The power of personal testimonies - from a Presbyterian perspective

[Pergamum]

I believe that personal testimonies can be a powerful way in which believers can share their faith to nonbelievers in a way that creates openness and interest.

However, many evangelical personal testimonies usually emphasize A. Your bad, dirty life before Christ, and B. Your clean, pure life after Christ, and there is sometimes the tendency to encourage exaggeration between the before and the after.


However, what are some god-honoring ways to glorify God with personal testimony when you were raised as a covenant child and trained up in Scripture from an early age such that instead of a night and day transformation there was slow nurture as a Christian?

 

[Peairtach]

Well clearly we have to be truthful and not embellish for drama.

Clearly the Lord doesn't despise the "undramatic" testimony, otherwise he'd have given all of us a dramatic testimony.

Some who are brought up within the CoG - like the Apostle Paul - still have rather dramatic testimonies.

Others, like John the Baptist, would only be able to say that he always believed. Is that less exciting? Is it important to the Holy Spirit that it is less exciting for the hearer?

Maybe we should think about what different biblical characters would have been able to say if asked for their testimonies.