The Witness. Christ has called us all to be witnesses. You could be a professional preacher, know all the ethos and still not have experiential knowledge of God, but to be a witness you would have firsthand experience of the thing you speak about. This is what Christ is calling us to do. We see an example of what it means to be a witness in 1 John 1:1-2 MSG.
We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. (1 John 1:1-2 MSG)
The word a witness shares is a testimony. You can testify of anything; what your life used to be, your healing, your success, just testify about Christ in your life. Share your story, sometimes we think for our testimony to be good our story should have been very bad. It is not the story that changes people, it is the Holy Spirit that touches hearts through the story.
You have your own story because you have met God, so all you have to do is witness to someone. Christ is not asking us to be expert witnesses, He is simply asking us to share our first hand experience of Him. The woman at the well met Christ and went to tell the entire village and they came out to see him. You never can tell the impact your story will have to someone. We all have our before and after story and nobody can argue with the proof of Christ in our lives. John 9:22-25 NLT. (Acts 2:22-24 NLT Acts 4:1-4 NLT)
To be an effective witness you must have been part of the experience. Share your story anytime you get the opportunity to, give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to turn someone’s life around.
An excerpt from the sermon by Pastor Boye Oloyede on Sunday, March 3, 2023
Watch this sermon here