Our Testimony About Christ

Posted on by korgrocker

“I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way – with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge – God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you.”
1 Corinthians 1:4-6 NIVUK
“I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts he has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus. Through him, God has enriched your church in every way—with all of your eloquent words and all of your knowledge. This confirms that what I told you about Christ is true.”
1 Corinthians 1:4-6 NLT

Paul could see so much good in those early Christians in Corinth. He provides the picture of a people who seem to have a new confidence enhanced by the spiritual gifts they had received. They received an ability that came from being “enriched in every way with all kinds of speech and knowledge”. But that wasn’t unusual with the early believers. In Acts 3 we can read of a “man who was lame from birth” and who was carried to the Temple gate every day to beg. Then there came those epic words from Peter, “ … ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong” (Acts 3:6-7). Of course, the people who knew the disabled beggar “were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him” and this gave Peter and John an opportunity to preach the Gospel in a part of the Temple called Solomon’s Colonnade. But this displeased the religious authorities and “They seized Peter and John and, because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day”(Acts 4:3). Peter and John were brought in for questioning the next day before a meeting of the Sanhedrin and they were asked, ” … By what power or what name did you do this?” (Acts 4:7). Now here’s the point of this story – the next verse started, “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: ‘Rulers and elders of the people!” ‭‭Peter started a discourse empowered in the same way as the believers in Corinth. They were all full of the Holy Spirit and the “gracious gifts He has given [them]”. After Peter’s defence before the Sanhedrin, the two disciples were removed from the assembly and we then read something very telling, “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realised that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus“. That’s what Paul could see in those early Corinthian believers – men and women filled with the Holy Spirit, giving them powers that could only come from God.

Of course we remember the verses where Jesus told His disciples about the Holy Spirit. Jesus was recorded as saying, “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say” (Luke 12:11-12). The same saying of Jesus is in Matthew 10:19-20, “But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you”. Both versions of what Jesus said stress the importance of recognising the Gift of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. I meet Christians who lack the confidence to speak out when an opportunity is presented, because they feel they won’t know what to say. In faith, we all know what to say, because the Holy Spirit will speak through us. 

Believers everywhere, pilgrims like us, have the responsibility, ability and, we pray, the opportunity to provide and speak out our testimonies about Christ. We don’t have to learn a script. We don’t have to stutter and be ashamed about what we know or about our faith. God will lead us and guide us in every situation we come across. How did we come to know Jesus? How has Jesus helped us in our daily lives? It is all there within us, just waiting for the Holy Spirit to form the words and speak them out through our lips, as Jesus said. Some of the best evangelists are new Christians, full of excitement and the Holy Spirit, desperate to tell someone about Jesus. Do we still have that same excitement that we once had?

But we should also take note of something else. In Peter’s discourse before the Sanhedrin he quoted a Scripture from Psalm 118:22, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone“. The point is that Peter knew a Bible verse that backed up what he was saying. In the culture of His day, Jesus took it as read that the disciples would have had a degree of Bible knowledge, being schooled at least to a basic level as every Jewish boy was. We pilgrims will not have a religious education to the same degree. We may have been ignorant of Sunday schools when we were small. We may never have entered a church until we met Jesus. But that doesn’t matter because we can read the Bible, and the Holy Spirit will be able to put scriptures into our testimonies because they are stored away somewhere in our memory. But having said that, our God is also a miracle worker. There have been times when some thought or impression has emerged in my mind, and I’ve wondered where it came from, but it has been very relevant to the situation before me. 

Paul reassured the Corinthian believers of the authenticity of his testimony about Christ, and I’m sure his readers had the same. This is something that we pilgrims must also be serious about, also having a testimony about Christ, proclaiming all that He has done for us. It is not just about going to church on a Sunday, and behaving like everyone else for the rest of the week. We must shine like beacons, showing the Light of God to all around us, through our behaviour, speech, attitudes and faith. We present a counter-cultural view of societal life that everyone will see and take note of, and we look for opportunities to share our testimonies with anyone who will listen, using as a bottom line the words that Peter said in Acts 2:38-40, “Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away—all who have been called by the Lord our God.” Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!””. We do indeed live in a “crooked generation” and must urge those in our society, those we know and don’t know, about the importance of salvation, and where will spend eternity.

Dear Heavenly Father. Thank You for our testimonies, and we pray for Your presence to bring them to life in the ears of our listeners. It’s all about our Lord Jesus, and all that He has done for us, and we praise and worship You today with deeply thankful hearts. Amen.

Celebrating God’s Mighty Acts

Posted on by korgrocker

“You will wipe their children from the face of the earth; they will never have descendants. Although they plot against you, their evil schemes will never succeed. For they will turn and run when they see your arrows aimed at them. Rise up, O Lord, in all your power. With music and singing we celebrate your mighty acts.”
Psalm 21:10-13 NLT

If there is ever a time in history when we need God to “rise up” in all His power, it is today. We look around at the world and see the wars, not just in a physical sense, but also in the sphere of global macro-economics. We see the misery of people stuck in a hopeless cycle of drug and alcohol addiction. We read about the people who want to end their lives because living doesn’t appeal to them anymore. We see the tragedy of unborn babies being eliminated in the name of women’s health. But I expect many in our past have called upon God to rise up in power. What prayers and cries to God were going up during the last world war? What were relatives praying when their loved ones were dying in the Covid pandemic? What about the times when untreatable sicknesses were rife in Victorian days? And all the way back to David’s day and beyond, there were crises, one after another, when people cried out to God for help. And how many people are suffering today, persecuted and abused just for believing in God? Part of living in an evil and sinful world is the reality that there will be times of difficulty, misery, pain, and hopelessness. But having written all of this, there is hope. David finished Psalm 21 with the words, “With music and singing we celebrate your mighty acts”. That implies that there were, and are, times when God does act. In fact, I am sure that God is holding back most of the evil that is poised, waiting to be unleashed on a helpless world full of God’s creation, evil that the devil and his assistants are concocting to bring unbearable misery. 

When God created the earth and all that is upon it, He said it was good. All that we perceive as evil just wasn’t there, but a Heavenly being, an angel called Lucifer, or Satan, rebelled against God and had to be removed from Heaven, which is the sinless domain where God lives. Unfortunately, the angels are immortal beings so there was only one other place that the rebellious angels could go and that was Planet Earth. Isaiah 14:12, “How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning! You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world“. And so there is a struggle between how God created us, good and perfect, and the devil and all his evil ways, that has resulted in a world tainted with sin. Many of David’s Psalms portray the struggle that has resulted. But in it all, David was close to the Lord, and could testify to the mighty acts of God worked out in his life during his reign as king of Israel. 

In our lives today, we pilgrims too can testify to the mighty acts of God. The first is the act of redemption and atonement that God Himself brought right down to Planet Earth. An act of love and compassion never before seen, and it will never again occur. It was a once only event, a time when Heaven and earth, the spiritual and the natural, collided and one that signed the death warrant for the devil and all his schemes. The devil thought that by bringing about the crucifixion and death of God’s only Son, Jesus, he would finally win the war between Good and Evil, but how wrong he was. There is now a conduit between earth and Heaven that allows human beings to escape from his clutches. Yes, we pilgrims are still living in a world of evil and sin, even to the point where we too are entangled in sinful ways, but as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, we have been set free and we are assured forgiveness and redemption through Jesus. 

We pilgrims can also sing and praise God for His “mighty acts” in the way He has brought about events in our own lives. I can personally testify to many occasions when God has come through for me and my family, as we trusted Him for direction and favour in a time of crisis. And I’m sure my readers also have their own stories of how God has blessed them. And so together we can celebrate His “mighty acts” with singing and music. There is no God like our God. Who else is there who can pour out on us so much love and compassion? Who else can forgive us for our sins and bring us ultimately to our Heavenly home? Who else is there who can wipe away our tears and heal our diseases? But even in times when it appears the doors of Heaven are shut and our prayers bounce back unheeded, we can stand firm as Habakkuk did when he wrote, “Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!” (Habakkuk 3:17-18). We know that the battles waging around us will ebb and flow, but we are certain, as Jesus said, ” … the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). In the meantime we will sing and make music in honour, and to the glory, of the One who has performed “mighty acts”.

Dear Father God. You and only You are the One who loves and cares for us and our souls. We worship You with grateful hearts today. Amen.

