Lillian Mitchell is a sweet sister in the Lord who is in her 90’s. Lillian had a rough life, with a couple of failed marriages, before she met the Lord in a glorious transformation. Then she got disillusioned, thought God could never accept someone like her, and continued several years in darkness, although she believed. Whenever she has an opportunity to tell her testimony, she does so. Each time she tells her story its as if its being told the very first time, bringing tears to her eyes.
There are many in our church with similar stories of finding God’s grace in small incremental steps. There are also others in our church who have spent years of their Christian experience thinking God can never forgive and bless them. This is all the devil’s lies, of course, and holds us back from growing spiritually.
But, just as Lillian keeps telling her story, and finding encouragement each time she does, I find real encouragement in listening to her story and learning anew how God works in people’s lives.
Tags: grace, salvation, testimony
Rev. D. F. Ferguson, a senior pastor in Riverside, California, was an excellent preacher with a real understanding of Calvary and of grace. At a district conference of his denomination, a fellow pastor was testifying of how he had left a job as a successful attorney making a six-figure salary to follow the call of the Lord into the ministry.
Following him, another pastor stood and said, “I was making two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year in Kansas grain when I gave it all up to serve the Lord.”
After two more pastors followed this theme of what they had given up to follow Jesus, Ferguson could take no more. He jumped to his feet and ran to the front. He seized the microphone and in broken voice said, “When God called me into the ministry I was standing behind two mules plowin’ a field in Arkansas. It was 105+ degrees and I had on one tennis shoe and one of dad’s boots. I threw down the reins of them two mules and said, ‘God, I’m ready – anything beats this’, and I’ve been in the ministry ever since!”
The conference roared in laughter and came to a standing ovation. God has a unique way of calling each of us. Some sacrifice greatly in following Christ, but for many others, following Christ was nothing but a step up. Which was it for you: a step up or a step down?
Tags: call, sacrifice, testimony
British scientist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) vigorously supported the theory of evolution, which earned him the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog”. As an agnostic, he believed religion was a harmful superstition.
On day Huxley asked a deeply committed Christian, “What does your faith mean to you?” Knowing Huxley’s skepticism, the man paused and then replied, “You are very educated, and you can dispute anything I say.”
Huxley urged him to explain why he was a Christian. So from his heart the man told what Jesus meant to him. Huxley, deeply moved, didn’t argue. Wistfully he said, “I’d give my right hand for your faith in Jesus.”
People are waiting for someone to give them something real to believe in. They’ll believe in ghosts and they’ll believe in extraterrestrials, why should we think they won’t believe in God. We ought to stop talking to people about church and begin telling them what He has done for us. Your heartfelt testimony ought to convict people.
When Paul gave his testimony before King Agrippa, the king replied, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian” (Acts 26:28 (KJV)).
Tags: evangelism, testimony
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a world-famous Russian author who had been sent to a Siberian prison because he criticized communism. Languishing there under intolerable conditions year after year, he decided to end his life. But suicide, he firmly believed, would be against God’s will. He thought it would be better for a guard to shoot him.
So, at a public assembly of the prisoners, he sat in a front row, planning to get up and walk toward an exit, compelling a guard to kill him. But to his surprise, another prisoner sat down, blocking his exit. That unknown man leaned over and, to Solzhenitsyn’s astonishment, drew a cross on the dirt floor.
There in prison Solzhenitsyn became a Christian and was eventually set free to bear witness to the world. There is still life changing power in the cross.
Tags: cross, prison, testimony