Witness (Sharing Your Story of God)

Hey everyone. If you don’t know me, my name is Leah, and I’m on staff here at CSF. This is my third year on staff, and it’s honestly the most fun and fulfilling job I could have ever asked for. But before that, I was a student here at WKU and CSF for four years. I led a community group and made the best of friends here. I majored in Creative Writing and Religious Studies, which fostered and grew my love of stories, which if you know anything about me, it’s that I love stories. I want to be an author one day, and I’ve written several books that I’m thinking about getting published.  Some of my roommates were teasing me the other day because I always say some version of the same thing at the beginning of every talk, and this one was no different. That is just about everything there is to know about me and why I would be up here talking to you. 

Before I get any further, let me pray. 

Lord, we are all here to hear from you, not from me. Speak through me and let anything that I say that is not from you fall on deaf ears. Teach us what you have for us, and change us to be more like you. Ease my nerves and let Your will be done. I love you, Lord. Amen. 

Tonight, I’m going to continue our Bible Words series, where we try to demystify some common words used in the Bible and in church. So far this semester, we’ve talked about Hope, Sin, Perfect, Grace, Wisdom, Blessing, God, and Humility, and I’m going to share some about the word Witness. In all my research, I found and I think I can safely say that bearing witness and the word testimony can be used almost interchangeably. Before I chose this word, I was thinking a lot about stories, as I do, and about writing a memoir, a story about a particular series of events or theme in your life, and what it means to share your testimony. I remember growing up in church, hearing about people sharing their testimony and they’d talk about all these horrible things they did before they became a Christian and how getting saved completely changed their lives and now they are a perfect Christian, doing and saying and believing all the right things. But that was never my story. First of all, I grew up in church and I never really did anything all that bad. I mean, I wasn’t a perfect kid by any means, but I mostly did what I was told and I did well in school and I hung out with good people and did my chores, for the most part. I also knew all the right answers in church; I knew what I was supposed to believe and how to explain it, and to me, at least for a long time, knowing something and believing something were often the same thing. I didn’t have a perfect “before Jesus, then Jesus, now with Jesus“ version of my story I could share and it confused me. 

I don’t want anyone here to be confused anymore, so I want to go through my favorite story, the story of Hope, the story of the Bible, and see what it says about sharing a testimony or bearing witness. 

Let’s start with some Hebrew and Greek words and some definitions. The word “witness” in Hebrew is Eid and in Greek is Mártus and it refers to someone who sees something important or amazing and then shares their testimony or story with others. And “bearing witness” or giving testimony in Hebrew is Uwd and Greek is Marturéo and refers to when a witness shares what they have seen. In other words, a witness is someone who sees something and shares the story of what they’ve seen. I sure do love stories. This word “witness” can be used to understand the whole story of the Bible. I’m going to go fast through this part because I want to get to the practical stuff, so bear with me. If you have any questions about it later, I or anyone on staff or just around CSF would love to talk with you about it. So here goes: 

God created humans as his special creation for a special kind of relationship with him. They would walk together in the garden. But, as we’ve talked about several times this semester, humans saw something that looked better than God, a different way of living without that special relationship, and took it for themselves. This separated God from his creation. But God didn’t give up; he revealed himself to several people and then to Abraham who he promised he would make into a great nation that would bless the world. 

Gen 12:1-3

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation,

    and I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

    and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

    and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

    will be blessed through you.”

I could spend the rest of my time up here digging deep into this set of verses and the different ways God would bless the nations through Abraham and his descendants, but there is so much I also want to get through. The main takeaway I think is this: God wanted Abraham and his family—which would one day be the nation of Israel—to be witnesses of God to the world. And through them, through their witness, God would bless the world. And I think the rest of this story proves that. 

The nation of Israel took a long time to grow—since it was just Abraham and his wife when God promised this to them—and when they did grow into a great nation, they were in captivity in Egypt. They cried out to God for deliverance from their suffering, and God revealed himself to Moses and told him to go tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to let God’s people go. Long story short, the nation of Israel makes it out of Egypt and into the wilderness, and they had seen and experienced God do this incredible thing of delivering them from slavery. God appoints this nation to bear witness (uwd) to the rest of the world of the wonderful, powerful, and true God. God calls them a kingdom of priests, or people who connect all other nations to the one true God, Yahweh. 