The End

Posted on by korgrocker

“This disciple is the one who testifies to these events and has recorded them here. And we know that his account of these things is accurate. Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.”
John 21:24-25 NLT

The world today has an insatiable desire for information. Vast quantities of data flow along cables and radio waves throughout the world, a global information highway that transport data in fractions of a second. Telephone calls can be made across the globe. News reports become immediately available. In a sense the world is shrinking. But back at John’s desk, as he was penning his final words, he felt a sense of being overwhelmed. Have I written enough? What about that time when …? Did God want me to mention about …? These were all questions that could have been going through his mind, but in the end he concluded that he had done enough. Mission accomplished. We must also remember that what he wrote was inspired by the Holy Spirit so he would have felt a peace within as he added the final “full stop”. But John was right over one thing, if all that Jesus had done had been recorded in the way we have come to expect today, then there would not have been enough storage media available to record it all. 

In recent years, a device called a “lifelogger” has been produced that would take a snapshot every thirty seconds or so, providing a log of someone’s life. And then there was the Spanish scientist who started logging every detail of his life in a notebook when he turned forty. Now, nearly ten years later, he has filled 307 notebooks and there are more to go. But it begs the question about what value this could ever have to anyone. But it is different with Jesus. Superficially, the Son of God’s thoughts and deeds would be of immense value to humanity, but then we have to consider that He, through John and the other Bible writes, had divulged all the needed principles for life that would leverage our human understanding and intelligence. Jesus taught using parables, and the benefit of these is that they make people think, bringing understanding and direction for the way they live their lives. And the Holy Spirit brings enlightenment and direction. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). 

John concluded that his Gospel account was “accurate” and his testimony recorded. Job done. Book finished. And we’re grateful for the Bible writers like John who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote down just what God intended. 

Dear Father God. The Bible is Your own work, recorded by Your human servants. Thank You for John and men and women like him, who devoted their lives for the benefit of others. Amen.

You Must Testify

Posted on by korgrocker

“But I will send you the Advocate —the Spirit of truth. He will come to you from the Father and will testify all about me. And you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.”
John 15:26-27 NLT

The word “testify” appears twice in these verses, once associated with the Holy Spirit and the other time with Jesus and His disciples. Everything they needed to know about Jesus after He had gone would be revealed to them by the Holy Spirit, who would “come” to them “from the Father”. But just a few short years before, something happened on the shores of the Galilean Sea that would have far reaching consequences, not just for those concerned, but for the world ever since. Those early disciples are long dead but their legacy lives on in successive generations of believers. Mark 1:16-17, “One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!””. Just a little further along the shore Jesus found James and John and we read, “He called them at once, and they also followed him, leaving their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men” (Mark 1:20). Did those four men have any clue about would happen over the next three years or so‭‭? Their world was turned upside down but they never turned away from Jesus. But here was their Master saying to them and the others, “you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.” 

And testify about Jesus they did. On the same day that the Spirit fell on those gathered in that Upper Room, on the first Day of Pentecost, Peter testified about Jesus, “People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know” (Acts 2:22). And Peter’s last recorded words were, “Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The last verse in the Bible was spoken by the Apostle John, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people” (Revelation 22:21). Those early disciples, who had “been with [Jesus] from the beginning of [His] ministry” never stopped testifying about Jesus, fulfilling Jesus’ wishes in these last hours of His life.

We pilgrims, by extension, must also testify about Jesus. The Holy Spirit dwells within all truly born again believers and they too benefit from His testimony about Jesus. At every opportunity we must share how Jesus gave His life to save everyone, and in the process we testify how that made a difference to us. In John 1:4-7, we read, “The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony”. John the Baptist was the first testifier about Jesus. He realised who the Light was and he testified about Jesus “so that everyone might believe”. 

Paul wrote, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. … But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke”” (2 Corinthians 4:7, 13). We faith-filled pilgrims may feel totally inadequate for the task of testifying but regardless we must speak the words of Jesus at every opportunity. Why? Because Jesus asked us to.

