You hear other peoples testimonies all the time. Many of them are very encouraging and uplifting and it’s great hearing what God has done in someone’s life. Although there are times people tend to embellish a story, I usually first take away the positives and give them a benefit of the doubt. But, something that has bothered me is the lack of testimony telling in the New Testament, when in todays culture it seems to be more common than just sharing the gospel, and is that a good thing?
First, I do not discredit a testimony in general. There are may people I may disagree with on one standpoint or another, but typically unless there is some kind of mounting evidence, I’ll take the testimony for face value. That does not mean I will agree with what they did with it. For example, I do accept the story of someone that, through the Holy Spirit, was given a challenge and God kept his promise and they saw the fruit of that promise. But, may times they will take that and turn it into something that it was not. They assume now there is a formula for success and will write books and do shows on how to get X because God did this in their life. That is a misunderstanding of the covenant we have with Christ. Just because the Holy Spirit directs you for something does not at all mean that was to be shared or done by anyone else. All that ends up doing is misleading people and they end up turning from Christ because something did not work out like it did for someone else. I really do not see that outline or template modeled for us by the early Christian church. Actually, the only real time you see that is in 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul shares his testimony of everything he went though, and in verse 23 he actually voices that he is “insane” for even talking about it, like there should be no reason to.
Does that mean we should not share a testimony? No, I believe those are very important and encouraging to other believers as mentioned in Hebrews 10:25. There is no mention or example of using our testimony (difference between Christ’s testimony or us sharing His testimony) as a precursor for sharing the Gospel. People should not even need to hear a word of our testimony because our response to the world should be enough for them to question why. (John 13:35). And we are to be ready to defend our belief (1 Peter 3:15) and that can include a testimony, or not.
Since the new testament writers do not actually address this directly, we have to use the model we do have, and that is the covenant relationship we already established in earlier posts. Our testimony is important to us, but if sharing it will give a sense of pride (look what I did) or give a sense of misleading (Look what God did for me and He will do it for you, excluding salvation as that is what we are called to preach) then maybe a testimony is not what the Holy Spirit is asking you to say. Every time in Acts when someone was “filled with the Spirit” (like Acts 4:8) they did not include themselves in the message. I am sure that within themselves they shared what God was doing their lives as an encouragement. The reality is, the Holy Spirit does not need us to share it (unless He specifically calls us to). Our specific calling is to proclaim Christ (Mark 15:16), not us, and the Spirit will bring those that hear to a saving knowledge of Christ. (John 16:8). We in our western mindset think that if we give out a flashing story and throw the Gospel in at the end we can help God out by bringing the crowd. I just do not see that modeled anywhere in Acts. Does not mean it’s wrong, just means maybe there is a more effective way to do this.
One of the books I have read in recent years is one by Ray Comfort. Not saying I agree or disagree with him, actually I finished the book (titled “God has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life”, you can download it for free) with more questions than answers. But one thing he pointed out had a huge impact that sent me back to Acts to take a closer look on how the early evangelists went out. He mentions that not many of theses studies have been done, but those that have been done are quite bleak. They took a look after large gatherings, crusades, and denomination statistics, and went over the thousands of people that wrote out a card or identified that they came to Christ and found 84%~97% of them fell away and no longer follow Christ. Contrast that the early Church and it’s apparent we are missing something. I am not saying I know exactly what that is, I am leaning myself, but what I covered here is one takeaway I had. I think there are a lot of Christians misusing the role of testimonies and having a false sense of accomplishment. I firmly believe we should be looking and modeling after the examples we have been given and not take our current model and find justification.
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