But the people were not good at being witnesses of God. They had been in Egypt for so long that they didn’t look any different than Egyptians—they worshiped Egyptian gods, they acted the same way as Egyptians, and they didn’t know their own God very well at all. So God raised up Moses as the chief witness, the one who would tell God’s people about God and about the way God wanted them to live. He was to bear witness, or uwd, to the people who were supposed to be the real witnesses. 

Over time, Moses dies and the people forget about what they had seen and experienced with God. They fail to really experience and see God, so they fail as his witnesses. So God raises up prophets who, like Moses, are supposed to bear witness, or uwd—to open the people’s eyes to who their God really is. Different prophets came at different times, so a lot of them had slightly different testimonies or stories to share about God, but the main point of all of them is the original one: God himself, Yahweh, is the one true God. The prophet Isaiah, for instance, has a vision of God as the Cosmic King and is sent to uwd—bear witness—to Israel because they don’t recognize God as their King. Isaiah then says that one day God will raise up the ultimate chief witness, a figure called the Servant, who will open the eyes of the blind so that they can truly see Yahweh and bear witness to the nations that their God is the King who will rescue the world. 

Fast forward hundreds of years, and we have this guy called Jesus who claims to be that Servant and witness that Isaiah talked about. He is the ultimate witness, or in Greek, mártus. Crowds of people witness him saying that he’s bringing God’s Kingdom and doing many signs and wonders. They see and experience him, and their testimony of all that he’s said and done spreads all over that nation. All the way up to the leaders of the nation, who refuse to listen to him and decide to kill him for bearing witness to God’s Kingdom, that is for being a mártus—where we get the word martyr. 

But after Jesus died, something amazing happens—Jesus reveals himself and his friends see him alive again, and they recognize that he is the divine King, Yahweh himself, who has come to rescue the world. And Jesus sends them out to bear witness—to marturéo—to the nations, to open their eyes to this risen King who has conquered death and who offers freedom and rescue and the hope of a new creation. It’s this story about Jesus that’s been spread all around the world by faithful witnesses. And to this day, when someone hears the story of Jesus and experiences the love of God for all humanity, the most natural thing to do is to talk about it or bear witness. 

As his disciples, we were also told to bear witness, to marturéo, to the whole world in Matthew 28:19-20. 

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. 

Jesus clearly calls us to bear witness to all nations, to make more witnesses who can see and experience God and then go and tell others. We are called his witnesses in Acts 1:8. 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 

God has always wanted a relationship with the humanity he created, and he has done everything to make it happen. And he wants us to invite everyone to be reconciled with him. And that’s where we’re heading—to ultimate reconciliation. 

That’s the story. That’s what the witnesses before have told us and that’s what Christians all over the world experience for themselves today. So if we’re called to be witnesses of God, what does that mean for us right here, right now? I want to spend some time talking about 2 Corinthians 5:20, which might seem like a tangent, but I’ll try to bring it back around. It says this: 

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

I listened to a podcast called How to Share Your Faith by The Porch because I thought it might be helpful in preparing for talking about being a witness. And the speaker, Timothy Ateek or TA talked about this verse and word ambassador. An ambassador is a person who represents and promotes someone or something, a representative if you will. But in Roman culture, however, an ambassador had a different function. Well, similar, but far more significant. Ambassadors were messengers that were sent from an overpowering army to one who was about to be destroyed. As was military custom, the messenger brought terms of surrender, and thus peace, to the army that was about to be overwhelmed. It was a final offer before utter destruction. 

So when Paul claims that he and his coworkers are ambassadors of Christ, when the Bible calls us ambassadors of Christ, it’s much more significant than just a representative. Yes, we are representing Christ, but we’re also representing the King and telling captives of the enemy army that they can be free and don’t have to be destroyed with their captors. And we’re bearing witness of the King’s faithfulness and kindness to do what he says he will. 

