I don’t mean to brag, but . . . – Devotion for
Growing up listening to my daddy preach, I got many good lessons on God and how we should live our lives through my dad’s sermons. Many times his sermons would have a little personal story within them – something that had happened in his life that was relevant to the message that he was giving. So when I began serving as a pastor while I was in seminary, I pretty much delivered sermons similar to my dad’s – which included some personal stories that were relevant to the message. I think it was after I had been serving the church for a year that I finally took a preaching course, and one of the first things that they taught us there was that we should not talk about ourselves in our sermons. I didn’t know what to do! All my life I had heard sermons that included some element of personal testimony, and now I was being taught that we should not talk about ourselves! We were told instead to research further, and if we needed something to illustrate the point, we could certainly find materiel in someone else’s book. I didn’t understand that then, and I’m not sure I do now either. They were instructing us to tell someone else’s story instead of our own? In a court of law, telling what you have heard from someone else is “hearsay.” Telling what you have seen and experienced is testimony.
2 Corinthians 12:1 begins, “Boasting is necessary though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.” Paul goes on to describe his personal testimony - his own experience with the Lord. As he continues on, verse 6 states, “For if I do wish to boast I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth; but I refrain from this, so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me.” I do understand that we shouldn’t brag, and that is something I have had to talk with my sons about (however, Jacob did have the highest math score in the 3rd grade, and Aaron was the starting 1st baseman on the All-Star team!), but I do believe that it is necessary for us to “boast” as Paul did in giving our personal testimony of what God has done. Too many Christians walk around giving “hearsay” instead of testimony – telling what God has done in someone else’s life instead of their own; telling someone else’s story instead of their own. I believe that we all should be able to boast about what God has done in our lives, and I believe it is necessary (as Paul would say) to testify to these things. Do you give hearsay? Do you give testimony? Or are you a silent witness?
No comments:
Post a Comment