A Mighty Testimony

Mighty Testimony | Acts 22:1-16
How useful is your testimony about your salvation by Jesus Christ?
Is it persuasive? Does it cause people to be stirred? If not, why not?
You are a sinner saved by grace and were on the same road (the road to hell) where Paul got saved. Did you know what happened then? A dead man came to life!
Your testimony may not be as stark as his, but the power of your testimony is not about the contrast between who you are now and who you were, but rather the contrast between who you are and the world around you. Your testimony is mighty because you have been saved by a mighty Saviour!
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Five aspects of Paul’s testimony
I. His Courage
- Imagine you have come back to your hometown and you've gone to the temple and the angry mob has grabbed you and is shouting all kinds of accusations, determined to kill you. If it were us, we would have ran home and shut the door behind us! But that's not what Paul did. With courage, he presented his testimony to them.
- We too need courage to share the Gospel, the testimony of God's salvation in our lives
- Sharing our personal testimony is a practical way of sharing the gospel, being less confrontational.
- There is a direct correlation between your confidence in the Gospel to save and your willingness to share the Gospel to the unsaved.
II. His Kindness
- Kindness and courage should go together, but most of the time they do not. Courage sometimes comes with disrespect and rashness.
- Paul's courage came with respect and kindness; he called them "brothers" and he even referred to some of them as "fathers".
- Paul wanted to get the message across with respect and honour and do his best to remove the barriers between them in gentleness.
III. His Contextualisation
- This is more than speaking a language that they can understand; it is also about conducting one's self in a way that people can relate.
- How much can we look like the world and still be holy? We can be like the world in every way except where the world breaks God's law.
IV. His Changed Life
- One of the reasons that personal testimonies are powerful is because it is a hard thing to argue against.
- If they can clearly see within your own life that something
radical has really taken place. This was what made Paul's testimony credible (the church's greatest enemy became the church's greatest champion!)
- Ask yourself whether your life looks more like the world or more like Christ.
- A good reason to hate your sin is this that it gives the world a reason to discredit your God's power to save.
V. His Core Message
- If you are a Christian, then not only has Christ appeared to you on that road but Christ has also appointed you from eternity past to be a witness to the ends of the world, to everyone and everything you have come to know and see.
- Paul's testimony is dramatic in many ways, but in many ways, it is as dramatic as your testimony is.
- We will look further into this in the weeks ahead.