Testimonies are meant to be repeated!
The Hebrew word for “testimony,” often translated as “Aydooth” or “Edut,” is derived from a root word that means “do it again,” “repeat,” or “return”. Sharing a testimony in this context is not just a retelling of events, but a declaration that God’s power and authority can be repeated in the lives of others. It’s an affirmation that God’s actions in the past can be experienced again.
Jesus spoke in Luke chapter 7:
22 Only then did Jesus answer the question posed by John’s disciples. “Now go back and tell John what you have just seen and heard here today. The blind are now seeing. The crippled are now walking. Those who were lepers are now cured. Those who were deaf are now hearing. Those who were dead are now brought back to life. The poor and broken are given the hope of salvation.
The miracles that Jesus performed are in the “plural” and not selective in nature. Jesus healed “all”, not just some who were in a special category. FATHER wants us to duplicate past testimonies as we minister to others, without exception.
A testimony was never meant to be a historical factor that pointed to an old event. It was supposed to be a present tense reality that releases the activity of GOD into present situations.
Every testimony reveals the nature of GOD and reveals HIS covenant with us.
Charles Spurgeon wrote on July 17th, 1859:
When people hear about what God used to do, one of the things they say is: “Oh, that was a very long while ago.” They imagine that times have altered since then. Says one: “I can believe anything about the Reformation—the largest accounts that can possibly be given, I can take in.” “And so could I concerning Whitefield and Wesley,” says another, “all that is quite true, they did labour vigorously and successfully, but that was many years ago. Things were in a different state then from what they are now.”
Granted; but I want to know what the things have to do with it. I thought it was God that did it. Has God changed? Is he not an immutable God, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever? Does not that furnish an argument to prove that what God has done at one time He can do at another? Nay, I think I may push it a little further, and say what He has done once, is a prophecy of what He intends to do again—that the mighty works which have been accomplished in the olden time shall all be repeated, and the Lord’s song shall be sung again in Zion, and He shall again be greatly glorified.
Others among you say, “Oh, well I look upon these things as great prodigies—miracles. We are not to expect them every day.” That is the very reason why we do not get them. If we had learnt to expect them, we should no doubt obtain them, but we put them up on the shelf, as being out of the common order of our moderate religion, as being mere curiosities of Scripture history. We imagine such things, however true, to be prodigies of providence; we cannot imagine them to be according to the ordinary working of His mighty power. I beseech you, my friends, abjure that idea, put it out of your mind. Whatever God has done in the way of converting sinners is to be looked upon as a precedent, for “His arm is not shortened that He cannot save, not is His ear heavy that He cannot hear.”
If we are straitened at all, we are not straitened in ourselves, and with earnestness seek that God would restore to us the faith of the men of old, that we may richly enjoy His grace as in the days of old. Yet there is yet another disadvantage under which these old stories labour. The fact is, we have not seen them. Why, I may talk to you ever so long about revivals, but you won’t believe them half so much, nor half so truly, as if one were to occur in your very midst. If you saw it with your own eyes, then you would see the power of it.
If you had lived in Whitefield’s day, or had heard Grimshaw preach, you would believe anything. Grimshaw would preach twenty-four times a week: he would preach many times in the course of a sultry day, going from place on horseback. That man did preach. It seemed as if Heaven would come down to earth to listen to him. He spoke with a real earnestness, with all the fire of zeal that ever burned in mortal breast, and the people trembled while they listened to him, and said, “Certainly this is the Voice of God.”
It was the same with Whitefield. The people would seem to move to and fro while he spoke, even as the harvest field is moved with the wind. So mighty was the energy of God that after hearing such a sermon the hardest-hearted men would go away and say: “There must be something in it, I never heard the like.” Can you not realize these as literal facts? Do they stand up in all their brightness before your eyes? Then I think the stories you have heard with your ears should have a true and proper effect upon your lives.
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We must pursue the Heart of GOD with all diligence and expect new testimonies of miracles to be wrought by our own personal ministry to others. Let us no longer sit on the sidelines and only reflect on the past!