Matt Testimony – Part 3
(Part 3/11)
“I was carrying a lot of guilt. Even still today, you carry shame. I know I’m accepted in God’s eyes; I don’t feel any shame from God. It’s the public shame, from people, that you feel. I don’t know if I want to deal with the public shame, so then you’re not as vulnerable with things. Especially in my role. In 28 minutes I can’t give you enough of the story to not judge the scenario. It’s almost impossible to be like ‘Hey this has gone on in my life personally.’ I can’t fully explain it in 2 minutes but hopefully you’re catching it and not judging me because of what you think I’m saying or not saying. Still to this day, there’s shame that you carry. There’s the fear of being shamed, I don’t carry shame. I don’t carry shame from God, but there’s a constant carrying of fear of being shamed from others because of the role that I have, and had, from when our marriage fell apart to now. My wife today, Mina, is like ‘You need to talk more about it. People need to hear; they need to know you struggle too.’ I wish I could, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t care about feeling shame from people. But I’m a human like everyone else so why wouldn’t I? Everyone else is scared. People are scared about the shirt they wore yesterday.
I was really young in my ministry. I’m thankful. We don’t think that God knows everything, but he does. You think ‘I’m doing so much great stuff, why aren’t I more public?’ Then something like this happens and it’s like woah. Thank God I wasn’t more public. I don’t know if I would have ever recovered. I was still young, I was still kind of learning, cutting my teeth on different kinds of ministries. I didn’t have as much of an up-front face as I would have today. Now I do have an up-front face and have such a solid marriage and family, it’s awesome. ‘Thanks God, if I would have asked You to give me this then, my life would have been a disaster. But because You knew what I was going to go through, You knew what You were going to teach me. You knew how You were going to form me.’ Now I’m more ready than ever.
We had gotten married really young. I was 19 and she was 20; this all happened in our 20s. I’m 42 now. When you’re young, you’re like ‘Come on I have great things to say, especially in ministry. Why aren’t you promoting what I have to say? I’m talking to the same five people every day; don’t you want this to get out?’ Then everyone is like ‘Matt you’re so anointed and say this and this and this, you should have a platform to speak that out.’ At the time, when you’re young, that’s what you care about. Trying to make a name for yourself, trying to build your career. ‘Lord, why do you keep having me in the closet?’ And well, I saw why. He saw that things were going to unravel, and I don’t think He wanted that to spoil the things He eventually wanted me to do with my life.”