Testimony, not Biography

Tripod ^ | (undated) | Hans Zeiger

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Testimony, not Biography

http://scoutoath.tripod.com/id17.html

By Hans Zeiger

I once went to a car race where most of the cars were marked with the names and logos of their sponsors and drivers. Only one car stood out. This one was a sprint car, and it carried a simple message on the side: “Jesus is Lord.” As I watched the racers zoom around the track, I reflected on the difference between that car and all the rest.

The race is now but a flash of memory – the dust settled, the fans went home, perhaps the prize money was spent – but that one sprint car remains in my mind. It illustrates the difference between a biography and a testimony.

When the race of this life is over, it won’t be anything I’ve done or accomplished that will entitle me to the winner’s trophy. No number of words written, skills acquired, friends won or people influenced can justify me before the One Whose story this is.

Once I thought that this life is mine to do with as I find most conducive to greatness. I figured that life is a biography to be written, so that peer and posterity alike might look and say, there stands a mighty man. God would help me get to where I wanted to go, I thought.

But I could not ignore the challenge of Jeremiah 45:5. “Do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them.”

The question is not “Do you seek great things?” The question is “Do you seek great things for yourself?” Is my racecar like all the rest – marked with my own name? Or do I bear the very image of my Creator, Redeemer, and King? Am I pursuing greatness in the wimpy whereabouts of the weak, or am I acting on the reality that all greatness that ever shall be is already owned for eternity in the high halls of Heaven?

If what the Bible says is true, there need not be any question about how I should spend my moments in this little life. If Jesus saved me, there’s no point in living for any other cause but the Gospel. If Jesus is Lord, He’s already given us answers to the hard questions, solutions to the impossible problems, assignments to the disciples. My favorite Bible verse is Micah 6:8 – “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

To tap the infinite resource of glory’s realm is success beyond the treasuries of Gates and Buffett, power above the office of Bush, influence more than Hollywood and New York and Washington, lasting beyond the everlasting Gobstopper and the product warranty and the relevance of the morning newspaper. But the Christian’s is not chiefly success or power or influence or endurance as the world measures it. Nor should we much desire the world’s measures, knowing what greater joy flows from the mercy seat of God.

So what should be my desire? The writer of Psalm 84 had it right: “My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”