Joe Davidson's Testimony

Joe Davidson here. I was asked for a testimony. As I understand a testimony is a candid disclosure of the Messiah’s work on our life. Ooh! I don’t want everybody to see all my wrinkles and fat.

Recently I was on the telephone with my 82-year-old father in Texas. My younger brother, who has worked for the post office for about 25 years, is planning to wed a wonderful woman who is totally sold out to Christ. Dad was commenting that the post office’s handling of my brother’s leave time around the holiday left him with only three days off rather than four. "Well," I said, "Why doesn’t he just call in sick?" Dad said, "Well, we don’t believe in calling in sick if you aren’t." He wasn’t mean, and did not insinuate, "What’s wrong with You?" He just answered my question. Oy! For the next 24 hours I didn’t think about anything else.

God used an innocent conversation with one I love and respect to turn on a light in my heart. I have been praying recently that God would convict me of sin; show me myself. It is like taking your car in for an inspection and finding out a potentially disastrous problem exists.

I, too, work for the government, and their leave policy is generous. The problem is: if I ask for a week, they might give me those days, but in the middle of the week. I thought -- "Well, my boss must be telling me to call in sick for that one day. It seems like he is trying to help me. He likes me. He wouldn’t hurt me."

Wait a minute! The enemy is so deceptive! Didn’t I wrestle this same problem out last year? Why am I wrestling with it again? I allowed an attitude of compromise to creep into my heart. God said to Cain in Genesis, "Sin croacheth at the door." This attitude was waiting only for the right opportunity and I would have been entangled in sin.

I asked God to forgive me for my wrongful attitude. It was an attitude of idolatry, because it took God off the throne of my heart. It said, "God is not big enough or doesn’t know how to protect me. He will not give me His best. He cannot be trusted." It was unbelief. It was rebellion because it demanded its own way; i.e., if my immediate gratification is threatened, I will take whatever steps necessary to protect it even if I have to lie. The enemy can make us feel so justified and righteous about our sin.

As I look back down the road of my life and I see other times when I have fallen into these same traps. Though our God is a redeemer of all things, our sins sometimes have ongoing consequences. I wear the tzit tzit. I pray that God will be faithful to continue to convict me of sin and grant me repentance, that I also not be guilty of taking His name in vain by wearing the tzit tzit unrighteously. If pursuing goals in my life, even righteous goals, leads me to circumstances where I would compromise God’s standards, that is a clear "No!" from the Father. I must embrace these circumstances as God’s provision, and submit to them as unto Him, and refuse to sin. No one else may see but He sees. Dayenu. It is enough.