I woke up this morning with the word “testimony” on my mind. It made me realize how fortunate I was as a new Christian to be surrounded by people who shared their testimonies of how Jesus was working in their lives. Their real-life stories helped me to learn to recognize, hear, and obey the voice of God in my heart and made me hunger for more and more of the Bible. I got out of bed and immediately wrote this testimony about testimonies:

I love to hear salvation testimonies, the living word about the present-day work of the risen Jesus, shared from the heart of people who were born again, healed, and set free by Him! Testimonies overcome the darkness in human hearts by shinning the light on how the risen Jesus is speaking, acting, and working today.

Christians need to gather to hear the living word of heart-felt testimonies, not just one man’s analytical talk about the written word. As a new Christian I was part of a weekly testimony gathering. The first time I went there, I heard people testify about how Jesus saved them. As they spoke Jesus suddenly became real to me and I’ve been passionately in love with Him ever since. Every week I heard open-hearted testimonies that not only told me what Jesus was doing in people’s lives, but also showed me. I could see Jesus in their radiant faces as they told about what Jesus did and was still doing in their lives.

Their living word, life-story testimonials made me so hungry for the written word that I would continually devour the Bible. I still read it every day with an open hungry heart. Although our testimony gatherings had no sermon, my three years there caused me to grow in my relationship with Jesus and in knowledge of the Bible far more than decades years of sermon-hearing ever did. See Revelation 12:11.

When people are being led by the Spirit to show and tell what God has done and is doing in their lives the presence and power of Jesus is demonstrated for all to see. Regularly gather with some Christ-followers and open the meeting for anyone present to testify as they feel prompted by God’s Spirit. The most powerful sermons I’ve ever heard have been sincere, heart-felt testimonies!

There’s no reason why every church service shouldn’t feature at least one salvation testimony from a member. If they run out of members with testimonies, each week they could invite someone from another church to come and testify.

If Jesus has saved you, don’t silently sit on that experience. Tell it far and wide-even in church services! If you are shy about speaking your testimony, write it down. Then post it on social media and/or make copies of it and pass it out to people you see throughout the day.

When Christians meet and testify as they let the risen Christ take full control of His body, amazing things happen! Christian, you have a calling and a ministry. Get busy doing it daily! I don’t think that Jesus calls His followers to assemble together to sit & passively listen to one man’s ministry, but to actively obey the 50+ New Testament “one another” commandments.

The Bible warns us about a false Jesus. Many people and a few denominations that claim to be Christian redefine Jesus. We should always verify testimonies with the Bible and make sure that they are talking about the Jesus who is the Creator of the Universe in human flesh and not a redefined Jesus.

Years after my experiences in the first testimony gatherings I was helping lead a church. Every week we invited a different guest to come on Sunday and give their salvation testimony. We had about 90 different guests come and do that, and it was glorious. Some Mormon missionaries found out about it, and they kept trying to get us to invite them to testify. However, if you examine their beliefs about their Jesus, He isn’t the Creator of the Universe in human flesh, so we politely turned them down.