Sycamore

“The Word is primarily seen merely as an instrument for coaxing people into accepting the new birth.  ‘Making a decision’ causes the intimacy of a personal relationship with God to commence.  The new birth, especially if one judges by the testimonies of converts, is not so much the result of hearing with human ears, in human words, a declaration of things that happened in human history.  It is not so much the preaching of the cross, but the preaching of ‘my personal relationship with Jesus,’ the day when ‘Jesus came into my heart.’  The story we love to tell is really a story about ourselves, how we found the Lord, and how we are different people since the day we asked Jesus into our hearts.” -Michael Horton

The giving of “testimonies” has fallen out of style lately.  It used to be that someone giving their testimony was a regular occurrence at church services.  And while there are probably lots of reasons for that, I think one of them is that most people’s testimonies have changed.  The idea of a testimony is proclaiming something - you testify in court to proclaim the truth.  And it used to be that testimonies had a predictable but powerful pattern: “I was lost in my sin, facing judgment from God, but Christ called me to Himself, I repented of my sin and found forgiveness at the cross, and now I have a hope and a future through Christ alone - all praise be to Him.”  Today, though, they tend to sound different - “I was lost in my life, I felt empty inside, so I wanted to turn my life around and I came back to church.  Now, I feel closer to God than ever, and I really want to be a better person.”

The first one testifies to the Lord, and reminds me of the grace I need from a gospel I will never get tired of hearing.  The second testifies to yourself, and leaves out the very gospel of grace I need to hear over and over again.  And I don’t think I’m alone when I say that if I’ve got to sit through the latter, I’d rather leave it out of the service too.