The Testimony You Are Still Living

We tend to think of a testimony as something you deliver in the past tense: a completed story with a clean beginning, middle, and end, standing at a podium, telling everyone how it all worked out. But most of us are living our testimony in real time, in the middle of a chapter we can't see the end of yet.

That's a harder kind of faith. It's easier to trust God with a story you already know the ending to. It's another thing entirely to trust Him with one that's still being written, where you genuinely don't know how it resolves.

Joseph in the middle

We know how Joseph's story ends. He becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt and saves his family from famine. But Joseph didn't know that while he was living it.

At seventeen he was his father's favourite. Then his brothers "pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt" (Genesis 37:28, BSB). He served faithfully in a foreign household, was falsely accused, and was thrown into prison. There, he helped a fellow prisoner, Pharaoh's cupbearer, and asked only to be remembered. Then comes one of the saddest lines in Genesis:

"The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot all about him." (Genesis 40:23, BSB)

The next chapter begins, "After two full years had passed" (Genesis 41:1, BSB). Two more years in a cell, forgotten. By the time Joseph stood before Pharaoh, he was thirty. Thirteen years had passed since the pit.

If you had asked Joseph for his testimony in year eleven, what would he have said? Probably not the speech he gave his brothers at the end: "What you intended against me for evil, God intended for good" (Genesis 50:20, BSB). That sentence could only be spoken looking back. In the middle, all he could do was keep trusting.

The heroes who didn't see the ending

Hebrews 11 is often called the hall of faith. It lists Abel, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses and many others. But it says something surprising about them:

"All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar." (Hebrews 11:13, BSB)

Some of the greatest testimonies in the Bible were never finished within the lifetime of the people living them. They were still commended for their faith. Faith, in other words, is not measured by whether you've reached the ending. It's measured by whether you keep walking toward it.

Why the middle matters

Psychologist Dan McAdams at Northwestern University has spent decades studying the stories people tell about their own lives. He found that people who describe their lives in a redemptive pattern, where suffering eventually leads to growth or something good, tend to have better psychological well-being. Many of the most generous, community-minded adults he studied told their stories this way, and he noted that faith traditions emphasising transformation often shape those stories.

Christians have a reason to tell our stories redemptively that goes beyond psychology. We know the Author. "We know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28, BSB). That doesn't mean every chapter is good. It means no chapter is wasted.

If you're in that place right now (in the middle, not the resolution), you're not behind schedule. You're not failing to have enough faith because you can't see the ending. You're just early. The testimony isn't cancelled. It's still being written, and you're a character in it, not the author.

How to share a testimony that isn't finished

You don't have to wait for the happy ending before you speak about God's faithfulness. In fact, a testimony from the middle can be the most powerful kind, because it's honest.

Tell what God is doing, not just what He did. "I don't know how this ends, but I know He has carried me through this week." That is a testimony.

Name the small mercies. Paul described his own hard season like this: "We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair" (2 Corinthians 4:8, BSB). Not crushed. Not in despair. Those are mercies worth naming, even before the rescue.

Be ready to explain your hope. Peter wrote, "Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15, BSB). Hope only makes sense to explain when you're still waiting.

Write it down as you go. One day you'll want to remember how God held you in the middle. Keep notes. They will become the testimony.

Trust the Author. He's finished every story He's ever started.

"Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:6, BSB)