of God's only begotten son, Jesus Christ. And it is not boring, for it is the purpose of our holy God's will, to the praise of his glorious grace.

May his simple, miraculous, powerful saving of you from your early days give you many, many years to run from sin, know God's forgiveness, grow in grace, endure hardship with joy and peace, praise God for his blessings, and lead many others to him, whether their stories will be incredibly dramatic or just the simple tale of a mother who faithfully showed our Saviour to her children and her children's children.

We love you very much and look forward with great anticipation to what God will do with your lifetime of walking in his ways by the power of his Spirit, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus!

Love,
Mommy

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The "simple" testimony of a 9-year-old (but precious words to her mother, her father and her God):
"I am growing up in a Christian family, so ever since I was little, my parents had been teaching me about God. They read me and my siblings the Bible, teach us from the catechism and talk to us about Jesus. I realized that I was a sinner and was separated from God, but that he made a way for us to be with him by sending his son Jesus to die in our place. I read the Bible and looked at my life and believed it was true. I wanted to be baptized because Jesus says to in the Bible and I wanted to be identified with him."