Our Testimony

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3:15

An easy way to begin to share Christ with your friends and family is by telling them your testimony. Your testimony is simply your story about how God has worked in your life. In today’s lesson at Chimusanya Baptist Church I read the story of how Paul shared his testimony in Acts 26:1-29. Then we talked about how Paul’s testimony had 3 parts. 1-His life before he knew/received Jesus, 2-How he came to know Jesus, and then 3-His life after he received Jesus(how he had changed). Basically, if you can share these 3 things you can share a short testimony. Lesley went with me today and so she had the opportunity to share her testimony with the women. Then I had the women break up into groups of two and practice sharing their testimonies. We then came back together and one by one they each got up and shared their testimony to the whole group. Most of these women are not used to getting up in front of others and speaking so I was very proud of them for doing that. I also was able to see how some of the women seemed to depend on their joining the Baptist church to make them a Christian. It was also interesting that all but two women didn’t become a Christian until after they were married. I think there is a lot of confusion among some of our churches about what it really means to be born again. Pray for me over the next couple of months as I share Christ and His Word with these women that they will understand what I’m saying and desire to truly live for Christ. For homework this week I asked them to learn the verse mentioned above and to share their testimony with a friend. Pray for these women as they try to do these things this week.

It was sad to me today when I asked a woman if she could say the memory verse from last week and she said she couldn’t read and she didn’t even have a bible in Chichewa so no one could help her. She lives very far from the church and none of the church members live close enough to come and help her learn the verses each week. She truly seemed to want to learn the verses but could not see a way to do that. I told her I would try to start staying a little longer after the meetings and help her to learn her verses. How often do we take for granted the fact that we can read? How often do we just quickly read some passage of scripture and say we have spent time with God? How often have we just left our Bible on the shelf and not read it at all? So many people all over the world can not read at all. Many people don’t even have their own Bible. There are still many places in the world that there isn’t a bible written in their language. What would these people do if they had the ability to read and owned a bible? May God have mercy on us all! Lord, help us not to take for granted everything you have blessed us with.