The Coffee Shop Testimony
A few days ago I was at a local coffee shop near my hometown. I was working on some homework and decided to take a break. I pulled out my Bible and started reading in the book of 2nd Corinthians. As I was reading a man came up to me and asked if he could share a story with me. I visit this coffee house frequently and I have seen him there probably a dozen times. So I was a little surprised when he sat down before I could even answer his question. I told him I would love to hear a story and that’s when he began. He started by telling me about his father and how when his father was a young adult he had some big struggles in his life. His dad from a very early age was addicted to drugs and alcohol. His father struggled with this for about 10 years. Until one night his father was in a bar. His father was in a super low place at this time and all of the sudden someone in the bar yells to everyone “get out and don’t come back”. He said his father left the bar that night and went home and dropped onto his knees. His father prayed that God would heal him. From that day on his father had not done any drugs or touched a bottle of alcohol.
At this point, I was blown away by this story. I love hearing stories like this that have such a dramatic switch in someone’s life! God works wonders in ways like that and I love when God gives them the courage to share their testimonies. But this is not where the man I was talking to stopped, he continued. Then the man started sharing his own testimony. He explained how he was raised in the church and he never realized how big of a privilege that was until he was much older. He talked about how for years that he thought this testimony was so “boring” because everything had been very smooth for most of his life. He hasn’t had any crazy life change that has put him in super low times where he needed God to rescue him from, or at least not something like God did for his father. He explained to me that he has been praying to God about this for months now and God finally gave him an answer of why the man thought his testimony was “boring”.
God told him that he thought his testimony was “boring” because God had already saved him from those rough trials already. That he was on a bad path that he never even knew about. He never knew about that bad path because God saved him from it before he could even get there! God had saved him from that life and from a low point in his life. He said that now he has shared his “boring” testimony more than ever before because he realized that it wasn’t “boring” anymore! God gave him a new way of thinking and it changed his entire life!
At this point, I was just sitting there in awe of what he has said. I related to this man in so many ways. I have always thought my testimony cant change people’s lives because it isn’t some crazy story that God had lifted me from the very bottom, to a life with Him. I was raised in the church. My dad is an elder and my mom is a part of the children’s ministry. I was baptized when I was 15 and here I am living a normal Christian life but with a “boring” testimony. But when the man told me “God saved me before my walk with Him went to a bad place” I realized God brought this man to me, to tell me his testimony, in the middle of a coffee shop, because it was exactly what I needed to hear. I no longer think my personal testimony is “boring” anymore. I can now see my testimony in an amazing yet different way than I ever did before.