Does that make sense? If you’re a Christian like me, we were once captives of the enemy army and God was good and kind and faithful and he made us free so we won’t be destroyed. We are witnesses of God’s power to save, just like the Israelites were witnesses of God’s salvation from slavery in Egypt. And we’re sent out by the King to bear witness, to tell people the good news of Christ, and to offer that same peace offering that he gave to us—before it’s too late. We are the messengers that go out into the world who offer peace before utter destruction for those who don’t know Jesus when he comes back. Like Paul said, “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.” 

Where does this leave us? My goal is that I don’t want anyone to be confused anymore about their testimony—or at least that you will know how to go about sharing your witness account of God and what he’s done in your life. So I think I need to give some practical steps here. I have seven of them.

Step 1- Know Jesus. If you’ve already come to saving faith in Jesus, easy; step one done. You have a story of Jesus. Actually, two: you have the Gospel, that God himself came down, lived perfectly, died, rose again, and is coming back someday all so we can be reconciled to him; and you have how you met Jesus. Who introduced you? What made you realize you needed him? What was it like? How did it feel? Did anything in your life change?

Step 2- Know who you are in Jesus. Know who God is—his character and attributes and who he has proven himself to be—and who he says you are. Sometimes, especially when you have things in your past or even current things that you’re ashamed of, it’s hard to share that. You feel like you’ll be judged or viewed differently. But God has redeemed you, made you His, and has covered all your shame. But if you don’t know that, if you don’t know what God has done for you, it will be hard for you to live in that reality. The way to know God and who you are because of Him is to know His Word. Read the Scriptures, join a Bible study or community group, actually pay attention to the sermons on Sundays. There are tons of different ways to study the Bible, just read it for yourself until you know it and really believe it. There are some things that will be hard for you to believe and some things that will feel impossible to believe. What are those things? What’s holding you back from the humble confidence that Conny talked about last week? 

Step 3- Continue to grow in faith, understanding, and action. Sometimes your first encounter with Jesus isn’t the encounter that changed a ton in your life. Sometimes it just changes a small part, and the Holy Spirit convicts you later of something bigger that changes everything. Maybe He’s delivered you from something that had a stronghold over you, like an addiction of some sort or even something that sounds easy to overcome but felt impossible when you were going through it. Sometimes you’re still in the midst of a battle against a sin in your life, something that pulls you away from God, but He is still working in you, changing you, shaping you to be more like Him in preparation for the reconciliation. Keep studying the Word, keep praying, keep working through it, and fix your eyes and heart on Jesus. And follow up that belief and trust with action. Actually obey what you feel God telling you to do and see just how faithful He is. The more you grow in your character, the more you align your character with God, the more you’ll encounter him and experience him. How have you changed and grown in the past? How are you changing and growing now? If you don’t think God is speaking to you now, I’d wager that you’re just not listening. Listen. What is he saying? And what’s holding you back from doing it? 

Step 4- Pay attention. Oftentimes, as Christians, we walk through life learning a bunch of different stuff about God and ourselves and how we should live and then we just forget it all when something else comes up. I know I’m guilty of that. Something that’s really helped me start paying attention to the way God’s been speaking to me, how I’ve been experiencing God, has been journaling. I keep a prayer journal, which, in addition to helping me pray generally, has been a record of all the ways that God has been working in my life. A lot, if not all, of what I’ve seen and experienced with God is in this journal or one like it. And going back and reading it sometimes, like when I’m feeling far from God or when I’m struggling to see His faithfulness, is a way that I bear witness—uwd—to myself. And then it helps me to identify what I like to call spiritual markers: moments throughout my life that shifted my perspective on God or myself or the world. For example, one of my spiritual markers is when I finally trusted God enough to pray about my writing because for a long time I believed that God would take away anything that I gave up to Him. Spoiler: that’s not true, and God was so patient when He taught me that, and now that’s a part of my story, my testimony, my witness account of my experience with God. So if you’ve never thought about it before, what are some of your spiritual markers? What ways have you experienced God, both in the past and now? 

Step 5- Tell one person. If you’ve never told your story, any part of it, then it’s going to be hard to share your story. It’s most likely going to be scary the first time, so it’s best to share with someone you know and trust and who you know loves Jesus. Or maybe you feel called to jump right in and share with someone you don’t know super well or don’t know at all; do that. It’ll probably still be a little scary, but in my experience, the first time is always the hardest. If you have shared your testimony before, who did you share it with? If you haven’t, who could you share it with? Who would be the easiest person to start with? It could be someone here at CSF, your community group leader, someone on staff, one of your friends. It could be someone from your church, a pastor or mentor or whoever you feel close to. It could be literally anyone you want. If you still can’t think of anyone, share it with me. I am telling you that I want to hear your story. I would love to hear it. 

