So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
-Isaiah 21:10 (NIV)
♥ TESTIMONY:
I was born into a Christian family, and had been following Christ my entire life. Judgment and pride have always been my downfall, and perhaps there was a good reason for that, even in the early stages of my life. Honestly, it stemmed from my own fear of being a useless person, as well as a desire to be admired by everyone else. God has helped me change, and is still helping me, from a arrogant and judging person to someone who is much more tolerant and compassionate. I shall now tell you a long-winded story of my own struggle, and the source of my pride.
Of course, that didn't last long. At the end of elementary school, I took a math aptitude test to see how many grades I could skip in math at the junior high. I didn't want to skip, but my parents insisted on it, saying that I wouldn't have to take the honors acceptance test in order to get into the honors program in junior high. My mother had claimed that half of the EAP program children were rejected from the honors program due to failing scores on the difficult exam. As it turns out, skipping three grades in math was the biggest mistake in my life that my parents have ever made for me and the biggest regret in my life thus far. Before any of my friends knew what 'final tests' were, I had already been stressing for years about finals that could potentially devastate my already struggling math grade. For the first time in my life, I had failed three tests in a row, and at age 11, had my first D+ in a 9th grade math class. I struggled, enduring frequent yelling sessions by my parents who insisted that I was a lazy black sheep in the family. I remember telling my parents, amidst copious tears, that I was working as hard as I could. My father responded 'Not hard enough'.
Not enough. That phrase haunted me for a long time. I was afraid of not being good enough because I was supposed to be the best, and I was terrified of being a nuisance to society, someone that other people would say "'what a loser. they can't even do anything." What scared me more was that I knew I was the kind of person who would say that. My friends protested that I was so many years younger than everyone else, that my parents shouldn't have expected more out of me. Just by skipping so many grades and holding out, I was already considered extraordinary. But I wanted to prove that I was even better than extraordinary, that I was just as gifted as my parents expected me to be. So I worked harder than I thought possible and immersed myself in my own mental boot camp. I wouldn't be able to count how many times I cried tears of frustration over math during that time. It was the most indescribably torturous thing I ever endured. However, my mental talent and hard work prevailed, as I knew it would. I pulled my grade up to a B+ by the end of the semester, and ended up with a final grade of an A at the end of the year.
With such an experience behind me, my already enlarged ego grew even more. People were in awe at what I had accomplished, and as I got older, at what I was continuing to accomplish. In my private violin lessons, I discovered that I had also inherited musical talent, and was placed amongst the top students in my teacher's studio. I thought pridefully to myself that I deserved all the praise and attention from the world that I was getting. I had proven my ability to everyone and had shown that I was one of the best. Needless to say, that kind of thinking got me in trouble when it came to viewing others who were less gifted than I was. Whenever I heard someone else complain about their struggles at school, or who were having difficulty with something they were doing, I sympathized with them. But in the back of my mind, I was scoffing. Did they even know what I had gone through? What right did they have to whine about something so simple as that? I found myself thinking about others what I had once feared others would think about me: "what a loser. they can't even do anything."
But Jesus was my inspiration. Here was someone who was God, and yet He was willing to come down to Earth and die the worst death possible. He consorted with the lowest outcasts of the time. Instead of limiting himself to the elite in society, he associated with all sorts of people, from fisherman, to tentmakers, to doctors and kings. He was the humblest person ever.
Of course, my struggle with pride and a desire to be admired by the world remains, but Jesus has helped me to realize the truth in 'to whom much is given, much is expected'. All of the talents I prided myself on were given to me so that I could use them for God's kingdom. Hard work was all well and good, but the glory was not for me, it was for God. And I couldn't be lazy and just get by off of my talent, because God expects much from those who have been given much. I forced myself to consider other people's circumstances and realize that not everyone got the same number of talents, like in the parable from Luke. But God has different plans for all of us, and no one can say 'one is better than the other'.
