If you’re anything like I was, you’ll equate a ‘powerful testimony’ to someone who was a big time drug dealer and got shot but survived only to be thrown in prison finally finding faith behind bars and starting a bible study group that revolutionises the entire prison with hundreds getting saved.
Now, while that is pretty cool (and if that is your testimony Praise God, I say!) it is by no means the only definition of a powerful testimony in God’s eyes.
Quite a few years ago, I was taking a youth bible study and, as we were discussing testimonies, I had a young lady say to me, “I don’t have a testimony!” She was the Pastor’s daughter and had never ‘done anything exciting’ to have a testimony (in her mind at least).
Just a few weeks ago I was sharing a message at a small country town church about an hour and a half from where I live. During the message I touched on the issue of testimonies and had an woman older than me come up after the message and say, “I never felt I had a testimony until now, thank you.”
See, the reality is, if we have given our lives to Christ, we have an amazingly powerful testimony regardless of our lives before we did.
I told the young Pastor’s daughter that I wished I had her testimony! God has preserved her from the mess and tangle of alcohol, drugs and multiple empty relationships and everything else that comes with that type of lifestyle that so many experience.
That type of ‘preserved’ testimony can reach people that a drug dealers testimony can’t. I’ve had non-believers becoming cynical because every Christian testimony they heard involved alcohol or something along those lines.
I don’t believe that one testimony is more ‘powerful’ than another. It depends entirely on how and when God can use your story… And He can and He will.
Never be afraid to share what God has saved you from or called you out of. Whether you became a Christian as a 5 year old or 45 year old, what makes your testimony so powerful is that it is just that… Your testimony. No one can change it, no one can take it from you and no one can deny it.
Think about this scripture…
“Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”Revelation 12:10-11 NKJV
You don’t get much more powerful than that! Seriously.
To have a testimony in this day and age that says you haven’t been through a lot of the things most testimonies speak of is outstanding and miraculous!
Whatever your story, it’s yours and the one God gave you to tell and share with others for His glory.
Tell it!
May God bless you and yours.
GT Byles