Lord Jesus. Because of Your grace and love what else can we do other than speak out our testimony of faith. Please lead us to the people You want to hear it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Personal Testimony

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” The Pharisees replied, “You are making those claims about yourself! Such testimony is not valid.” Jesus told them, “These claims are valid even though I make them about myself. For I know where I came from and where I am going, but you don’t know this about me. You judge me by human standards, but I do not judge anyone. And if I did, my judgment would be correct in every respect because I am not alone. The Father who sent me is with me. Your own law says that if two people agree about something, their witness is accepted as fact. I am one witness, and my Father who sent me is the other.””
John 8:12-18 NLT

The Pharisees seem to have been abandoned by the other Jewish religious leaders because John stopped mentioning them. But regardless, the Pharisaical attacks on Jesus continued, and they now start another approach. The Pharisees decided that Jesus was making claims about Himself that could not be substantiated by independent witnesses, so how could they be proven? Where was the testimony of others? Without it, the Pharisees said, Jesus had no right to make the claims He did. Claims like we read in John 6:35, “Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”. And in our verses today we read another claim that Jesus made – “I am the light of the world”. Of course, to the Jews, the use of the two words “I am” was highly contentious because they were the name of God and many Jews wouldn’t even mention it. Exodus 3:14, “God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you””. 

Jesus told the Pharisees that what He said about Himself was valid, because there were two witnesses – Himself and His Father in Heaven. Jesus said His claims were true because He knew where He had come from and where He was going. His mandate couldn’t have been any higher. He was on a mission ordained by His Father. Effectively, He was saying to the Pharisees that He was the Son of God, able to make valid claims about Himself, so get over it!

Jesus also pointed out that the Pharisees were using human values to judge Him, something that did not apply in His situation. There was no higher authority than God and His Son, so human jurisdiction did not apply. Jesus then said that He didn’t judge anyone. We remember that He had previously mentioned this in His conversation with Nicodemus, recorded in John 3:17, “God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him”. At the time of His first coming, Jesus was not going to judge anyone – that occasion was still to come, as we read in Revelation 20. 

So, what do we pilgrims think of Jesus and His claims? They are all recorded in the Gospels and elsewhere in the New Testament. The people of His day were divided in their opinions of Him. Many believed in Him because of the miraculous signs that he did, and because of His teaching. But still more, including the Pharisees and the other religious leaders, did not. However, two thousand years on, we are followers of Jesus, disciples of the Son of God, believers in the God-Man who had the words of eternal life. The Messiah who was the bread of life, sustaining those who believed in Him. We don’t stumble around in the darkness of a sinful world, but we have the light of Jesus illuminating our every step. We worship a loving Saviour, who gave His life that we might live.

Dear Lord Jesus. We believe in you, and will follow You all the days of our lives. In Your precious name. Amen.

The Galilean Welcome

Posted on by korgrocker

“At the end of the two days, Jesus went on to Galilee. He himself had said that a prophet is not honoured in his own hometown. Yet the Galileans welcomed him, for they had been in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration and had seen everything he did there.”
John 4:43-45 NLT

After a couple of days spent amongst the inhabitants of Sychar in Samaria, Jesus continued with His journey to Galilee. Amazing things had happened in Sychar, and the Samarians were left with the knowledge that they had met with God’s own Son, Jesus, the Messiah they had been waiting for. Perhaps Sychar was an oasis of revival in an otherwise neglected people. 

John wrote that Jesus’ ministry didn’t start very well in Galilee. We can read about that occasion in Matthew 13. John wrote that Jesus ” … returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said, “Where does he get this wisdom and the power to do miracles?”” (Matthew 13:54). But to the people amongst whom Jesus grew up and worked, in His home town of Nazareth, there was a disconnect. The account continues in Matthew, “Then they scoffed, “He’s just the carpenter’s son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers—James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. All his sisters live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things?”” (Matthew 13:55-56). At first sight, it is incredible to think that the miracles Jesus had committed and the words of the Kingdom of God that He had preached, were all rejected just because they had known Him differently. And in Matthew 13:57 we read, “And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him. Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honoured everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family.”” A really sad state of affairs.

