Bill's Bible Blog

🍎 APPLICATION: Our Testimonies

Psalm 40:9-10 can be looked at as a model of how to give a testimony not only in the “great assembly,” in other words, the  ‘church,’ but also with small groups and even individuals. Here are some aspects of that model that might be of use to us today.

A testimony is a statement about what we have seen, what we’ve heard, and what we did in response–in other words, what we’ve experienced ourselves. Typically, people think of a ‘testimony as the story of how we became a Christian. That IS an important story and we should be able to tell it in both long and short versions at any time. But it should just be the first of many stories of God’s grace towards us as we walk in faith with Him. (See the last point, #10.)

We should be eager to share our testimony with the rest of God’s people, who may not have had the same experience with God, but we have to be careful how we do that. Too many testimonies devote far too much time to the “miry pit” part of the experience, in other words, what life was like before God intervened. 

Unfortunately, some testimonies to God’s grace are really testimonies about the one who was delivered. You can tell the difference easily enough by whether the testimony is filled with use of the self-serving pronouns, “Me, Myself and I.” 

Sometimes in our public American Christian culture of constraint, we neglect to give God praise in public testimony. At the other extreme, sometimes in the lack of restraint in our private lives, we say a lot of things about our faith that are essentially off-base.

We need to get the sharing of our testimonies right, and it’s not necessarily just going to happen.  Somewhere along the way, there has to be an intentional effort to teach and learn how to thank and praise God in public testimony.

That’s what David is talking about in Psalm 40:9 and 10 — don’t keep it a secret, don’t keep your mouth shut, if God has answered your prayer, tell everyone about it!  David is saying, ‘I will talk about it. I won’t keep it to myself. I will talk about God’s goodness and his faithfulness.’ Because the issue is not just getting across the truth aboutGod, there is also the personal testimony about Him that is in itself powerful and convincing.

There are some people who proclaim the gospel by giving their testimony, but they never actually get around to explaining the gospel. After all:

Sharing our conversion testimony kind of ‘puts skin’ on the words of Jesus, but it is not enough to save anyone. Only God can do that, and He has chosen the gospel–the good news about Jesus Christ–as His instrument for that salvation.

Our manner of living–both speech and actions–should be consistent with what we say in our testimony. We can proclaim the gospel in such a way that we don’t sound convinced by it or committed to it, like it’s more of an intellectual exercise rather than a heart conviction. If we don’t sound convinced enough that WE believe it, how can we expect those we share it with to even consider believing?

One of our teaching pastors, Curtis A., shared a story recently (Note that these ‘stories’ are really testimonies!) about how he had been sharing the gospel with a co-worker over lunches at work before he had entered full-time ministry. He wasn’t completely happy with his job and some of the things that happened there, so it was not uncommon for him to be complaining about how the day had gone.

One day as they were leaving work and he was engaged in his usual litany of complaints, she turned to him and said something like, “I find your gospel very unconvincing when you talk about how much joy it brings, and you are so miserable every day when you leave work.”  Ziiing!   It is essential that the testimony of how we live our life matches the testimony of our words.

Often it sounds like people are arguing about the gospel. They argue about terms, they argue about suppositions, they argue about what is true and what is not.

Christian apologetics is taught along that same line. In apologetics, you are taught, “They say this; you say that.” You are taught to handle any objection or argument against the gospel with the counter-argument. But it often goes from “giving a defense,” to “the best defense is a good offensive,’ then the discussion tends to become ‘offensive’ and breaks down to who is louder in their argument, not in sharing the truths from God’s Word.

Pastor J.D. made a really great point recently (and not the first time he’s made this point) that how we talk to others about God, Jesus Christ and the gospel should be a reflection of what the gospel means.

The gospel is all about the grace and mercy of God made available to us through His love and the sacrifice of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, when we’re sharing the gospel, our words and actions should be a reflection of that love, grace and mercy. And we should be willing to make at least small sacrifices of time, pride and social acceptance to put the gospel out there.

Our gospel should not be an oversimplified version—it needs to be the whole gospel. But when arguments arise about the gospel’s assertions, we don’t need to have an arsenal of counter-arguments lined up like baseball bats to club people over the head with.  Sometimes we have to be able to say something like, “Once I just felt so guilty, but now I feel forgiven and clean.”

In the way that we bear witness to the gospel, in the way that we speak about ourselves, and in the way we teach others to do so, we must be able to not only present the gospel clearly and accurately, but we must be able to bear witness to the gospel out of our own experience. We must all have our, “Once I was blind, but now I see,” testimony for public proclamation. Develop your own truthful testimony about what God has done for you, and be humble and sincere in sharing it.

Let’s not have an experience of how faithful God is and just clam up and be quiet about it!  Let’s share with our brothers and sisters how faithful God was to us.

Rudyard Kipling said, “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”  We need to do something similar with God’s answers to our prayers.

I’m encouraged in my faith when there has been a clear answer to prayer by God. Others might not have received such a clear and obvious response from God in a while, so by sharing what God has just done for us, we can help encourage others and help build up their own faith in God.

Therefore, when we’ve been encouraged in our faith by by answered prayer, we should testify about it in our assemblies–whether one-on-one, small groups, Sunday School class, men’s or women’s discipleship groups–whenever you are in a situation where you can share from your life, TESTIFY! Its not just for you.

There is a purpose beyond ourselves in giving public thanks to God and bearing witness in our personal testimonies. Whether speaking in small or large assemblies, or just one-to-one, we are modeling to the next generation how to respond to what God is doing for us. That’s the gist of David’s conclusion of the first part of Psalm 40 in verses 9 and 10, and it’s the biggest part.

Our testimony is not just about our conversion, we should have a testimony about every time we experience God’s grace.

God is rich in grace and mercy, and when He has blessed us in some way, especially in contrast to hard times around us, we should testify to that!  For example:

The opportunities for testimony abound! Trust God, ask for His help, thank Him when He answers your prayers, and then TELL OTHERS!

As our last meditation and application of the 26 verses for 2026, let’s remember: