You attend every Sunday school class, signed up for every retreat offered, and know the order of the books of the bible like the back of your hand. You grew up with personalized bible covers and wore shirts that said "My lifeguard walks on water". You were characterized as the stereotypical christian. While not a bad thing by any means, some of us including myself, only saw ourselves as this persona. We grew up in homes that played Christian music and we were baptized in our tweens. While at the time thinking that our outwardly commitment to Christ was awesome, growing up we started to doubt that. The older we got the more people we met and the more testimony we heard. We heard rags to riches stories that inspired us, made us cry, and gave us an opportunity to thank Jesus for His goodness. Just a side note, none of these events or emotions I'm explaining are wrong, they're great! We should be inspired by the work of God in others lives. However theres a point when it becomes dangerous to our self-worth and value. As we hear others testimonies we start to compare and measure them up to ours. We start to rank them on who's story was the most "impactful" and who's story produced the most tears. If we find that our friends testimony by the "christian testimony standards" is "cooler" than ours we start to downplay Gods work in their life. We start to offer up their past un-righteousness so we can look more righteous before God. We compare, judge, and ultimately make our "testimonies" a competition. Throughout this process we put the attention on ourselves and our story telling ability and less on the one who wrote the story. God is the one who orchestrates every trial and triumph we face. Without him we wouldn't have a testimony, literally! We need to start living a life where we care less about our story and more about our great God who sought us out for us to have a story.

Now that we know how easy it is to fall into this trap of comparison, we can better understand that its truly not about us. Whether you grew up in a bible thumpin home or a broken family, every story matters to God. Its not about us and what we did to come to know God but about how He chose us to become his children. Our stories are reflections of His selflessness as he died on the cross. Our testimonies are accounts that Jesus makes it easy for us to come home. Testimonies were never meant to be about what we've done but about the one who did everything for us. Despite the "coolness" or "not coolness" of our stories, God calls us his sons and daughters. He chose you and me to be image-bearers of his goodness. So lets hold onto the promise that God holds on tightly to each one of his children. Lets live a life where we believe that our story matters to the one who created it.