THE POWER OF TESTIMONY

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!”

See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and He rules with a mighty arm. See, His reward is with Him, and His recompense accompanies Him. He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young.

Isaiah 40:9-11

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I would like to start today’s devotion by asking you to think about the things the Lord has done for you in your life. Make a list if you have to because if we really do this exercise right, our hearts and minds should begin to fill up to overflow with the many blessings we have received from Him. In fact, after reading this, I encourage you to post something that the Lord has done for you in your life for there is power in testimony.

In fact, a testimony is something we all have that can be used in a positive way to tell others about the Lord and what He has done, is doing, and is yet to do in your life or what He has done in the life of others. We may not see ourselves as able to write a Bible-based devotion or preach a sermon or teach a Sunday School lesson but we all carry on conversations with others and it is in those conversations that we can introduce the power of testimony with the hope of bringing the person or people we’re talking to into a closer relationship with the Lord.

As we continue to examine the 40th chapter of Isaiah and look at today’s scripture, we find an exhortation to testify to others about the Lord, for all He is and all He does. Look again at the verses here:

You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!”

See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and He rules with a mighty arm. See, His reward is with Him, and His recompense accompanies Him. He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young. Isaiah 40:9-11

Note the many things proclaimed about the Lord in these mere three verses:

1. We are to proclaim God is alive and well without fear, proclaiming the good news of His love for us as expressed through Jesus Christ.

You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!” His reward is with Him, and His recompense accompanies Him.

We are to be bearers of good news, or to use another word the gospel which actually translates to “good news”. Jesus saves and God provided us the way to our salvation by willing giving His only Son as a living sacrifice to pay the penalty we deserved. Because of this, those who believe and trust in Christ are justified or made just as if they had never sinned when judgment day comes. Death is not the end because through Jesus, we have victory over it just as He did. Jesus is alive and so is God, His Father and ours. Through them, we have the reward of salvation and we need to lift up our voices and shout this from the highest mountain or anywhere else we go for that matter. We need to tell others about Jesus through the power of our testimony.

2. We are to proclaim the power of our sovereign Lord.

See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and He rules with a mighty arm.

In the last three months, I have learned of two people who are completely cancer-free after a regiment of treatments and a woman who received a kidney transplant after years of having to go through dialysis. None of that would have happened without the mighty healing power of the Sovereign Lord, the Great Physician, the One who rules and reigns over creation with a mighty arm. Those mighty arms are arms that discipline us when we need it but they are also the arms that wrap their arms around us tenderly when we need loved or comforted. We need to use the power of testimony to tell others about the mighty things our Lord is doing in around and through us for they are too numerous to be counted.

3. We are to tell everyone about Jesus, our Good Shepherd (John 10:11).

He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young.

At the end of the Lord’s mighty arms, we find hands that are always willing to hold ours, leading us along the path of righteousness when we choose to walk with Him. He is the amazing Good Shepherd and we are His beloved flock who would be lost without His protection and guidance. When we, His precious lambs, fail and fall, feeling like we’re unable to walk another step in the midst of our circumstances, He scoops us up and carries us close to His heart, the heart that loves us more than any other. Through the power of our testimony, we need to tell everyone about this Good Shepherd and how He loves them, even if they have strayed from His flock.

Friends, through our scriptures today, we are reminded about the awesome, amazing power of testimony. Now it’s time to get to work and never hesitate to tell others about the Lord, to tell them what He has done for us and others and to let them know He can, will, and probably already has done the same for them and others around them. They just didn’t see the work as coming from the Almighty Lord who made them, the Almighty Lord who loves them, the Almighty Lord who is ready to save them and give them life eternal.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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