Commissioned: Testimony: Your Story for Their Earنموونە

Telling the Whole Town

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus set free a Gerasene man from the power of demons, and in John Gospel, he amazed a Samaritan women when he knew her life’s story without hearing it. Both of them had stories to tell about their encounters with Jesus—and they both told those stories to those around them. The Gerasene man “proclaimed throughout the whole town” what Jesus had done for him, and the Samaritan woman invited her whole town to come and see Jesus and “many of the Samaritans of the town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman.”

Our story about our personal encounter with Jesus is the most powerful way we can share the Good News of Jesus. No one can argue with our personal story; we are simply telling what we have experienced. People may argue with our theology, they may even argue that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, but when we tell them about our encounters with the living Christ, our testimony is hard to deny.

Our testimony is especially powerful for those who know us when it is accompanied by an undeniable change in our life. Everyone in the Gerasene town knew the demonized man, and everyone in the Samaritan woman’s town knew her story. These towns were probably small enough that we can think of them as their oikos—the group of people with whom they lived their daily lives. Seeing their lives change was a powerful demonstration of God’s reality, his power and his love to those in their oikos.

Our stories may not be as dramatic as these two, but to those who know us well, they can be just as powerful. Let’s let our light shine so that those around us can see the work of God in us!

Stop, think and pray:

Let’s continue to pray for those in our oikos, especially for the five we have chosen in our prayer, care, share cluster. Let’s give some thought to our normal daily conversations with them: Are we able to naturally speak freely about things like praying to God, trusting in God, relying on God, or do we censor what we say so as to hide our relationship with God? Let’s work on being our true selves with everyone and letting the light of God’s work shine through us.

Let’s pray: “Lord, let me be a faithful witness about your work in my life to those around me, so that they, too, may know you and love you. Amen”