I was recently reading the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well and a detail caught my attention:
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.”
John 4:28-29
No, He didn’t. Not everything she ever did.
This woman wasn’t having to give an account of her entire life. Jesus hadn’t spent hours, weeks, days, or years laying out everything she had ever done. Bad or good. It was just one encounter that on face value probably lasted a few minutes.
But apparently, her life was so revolutionized by what Jesus spoke in those few minutes that she blew it out of proportion. For her, the grace that Jesus had shown her was so life changing that she couldn’t find words that even approximated her experience. So hyperbole was her best option.
You hear the same kind of things today. Many people say that if Jesus had not saved them they probably wouldn’t be alive. Occasionally, it’s true. But usually it isn’t. They probably would have gone on living. It’s just that they wouldn’t have lived a life worth living.
Grace blows things out of proportion. It takes an ounce of life change and exaggerates it in our minds to the point where it is a miracle on par with the parting of the Red Sea. And it should be this way. We should be so overwhelmed by God’s grace in our lives that, if anything, we exaggerate its effects.
Sadly, a lot of times we do the opposite. We downplay it. We minimize God’s miracles in our lives. We act and speak as if Jesus has made our situation only marginally better. If that.
But it isn’t true. God’s grace has revolutionized your life much more than you realize. And you should speak about it in such a way that, if anything, people are going to overestimate its effects.
Obviously, I’m not advocating lying about what Christ has done in you. This isn’t about creating a compelling testimony from scratch because you believe yours is too boring. It’s actually about recognizing your story is more compelling than you give it credit for.
Don’t be afraid of exaggerating the impact Jesus has made on your life. God’s grace is bigger than you think it is. Sometimes, you just have to blow its effects out of proportion to realize it.
