A friend mine share this with me. I am forwarding this out to you for each of you to read. God bless, rick/eagle feather --------- Begin forwarded message ---------- From: John Kovach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: "my" testimony Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 09:46:47 -0400 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> You are free to share this with others if find that it has value. My father was a man who did everything himself. He learned to trust no one, and was critical of anyone who could not do things right. This did not mean that he did not love his children. He was what his own parents were, and we became like him. Yet we were not unique as a family. Many other families were like us. We came from European peasant stock, from a class of people who knew that hard work was the only way to survive. When I was thirteen, the push type lawn mover that we had was a little rusty. The blades were worn and needed sharpening. So my dad said, sharpen them. It is easy. Build yourself a jig and just do it. His time was too important for him to show me how to do it. But he did spare a couple moments to sketch a brief picture of what the jig should look like. He told me to use the table saw to cut the parts for the jig. He must have spent at least ten minutes explaining it to me. To him it was easy. Only a few words is all that was necessary. He had other things more pressing and more important so that he could not spend a moment to show me more than a diagram. So by faith--even though I did not know Jesus, I knew what faith was--I picked up the wood. I trusted that my father knew what he was talking about. I had tried working with wood before in making those paddle boats, the ones with the cut out for a rubber band driven paddle at the back. If you stand them on edge they look like little houses with open doors. I could never cut the bow even, such that if you drew a line across the boat the two end points that would be the eaves of the house were never on the same parallel, making the bow lopsided. But I trusted in my father's instructions. It would be easy. All I needed to do was set the guide, turn the saw on and push the wood through. As the saw cut into the wood it made two pieces. The one I was pushing fell to the side as it went through the blade. The one that was formed between the blade and the guide began to lift up and looked as though it was going to fly up and hit me in the face. Quickly my young, reflexes went into action. I extended my left hand to protect myself. I felt the blade strike my left hand, and just a quickly I retracted it and held it in my right hand. When I looked, I saw a red line across two of my fingers. I was lucky. The blade did not strike the bone, but it did sever 90% of the tendon in one finger. We went to the doctor's who sewed me up in his office. My father drove me there and held my other hand while the doctor stitched me up. The uncanny thing about this situation is that my father did spend time with me. It cost him not only that evening, but anguish not only to himself but to my mother. I generally do not like to hear other people's testimonies because I can never make them my own. The Bible says there is ONLY ONE testimony and that is the testimony of Jesus Christ. And this testimony is that Jesus came to serve others. He took time out from his duties in heaven to come to earth and wash our feet. But we do not like to meditate on what washing feet means. We prefer to make it a religious ceremony for our Easter celebrations so we can feel good about being obedient. When I became a Royal Ranger leader, I was told, and the telling stuck with me, "If you have to leave and the ministry falls apart, then it was you and not God." You see, we all have talents and natural abilities. But ministry is not natural, it is supernatural. Ministry is not me, but God. Do you remember how Aaron and Mariam argued with Moses over ministry? God did not support them in their contentious spirit, but consider this. Who was it that lead the Israelites in worship after the crossing of the sea? Who was it that held Moses' arms up, that same Moses who lead the people and held the rod when Joshua was engaged in battle? And when Moses died, did his office go empty? St. Paul understood the principles of discipleship upon which the Church was founded. In reference to the gifts, which the Holy Spirt gave to edify the church and promote unity among believers, he said, "Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." (1 Cor. 14:19) In his letter to Timothy he encouraged him to exercise his duties as a pastor. "And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." (2 Tim 2:2) When I was in the military, I had an interest in the stock market. Although I had not made any money I saw how one could make money just by buying and selling according to the season of the year. when I shared this information with others at boot camp, I was baffled when someone asked me, "What soap do you use?" When you give your testimony, do people ask you , "What soap do you use?" When I Iisten to the testimony of a salesman and hear of the number of people he has led to the Lord, I think I want to be just like that. But for some reason, it never happens and I am not sure why. Most often I conclude that I am not spiritual enough because perhaps I am not using the right soap. We all have that tendency to proclaim, "Look at me. Look at me," especially if we have not been recognized for something in our natural lives. It may surface subconsciously in our own testimony. But if you remove the you from your testimony, if you remove the you from your ministry, from your church, will it stand on it's own, or will it disappear in your passing? I have been perplexed by the word "testimony." The Bible says that they overcame by their testimony. I was equally perplexed when a prostitute reached out her hand out to me and asked, "Hey mister, can you help me out?" I was perplexed again when an inebriated believer came under the Gospel tent and asked, "Will you help me?" What they are really asking is, "What soap do you use?" You see, we cannot stop giving testimony even when our mouths are shut. When we walk through the doors of the church we are giving a testimony. Is the testimony yours, or is it the testimony of Jesus Christ? What soap am I using? Is it washing feet? Can someone else use it too? I think it was Johnnie Barnes that said something like, A man can stand no taller than when he stoops to help a boy. And if we all become like children, then how tall will I be when I stoop to help that little girl or little boy next to me? God Bless, John --------- End forwarded message ---------- ___________________________________________________________________ Get the Internet just the way you want it. Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month! Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. _______ To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe rangernet" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Eat the hay & spit out the sticks! - A#1's mule" RTKB&G4JC! http://rangernet.org Autoresponder: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