Step 6- Practice, practice, practice. Get to know your story. Get to know your own personal witness account of God and get to know the Bible’s witness account of God, and practice telling people. This can be writing it out a bunch of times if you’re into writing like me; it can be sharing with more people who are close to you. List out your spiritual markers, remind yourself of God’s faithfulness in those moments, reflect on what you learned in those seasons of your life, especially if you never have before. I personally am open to telling my story to anyone, but it took me a long time to get there! And there are still some parts of it that I’m still scared about sharing. To help with this, and also just to process through some of it, I decided to write a memoir which will basically be an in depth version of my full testimony from the first moment I encountered God to right now. Or at least, that’s the plan. I don’t know exactly what all will be going into it, but I’ve been writing out my spiritual markers lately and it’s been so helpful. 

Step 7- Lastly, go and tell. It takes wisdom and discernment to know the what, when, where, and how of sharing your testimony or your witness account with someone. I don’t necessarily recommend walking up to a random stranger you’ve never met or talked to before and just starting, “When I was four years old, the pastor at my church preached about hell and, not gonna lie, that scared the hell out of me, pun intended, so I gave my life to Jesus Christ!” I just don’t think that will go over well every time! So how do you share your testimony? I think it all starts with building relationships. Get to know your classmates. Make friends, you know? I know there’s only a month or so left, but doesn’t that just increase the urgency? You only have a month to share your story, your personal witness of the King, with some of these people! Start a conversation; offer to study together. When you take your snack break, ask them about themselves. Look for the window through which you can share the hope of Jesus. If that’s too scary (or not scary enough, for some people), what about your close friends now? People in your community group? Your roommate or roommates? Have you told them your testimony? Why not? Don’t you think there’s something that God has taught you that they might benefit from? That they might need to hear? That God might be wanting to tell them through you? 

So those are the seven practical steps I came up with to help you get to know your own story and to start bearing witness—to uwd—to the people in your life about your experience with God. They are in the most logical order I could make them, but they are not hard and fast rules like you have to do perfectly at step three before you start step five or whatever, it’s just a guideline. I will say, you probably can’t skip step one. 

I said a lot of things, so let me sum it up quickly before I finish up. To be a witness is to see or experience something amazing or important and share that story. God wants to be reconciled with his creation, all of it, and throughout history he has appointed people from creation to be witnesses and to bear witness of who He is to his creation. Jesus Christ is the ultimate witness, the perfect witness who shows us who God really is, who bridges the gap between us and God. And, just like the disciples in the Bible who saw and experienced God were told to bear witness of what they had seen, we are called to do the same. How? Share your testimony or story of God with others. If you’ve never done it before or don’t know how, I gave you these seven steps: Know Jesus; Know Who You Are In Jesus; Continue to Grow in Faith, Understanding, and Action; Pay Attention; Tell One Person; Practice, Practice, Practice; and Go and Tell. We are ambassadors of Christ on earth, sent to deliver the message of peace, the good news that God wants to rescue humanity from destruction before it’s too late. He did it with us, and He will do it again; that’s our witness account. 

If you don’t know Jesus yet, this probably didn’t make a lot of sense to you, but I challenge you to really consider this story. Think about it as if it were true. I believe that it is. What does that mean for you? If you have questions, someone on staff can answer them or point you to someone who can. If you do know Jesus, what’s stopping you from sharing your witness account with someone? Do you know your story well enough to be a good witness and ambassador of the Most High King? 

Let me pray. 

God, you are so good and so faithful and so kind to want to be reconciled with us and you are powerful enough to make it happen. Thank you for not abandoning us. I love recounting the story of your relentless love, of your unstoppable pursuit of your creation, and your power to set us free. Help us to be good witnesses and ambassadors of your love to the world this week, the rest of this semester, and for the rest of our lives. We love you, Lord. Amen.