Your Testimony Matters!

This post is written to link with Five Minute Friday: write for five minutes on a one-word prompt.  The prompt today is “testimony.”

Testimonies are powerful because we all love stories!

I remember a visit to a church several years ago that has stuck with me as one of my favourite services ever.  Several members of the congregation came up in turn to talk about their favourite hymn or worship song and shared their testimony of what it meant to them.  Then after each person had shared, we all sang the song together.

Music and stories – it was the perfect combination!  And it was so encouraging to hear the different ways God had been at work in people’s lives through good times and bad, how he had brought them hope and comfort and transformation.

We all know testimonies can encourage others, but I think some of us can feel that we don’t have a testimony to share.

Every year I lead at a training camp for 16 and 17 year olds who are going to be trainee leaders at camps for children, and as part of that they are asked to share their testimony.

There’s always at least one who claims they can’t share because theirs is boring, so I ask what they mean.

“Well, my parents are Christians, and I’ve been to church all my life, and I’ve always believed in God, and there’s not a moment when I made a decision to follow Jesus.  I just always trusted him.”

And that’s the cue for my annual speech about how everyone’s testimony is different and everyone’s is important.  God works in different ways in different people’s lives.  Some stories may be dramatic and others may not, but all of them reveal who God is, and different people listening will relate to different stories.

When I reach the part about how I think a testimony of having been brought up in a loving Christian family, always having known Jesus, is one of the most beautiful stories you can have, my eyes fill with tears every time and the group of teenagers look at me as if I’m mad, but they’ve got the point – their story matters.

And your story matters – whether you’ve known Jesus all your life or only very recently, if you know him you have a story of God’s love and faithfulness that people need to hear.

And when we share it glorifies God and points others to him.

“Has the Lord redeemed you?  Then speak out!  Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies.”  (Psalm 107:2 NLT)

If you’d like to read more on this topic, you might want to check out these posts:

6 Reasons Why Your Story Matters
Sharing Our Messy Stories