Jesus has guaranteed me eternal life, which is far from nothing to me, but doesn’t mean much to people who aren’t already believers. How are they supposed to know it’s different when I say I have eternal life, vs. when mormons or muslims or whacky cultists say they have eternal life?

To me, personal testimony is about the here-and-now aspect of a believer’s life, and I’m really not sure what effect being a Christian has had on my earthly life. I have a good friend who is a clean-cut, former-eagle-scout type who has similarly avoided those nasty traps mentioned in the antecdote — but without really believing the Bible. I expect that when I meet Jesus I will find out all kinds of ways that I have been taken care of, but at the moment I can’t distinguish anything apart from His great providence that allows both the saved and unsaved to even exist in this life.

This is a topic that we’ve been discussing recently in my church, and I’ll share two things that struck me as important.

Rev.12:10-11:
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

There is spiritual power in sharing our testimony. When we are under spiritual attack, relating the things that Jesus has done for us helps us overcome the attack. This is along the lines of “”Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” Praising God to others when we are dealing with difficult situations denies satan his power. If he can’t get us to say, “curse God and die,” he’s lost the battle for our soul and we have overcome.

The second thing comes from a post I read recently that speaks for itself:

My pastor was preaching the other day and he was telling us a little about his life and his testimony and he was almost apologetic because he said he had never drunk alcohol, never taken drugs, never gone out partying, never gotten in trouble with the cops, never had sex outside of marriage, never been addicted to porn etc etc. He had been a straight-A student his whole life. After high school, he had gone to seminary, done well there, met his wife, got married and became a pastor. He said he’d never experienced many of the things that so many people struggle with, he didn’t have those bad memories from past mistakes – and he pretty much apologised for it, for not being able to truly empathise with people.

I went up to him afterward and told him “Don’t ever apologise for your testimony and don’t ever apologise that God saved you from going down those paths. Your testimony gives me hope. Your testimony tells me that it is possible to not make those mistakes. Your testimony tells me that it is not inevitable that I will start drinking and doing drugs again because of my depression over my wife dying. Your testimony tells me that God can bring me through this. Your testimony tells me that is possible for my children and grandchildren to not make those mistakes, to not go where I went and do what I did.

“Yours is a testimony that gives me hope.

http://blog.hafchurch.org/pete.....bye-bobby/

Anyways, if we American Christians were going out and surprising people with other Gifts like mercy, generosity, humble service, you wouldn’t be worried about whether the lost were being neglected: people would be asking us what our secret was. The big problem is that we can’t do those things either; at least, not in a way that stands out from the “good deeds” of the humanists around us. Not until we grow up and learn how to “do all things in Christ”. As someone who has a solid grasp on the gospel and also receives promptings from the Spirit, you are probably farther along than a lot of us… I would like to hear more about how you learned how to pray in a way that the Spirit can speak to you, instead of disappointing Him with monologues.