We all have a past checkered with sin and failure. We all carry baggage with us into our relationship with Christ and those who come to faith later in life, often carry more burdens into communion with God. Liz Curtis Higgs knows this all too well.
“One of the consequences of coming to know Christ as an adult is an awareness of this past life. If you come to know Christ as my children did at an early age, they’ll be hard pressed to look back and say, oh boy, I remember the bad years I needed to be forgiven for. In some ways that’s wonderful.”
“When people say to me, I wish I had your testimony, I would say, so you mean you wish that you had run out of a burning building. It’s not really anything anybody wants. For those of us who that’s our story, gratitude is how we need to live every day.”
It’s not farfetched to think that those who have experienced more of God’s grace as a result of their baggage, have an easier time appreciating that grace.
“I think we are maybe a bit more grateful for that grace, when we are fully aware of how much we need it. That was the case with the Apostle Paul. His conversion was so dramatic and at such a point in his life where he would at no point ever be unaware of all he had been forgiven for and all the ways God was using him, not in spite of his past, but in many ways because of his past.”
No matter how much wrong we’ve done. No matter what our background is. God can always use us.
“God uses all of us. If we grew up in a Christian family always knowing Jesus and have been walking the straight and narrow since as far back as we can remember. Well yay, that’s the testimony we want for our kids. If our story is we ran out of a burning building, or God yanked us out of a miry pit, whatever our story is, we’re grateful to still be alive.”
Liz Curtis Higgs is the author of more than 30 books, with 4.5 million copies in print. In her best-selling Bad Girls of the Bible series, Liz breathes new life into ancient tales about the most famous—and infamous—women in scriptural history, from Bathsheba to Mary Magdalene.
Key Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17
Featured Songs: Every Giant Will Fall – Rend Collective; Chain Breaker – Zach Williams; Jesus – Chris Tomlin
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