Tell what He has done
The healed man sent home
A man who has terrified an entire region sits quietly in the grass. For as long as anyone can remember he has lived among the tombs, naked, gashing himself with stones, screaming through the nights so that the whole shoreline learned to keep away. Chains never held him. Now he is dressed, calm, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of the One who set him free. And he asks the obvious thing: let me come with You. Jesus says no, and hands him instead an assignment harder and humbler than discipleship on the road. Go home, He says, to your own people, to the very ones who knew you at your worst, and tell them what the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you. No theology degree. No sermon. Just the story, his own: this is how I was, and this is what He did. The psalmist had called for exactly this centuries before, let the redeemed of the LORD say so. Reorientation hands you a testimony for one simple reason. You have a before, and you have an after. And a changed person plainly telling their own true story is the most disarming witness there is.
“Go to your house, to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how he had mercy on you.”
— Jesus, to the healed man — Mark 5:19 (WEB)
“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary.”
Reorientation turns your own history into testimony. See the formerly tormented man, now calm, sent not on the road but back to his own town to tell his story. This phase needs no eloquence and no expertise, only the honest before-and-after of a changed life. The new bearings hand you a testimony precisely because you now have a before and an after worth telling.
You may be certain you have nothing to offer as a witness, no training, no eloquence, no gift for words. The man among the tombs had none of that either, and Jesus sent him out anyway with the simplest assignment imaginable: go home and tell them what the Lord has done for you. Not what He has done in general, but what He has done for you. That is the testimony no one can argue you out of, because it is not a position to be debated but a life that was changed. Be careful, though, of one quiet lie: that what God did in your upheaval was too small or too ordinary to mention. The honest before-and-after of your own story, told plainly to the people who knew you before, reaches places no polished argument can touch. So say so, not impressively, just truthfully. The redeemed, the psalm says, should simply say so. Just truthfully, to the ones who remember who you were, this is how I was, and this is what He did.
The Church can outsource witness to professionals and platforms, forgetting that across the centuries its most disarming testimony has been ordinary people telling their own stories. Jesus sent the healed man back to his own town with nothing but what had happened to him, and that pattern has carried Christianity further than any strategy: the redeemed, simply saying so. The movements that spread fastest were rarely the most polished; they were the ones where changed lives were freely recounted and the psalm's charge was taken at its word, let the redeemed of the LORD say so. Before a watching world the Body discovers again and again that a life genuinely changed is hard to wave away, and that everyone with a before-and-after has something worth telling.
Memories fade and skeptics dismiss, but a life that was actually changed is hard to wave away. What cannot be shaken is what the Lord truly did for you, the real before and the real after that no counterargument can undo. Your account may be doubted, but the change itself happened, and the One who worked it does not unwork it.
- What is the honest before-and-after that the Lord has worked in my own life?
- Have I dismissed my story as too small or too ordinary to be worth telling?
- Who are the people who knew me before, to whom I could simply say so?
Lord, You did not require the eloquence of the man among the tombs, only his story. Take from me the lie that what You did in me is too small to mention. Give me courage to go to the people who knew me before and tell them, plainly, what You have done and how You had mercy on me. Let the redeemed simply say so. Amen.