A PERSONAL TESTIMONY (Part 1 of 3)
By Warrior Richardson
Giving a personal testimony is simply a matter of telling people what happened—what did we witness? What would that include? Our personal testimony includes a description of God calling us and our trust in him and our repentance. We don't have to use the word trust or say God was calling us. We just need to describe the event—as they say in literary circles, “show, don’t tell.”
Actually, most people typically describe their conversion exceedingly well, once they get over the fear of failure. For some reason they think they are not qualified to do this. They think they should leave this to the experts: the salaried ministers. It’s the old, “don’t try this at home” syndrome. Everyone can describe what happened when they were converted even if they don’t really understand what happened. They can give the facts even if they can’t explain the facts.
A description is extremely helpful to unbelievers. You will find they are deeply impacted by a vivid description of a genuine conversion. People don’t always know what we mean when we say we trust God, but when we describe it, people can see it; they can feel it; they taste it; they vicariously experience it; they get it.
Trust and repentance are two key elements of a testimony, because they answer the question, “What must I do to be saved.” And that is the most important question a testimony needs to answer. We answer that question by simply describing what happened. As they say, “just the facts Ma’am.” The facts speak volumes.
An explanation would be nice if we possess the biblical knowledge and understanding—which is certainly a good thing and should be an aspiration of every Christian—but even without that, the facts are very informative, and as we will see, once we get into the habit of boldly giving our testimony at every opportunity, we will see that people become convicted upon hearing a heart-wrenching testimony.
It makes them think about their own lives—their trials, tribulations, aspirations, hurts, pains, sins, and spiritual brokenness, as well as their inability to make sense of it all. They understand more of what we say than we often think they do and typically more than they admit. When giving a spontaneous testimony we may not give a lot of thought to answering the question “what must I do to be saved?”
We just say what happened. When we give much thought to our testimony after studying what scripture has to say about conversion we improve on our testimony because, at that point, we explain what happened to us—we have comprehension, not just an awareness of the facts but an understanding as well (Proverbs 4:7). This is a good thing.
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In this blog I take a close look at a wide variety of topics using the Bible as my lens. When we look at the world through the lens of scripture we discover life-changing truth that transforms us. We discover our
identity, purpose and worth. We find answers to life's most pressing questions. “If you don't know where you're going any road will take you there.” But when we look at the world through the lens of scripture we find the "way, the truth and the life;" then we live life to the fullest.
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