The Way ✦ Now Tell Someone

The Scene

He has told the story once.

To his small group, eight months ago, when his leader asked if anyone wanted to share what God had been doing in their lives. He had not planned to say anything. But something in the question caught him and before he had fully decided to speak he was speaking — telling them about the year the company failed, the fog, the parking garage Tuesday, the back porch morning when he said out loud for the first time that he did not know if he was going to be okay.

He told them what happened after that. Not the business recovery — the other thing. The way something had shifted in him during those nine months that he could not have engineered and would not have chosen and would not trade now. The thing that was different when he came out. He had not had words for it before that night. He found them while he was talking.

The room was quiet when he finished. His leader said thank you. Two men came up to him afterward — separately, privately — and said some version of the same thing: I needed to hear that.

He has thought about those two conversations almost every week since. He has also not told the story again. Not because he does not want to — because he is not sure where it belongs, who needs it, how to offer it without it feeling like he is making himself the subject.

He is sitting on his back porch this Saturday morning with his coffee, and the thought surfaces again: someone needs what you have been through. He has been sitting with that thought for eight months. He has not done anything with it yet.

Scripture

Psalm 66:16

"Come and hear, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me."

The Teaching

The psalmist does not say let me tell you what I believe about God. He does not say let me explain the theological principles I have derived from my experience. He says let me tell you what he has done for me — first person, past tense, specific. This is not doctrine. It is testimony.

The Hebrew verb translated tell here is saphar — to recount, to number, to declare in sequence. The psalmist is not offering an impression or a feeling. He is going to walk through what actually happened, in order, so that the people hearing it can follow the thread from where he was to where he is now and see what God did in the middle.

The Samaritan woman did not have her theology sorted when she ran back to town. She had been in five marriages. She was drawing water alone at noon — the hour when women with reputations came, when the crowds were gone. She had every reason to keep what happened at the well to herself. Instead she left her water jar — the thing she came for, the whole reason for the trip — and ran. Not with a sermon. With a question: could this be the Christ? And that question, spoken out loud from a woman whose life was a mess, brought an entire town to the well.

She did not wait until she had it all figured out. She told what she had while she was still figuring it out. And it was enough.

Come and hear is an invitation, not a command. The psalmist is not demanding an audience. He is making himself available — saying: I have something to tell, I am willing to tell it, come and hear if you need what I have. That is the posture of testimony. Not a stage. An open door.

The Way Before You

You have been sitting with the story for eight months. Or a year. Or three years. You have told it once — to the small group, to the friend, to the spouse — and you saw what it did and you have not offered it again because you are not sure where it belongs.

It belongs wherever someone is carrying what you have already carried.

The Samaritan woman did not have a platform. She had a town she knew and a story she could not keep to herself. The psalmist did not have a stage. He had a community of people who feared God and an account of what God had done. He made himself available and he told it.

You are not being asked to perform your hardest season. You are being asked to make it available — to open the door and say come and hear to the person in your orbit who is in the dark and needs to know someone has been there and found that God was in it.

The story you have been sitting on is not yours to keep. Tell it. Not because you have it all figured out. Because someone needs to hear what he has done for you.

Reflection

Who needs to hear your story — and what has been keeping you from telling it?

Prayer

Lord, you have done something in me that I have not fully told. I have been waiting until I had it more figured out, more resolved, more presentable. I am done waiting. Show me who needs what you have done for me \u2014 and give me the words to tell it while I am still in the middle of becoming. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.