But before we pilgrims take the moral high ground and claim that we would never have behaved in such a way, we should pause and think. Who in the workplace has not resented the promotion of a colleague, thinking that he or she is no better than they are and unworthy of the promotion? Who has had trouble receiving a message from a Christian brother or sister, because they perhaps have known them from another time? Who has become a Christian only to find that their family has rejected them? If Jesus was rejected by His own people, we should expect the same. We read in John 1:10-11, “He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him“. We sometimes expect that the deliverer of God’s messages, a prophet, should be someone who has perhaps been raised in God’s presence by a family of angels. But it is so different – Paul wrote about this in 1 Corinthians 1:26-28, “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important“. So we pilgrims should always welcome what a brother or sister, whatever their pedigree, says to us, because for all we know, God may be speaking a message for us just through them.

In our verses from John 4 today, we read that in spite of all the contempt and rejection Jesus had suffered in Nazareth, the Galileans welcomed Him anyway. They had seen the miracles He had committed in Judea, because many of them had journeyed there for the Jewish Feast. When we make that transition from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light, we are transformed. We become a new creation and we have access to all God’s resources. And through His grace and mercy He will use us obedient believers to deliver His message to those around us. That is, if we let Him. And we can expect opposition, particularly if the message is to our families and those who know us. To preach the message of salvation to our friends and family can be difficult, but we must persevere and pray. I know a man who is now a pastor of a church in a deprived area of Glasgow. He planted the church in the same community that he grew up in, and where he became involved with drugs, even becoming a dealer at one point. The police caught up with him eventually and he ended up serving a prison sentence. But in prison he was encouraged by the prison chaplain to consider spending time with Teen Challenge after he was released. But to cut a long story short, he came to know Jesus as his personal Saviour, went to Bible college, married a Christian girl in Dublin, and returned to Glasgow where he is now preaching the Gospel to his friends and family.

But Jesus was welcomed back into Galilee because He had credibility with the people there. They had seen at first hand the powerful miracles, and heard the gracious words about God’s Kingdom. It will take time for us pilgrims to achieve credibility as Christians with our friends and family, but persevere we must. And when they hear our testimonies, perhaps they too will welcome us as children of God.

Dear Heavenly Father. Through Your grace and mercy, we have a story to tell of our wonderful Saviour. Grant us the words to say, we pray, so that we can introduce others to Jesus. Amen.

Saviour of the World

Posted on by korgrocker

“Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had said, “He told me everything I ever did!” When they came out to see him, they begged him to stay in their village. So he stayed for two days, long enough for many more to hear his message and believe. Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not just because of what you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves. Now we know that he is indeed the Saviour of the world.””
John 4:39-42 NLT

Why should people believe in Jesus because of what this woman, someone with perhaps a rather questionable lifestyle, said? Why should exposing her rather sordid past lead to many of the Sychar inhabitants believing in Jesus? In fact the simple statement “He told me everything I ever did!” resulted in Jesus being invited to stay in the village for a further two days. In fact, it was not just a casual invitation – they “begged Him to stay”. And we are told that “many more” heard His message and believed. The short stay however resulted in many believing in Jesus because they got to know Him, and His saving love and grace, for themselves. They were not depending on someone else’s testimony. 

Perhaps the personalities and relational dynamics in the village community were suddenly overturned by the testimony of the woman by the well. They knew of course about her reputation, and she was obviously shunned by the other village women, being forced to draw water from the well when there was no-one else around. So there would have been no surprises in the woman’s message to her fellow villagers – we can perhaps visualise the nods and winks, and comments behind her back. But the fact that a stranger knew, a passer by who stopped at the well for a drink, added impact to the testimony. And we know from a previous verse that she added weight to what she had to say by including, “Could He possibly be the Messiah”? 

But the important message to the Sychar inhabitants is the same today – we introduce people to Jesus by the power of our testimonies. This power was recorded in the Acts account of the early believers, as we read in Acts 4:33, “The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God’s great blessing was upon them all“. For us pilgrims today, our conversion experiences, articulated in our testimonies, may be the only opportunity people have to hear the Gospel. It is of course possible for people to become Christians by reading the Bible, but the real power emerges when we introduce them to Jesus personally. 

Jesus was, and is, the Saviour of the world. Only He can introduce us to God, and only we can introduce people to Jesus. Our testimonies must be full of the excitement we first experienced when we found that Jesus loved us and died in our place for our sins. The woman at the well was so excited about her encounter with Jesus that she left her water pot behind and rushed into the village to tell someone. Do we communicate the same excitement and conviction when we share with others what the Saviour of the world, Jesus, has done for us? However, if we have lost our first love, then we must do what Jesus said to the church in Ephesus. “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches” (Revelation 2:4-5). 

