Add 1/6 plus 5/9.

If you are a non-math person, you may be silently screaming inside. Or screaming audibly. No judgement; I have done both.

If you are a math person, you would have immediately changed 1/6 to 3/18ths and 5/9 to 10/18ths and then come up with 13/18ths.

So, if you have a pizza and cut it into 18 pieces, I have eaten 13 of them. Because math.

But why 18? Eighteen is the lowest common denominator (LCD)  between 6 and 9. In order to add fractions, you have to find the LCD or your fractions aren’t workable.

“So what does that have to do with our spiritual lives?” I hear you ask. Along with “why are you dredging up memories of 6th grade, you horrible person?”

Providence meets the Preschooler

A little bit of background. I was saved at an early age, which means I don’t have one of those testimonies that keeps people on the edge of their seat. I always kind of felt bad about that, so I switched my tactic and focused on the fact that I had been saved from bad things.

That still never felt powerful enough.

Especially when God is saving people out of drugs, crime, debauchery. The splashy sins, as it were.

Except I was thinking about testimonies the wrong way. We tend to focus our testimonies on what we did. Not who we were.

Okay, I can understand why. In a way, we are telling people what God has done in our lives and our paths to Jesus will all look different. My testimony often looks like the 1/6th fraction. It’s pretty boring and basic. Some people have testimonies like the 5/9th fraction. It’s…just jarring. (I think it’s the odd numbers.)

So what is our lowest common denominator as humans – the foundation principle? We are all separated from God who are on a path to eternal separation after death. We are enemies of our Creator and can’t help it when we go astray.

What we do is just a symptom of who we are.

We sin, because we are sinners. Thank goodness Christ died for sinners!

Faith, not Formulas

Our testimonies can be used to plant seeds. Someone who lived a rough life may not be moved by my testimony of justification in pre-school. On the other hand, someone who thinks they’ll get to heaven because they’ve never done X, Y, or Z, may find my testimony convicting.

Our testimonies are powerful not by what they convey about us,
but what they convey about Him.

What I was saved from is less important than Who saved me. The same Person Who died for me died for the murderer and the thief.

He also died for the proud, the boastful, the greedy, the lustful, the angry, the anxious, the cynic, the hopeless, and those who sins never show up on the outside. Our testimonies are powerful not by what they convey about us, but what they convey about Him.

For those who believe, it doesn’t matter what we were saved out of because we all have one thing in common: Jesus Christ.

He is our Greatest Common Factor.