Sexual sin testimony concerns, guidance on crafting personal testimony

Q: I am in the process of becoming a member of my church, and part of that involves sharing my testimony with the pastors. I’ve never shared my testimony yet. A huge part of my testimony is how the Lord pulled me out of deep sexual sin that ruled my life. My fear is that the nature of my testimony may be inappropriate to share because it’s so rooted in sexual sin. I feel embarrassed to share those details with my pastors, and I also don’t want to make THEM feel uncomfortable in doing so. For some context I used to be someone who would seek out sexual attention from men online, I didn’t care if they were married or not, I just wanted to be “chosen” by a man. I became essentially a on cam girl for hire.

 I am a completely new person in Jesus but the thought of having to share that part of my life feels humiliating, even though it shows just how far the Lord has brought me. Additionally, my family and friends don’t even know about that part of my life. Am I just overthinking this?

A: 

There's a way to simplify your testimony. Our testimony is to meant to go into details. Its to point to the Gospel and how God transformed us into a new creation in Christ, and how hes still sanctifying [changing] us now.

Here are testimony helps. See the one about writing it, and the child example. This will help you create a 3 to 5 minute testimony. One you can share anywhere, with anyone. 

If this is connected to believers baptism, as a new believer, (not as a church transfer) then your church should have a baptism classes, where they help you craft your testimony and ensure excessive and explicit details are ommitted. Remember, children will hear it too.

If there is no class, run your draft it by your Pastor, decon or mature godly believer in the church, until you do a few iterations and get it finalized. 

Do consider a baptism event, noted in the link, to spread the Gospel to folk in your life. Your testimony is truth, and can lead to your family and friends salvation, so even though embarrassed, it's part of your life in sin, which Jesus saved you out of. If they ever bring it up you can just say "God is so good to save someone so undeserving of his Grace, what a wonderful God. Do you know Him yet?" And let their judgment convict themselves, and draw them to Him too. 

If this is a church transfer, moving churches, then just create your testimony as best you can, and maybe have the other believers from your previous church help you get it to a final draft, so you can send to the new church pastor. Or, ask your womens group and Sunday School class if anyone there has a salvation testimony where God saved them out of sexual sin. [And talk to the ones in late Millenial and the Gen Z generation, since they're familiar with some of your "type" of modern sexual sin history, and may have come out of that too]. Ask them after the meeting if they would be willing to look over your written testimony since your new to creating one. Have them look it over (in print or on your phone) at the next meet up (Sun, Wed, Fri, etc). They can give you tweak suggestions, simplification, and help even it out, so you can finalize it. 

Ray Comfort shared his testimony in that he used to lust after women even while with his gf/now wife, he read that Jesus said lust is adultery, and was horrified God saw his thought life. You could write something like that and say "as well as the various sexual sin I was involved in that most everyone today commits. I realized it was all sin against God, and my own body". There's ways around going into details, and no one needs to hear those sin details, not children, not teens, not men, not believers either. 

The pastors/leadership just want to have an idea of your testimony so they can see if its likely God did save you, and know how your life has changed since. They have to be careful who they allow to join, and there's important things to understand about your membership to the church. 

You can always tweak your testimony later on, to a more solid final version. Note: it's a good idea to save it to a cloud drive and keep a print version in the back of your Bible, as a backup. *And you can also turn it into a printed small folded gospel tract, to share out when witnessing. Or just use a regular tract to spread the Word 😊. There are times a testimony is useful, but it's best to have the Gospel in it so it points folk to it. The Gospel is what has the power to save, as Scripture tells us. The focus is always to be on God so He is glorified, not us or our sins. That's why every salvation is an equal miracle. None of us deserve it, but all who come to Him recieve it. Murderers, fornicators, lgbt+ folk, and those who lived moral lives. We are all sinners in need of The Savior. 

God bless. 

Also, as a growing believer this will be a blessing to you. 😊✝️