We pilgrims have a message so important that we must tell everyone at every opportunity. Our testimonies of what Jesus as done for us must be communicated, by what we say and what we do, to the people around us, because Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, is the Saviour of the world. By introducing people to Jesus we show them the way to eternal life. They may not have another opportunity.

Dear Lord Jesus. You said to Your disciples, “ … I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me”. There is no other way into Heaven. We are so grateful for Your grace and mercy. Amen.

His Testimony

Posted on by korgrocker

“He testifies about what he has seen and heard, but how few believe what he tells them! Anyone who accepts his testimony can affirm that God is true. For he is sent by God. He speaks God’s words, for God gives him the Spirit without limit.”
John 3:32-34 NLT

The importance of having a testimony is, without doubt, something that every Christian should take note of. As a minimum, we have that date, even a time of day, when we made that momentous decision to follow Jesus and to believe His testimony that He was (and still is) the Son of God. We add to our testimonies those occasions when God blessed us, healed us, helped us – the list of divine interventions can be endless. Often we don’t know what God is doing for us behind the scenes, so we need to be open and sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s ministry. There are some big things that God has done for me, but there are also times when He showed favour apparently against the odds. That time when a car crash of a job interview still resulted in an offer of employment. The beautiful young girl who, by a series of coincidences, appeared in my life, and who is now my wife of many years. We must always be ready with a testimony so that we have an answer for those who ask. 1 Peter 3:15, “Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it”. 

Jesus had a testimony but when He testified about “what he [had] seen and heard“, only a few believed Him. Only a few, even though He spoke about God, their Heavenly Father. Isn’t it strange that people in general only believe what they want to believe. If what they are hearing doesn’t fit in with their world view then they refuse to believe it. Speaking about the “man of lawlessness”, Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them. So God will cause them to be greatly deceived, and they will believe these lies. Then they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing the truth“. Jesus had the words of eternal life, words of truth, words that, if applied in their lives, would ensure the people’s eternal life with God in Heaven, and yet they refused to believe them.

The devil is a master of lies and in every generation he concocts evil ideologies that are based on his lies. So just now in 21st Century society, he has propagated a raft of lies over sexuality and gender. So impressionable people have been deluded to think that they can change their gender. Homosexuals think that they can still become a Christian while practising their same sex acts. Politicians here in Scotland are now trying to introduce laws that will criminalise a pastor praying for someone who has gone to them asking for advice over their gender confusion. All actions emanating from lies planted in people’s hearts by the devil. A quotation from best selling Christian author Dr Rosario Butterworth, “The Biblical truth is that homosexuality and transgenderism are found in the flesh, forbidden in the Law and overcome through the Saviour”. When our minds are assaulted by all sorts of strange ideologies, we pilgrims instead lift and open our Bibles and find the truth, free from the devil’s lies.

Jesus had a testimony, but He never forced it upon people. Then, and now, people have a choice. To believe His testimony, or to reject it. One way leads to eternal life and the other to eternal death. As for me, I know what choice I have made.

Dear Lord Jesus. Only You have the words that lead to eternal life. I believe them, and I pray that those I meet day by day will believe them too. Your testimony is truth and life. Thank You Amen.

He Who Comes From Above

Posted on by korgrocker

“He who comes from [heaven] above is above all others; he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks [about things] of the earth [his viewpoint and experience are earthly]. He who comes from heaven is above all. What He has [actually] seen and heard, of that He testifies; and yet no one accepts His testimony [as true].”
John 3:31-32 AMP

‭‭There are some potentially difficult thoughts in these verses. John the Baptist was setting out the differences between the inhabitants of Heaven and the inhabitants of earth. And, sadly, he pointed out that no one accepted what the Man from Heaven had to say about what He had seen and heard. Of course, we see the difficulty straight away because we look at these verses from a human perspective. We imagine in our minds a human being from Heaven and an earthly human, but of course this is not the case. Heaven is populated by spiritual beings and earth by natural beings. And the Man that John the Baptist was talking about had left Heaven as a Spirit and had taken on the form of a human being.

