Sharing Truth

May 19

Sworn testimony must be given before the appropriate people. A judge and a jury must hear it in order for it to be effectual toward the end that it is presented. Any written statement must be signed and notarized in order that it becomes legally binding. Our law takes the veracity of information very seriously.

The most important testimony any individual can present to another is that regarding his own spiritual experience. When a believer takes it upon himself to present an account of his faith in Jesus to another, it must be done with complete awareness of the gravity of the matter he is broaching.

Paul, a man who had persecuted believers in Christ, who had pursued them and arrested them and returned them to Jerusalem for trial, found Himself ‘arrested’ by the Lord whose people he’d been relentlessly pursuing while on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-20). This encounter with the risen Savior transformed his life and through the rest of his days, Paul concerned himself only with propagating the gospel of the King of kings and Lord of lords. He thereafter lived for Jesus and was willing to die for Jesus.

Paul desired that his testimony be established by the highest authority he knew so he stated his faith, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead…” and he admonished his hearers to, “…Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage with patience and careful instruction,” II Timothy 4: 1,2. Paul desired everyone to hear this truth—and he desired that everyone who heard it would, like him, become a preacher of it.