The Apostle John started his Gospel with the statement that “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And a few verses on we read, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Paul wrote an explanation in Romans 8:3, “The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins“. 

We pilgrims all understand that within our human bodies is a spirit, and this spirit connects with our Father in Heaven through Jesus. But this isn’t the case for everyone. Those who don’t know God still have something within them that yearns for a spiritual connection with something or someone. So they try and satisfy that yearning by exploring other avenues. There are of course the other spiritual outlets emanating from the devil – he will always try and counterfeit the things of God. Then there are drugs like alcohol that seem to offer some sort of relief from the emptiness inside, but this is only a temporary solution. Some will try sex in all its deviancies, but find a downward path to oblivion. But John the Baptist knew the answer, and he pointed out that the Man with the solution to the spiritual yearnings, the Man who came down from Heaven, the Word of God Himself, but sadly He was not believed by the people of His day.

So what can we pilgrims learn from this? We too have seen and heard amazing things in the Spirit. We have glimpsed God Himself through Jesus. We have felt His loving arms around us. We have a testimony to tell others, a testimony about our amazing Heavenly Father. But we find that as we share our testimony with those around we are mostly greeted by scorn and derision, by ridicule and rejection. But, like Jesus, we never give up. In the background God works in the hearts of those around us, and we will find receptivity from those open to the truth.

Dear Father God. You have graciously given us a glimpse of Your heart, and have given us the privilege of sharing that with those around us. Please lead and guide us to those You have chosen for Your kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our Testimony

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
John 3:10-12 NLT

Who was Jesus referring to when He said, “we tell you what we know and have seen”? Was it Him and His disciples? Or was He introducing the royal “We”, referring to the Trinity, God the Father, Jesus Himself and the Holy Spirit? Jesus was, I think, telling Nicodemus about the testimonies about Himself in Scripture, and the direct revelation from God Himself. Nicodemus would have been very much aware of the prophecies from the old Hebrew prophets – after all, Jesus acknowledged that he was a “respected Jewish teacher”. There are many testimonies in the Old Testament that we can interpret with the benefit of hindsight, but to someone living in Israel, there would have been a fog of misunderstanding and misinterpretation much influenced by the traditions and the political environment prevalent at the time. The testimony contained in the Scriptures about the coming of the Messiah was extensive – some scholars have counted up as many as 400-500 prophecies referring to Jesus’ first coming. But unfortunately Nicodemus and his peers would have overlayed on this their human interpretations and expectations. Jesus went on to say to Nicodemus that his lack of belief about the earthly interaction between God and man through Jesus was a blockage to his understanding of the spiritual Kingdom that Jesus was announcing.

Jesus had a testimony underpinned by Scripture and so do we. There is only one theme and that is all about Jesus and His saving grace. Yes, there are variations on the theme but there is one common denominator – what Jesus has done for us. But isn’t it strange that the most important event that can ever happen to a human being is often never spoken about. When pressed to give an answer, so many Christians say the bare minimum with an air of embarrassment, as though being a believer is something to be ashamed about. It is important that we have a testimony ready-prepared, shrink-wrapped to tell those around us. Jesus spoke about this as recorded in Matthew 10:32-33, “Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven“. A public declaration of our faith might open the way to ridicule and ostracisation, but there are bigger issues at stake than how we might feel. 

The psalmist wrote, “I will tell everyone about your righteousness. All day long I will proclaim your saving power, though I am not skilled with words. I will praise your mighty deeds, O Sovereign Lord. I will tell everyone that you alone are just. O God, you have taught me from my earliest childhood, and I constantly tell others about the wonderful things you do. Now that I am old and grey, do not abandon me, O God. Let me proclaim your power to this new generation, your mighty miracles to all who come after me” (Psalm 71:15-18). To those of us who are “old and grey” the clock is ticking, and the lights of our promised land are starting to appear on the horizon. But right up until our last breath we will never stop praising Jesus and telling those around us of His wonder and grace. 

Dear Father God. We have a testimony to proclaim about You and all that You have done for us through Jesus, Your Son. Please give us opportunities to relay our testimonies to this new generation, our children and grand-children, those following in our footsteps. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.