113 Sermon Illustrations on Testimony

My friend, I stand in the judgment now and

feel that you’re to blame somehow…

On earth, I walked with you day by day and

never did you point the way.

You knew the Lord in Truth and Glory, but

never did you tell the story.

My knowledge then was very dim; you could

have led me safe to Him.

Though we lived together on the earth, you

never told me of the second birth,

And now I stand this day condemned, because

you failed to mention Him.

You taught me many things, that’s true; I

called you “friend” and trusted you,

But I learn now that it’s too late, you could

have kept me from this fate.

We walked by day and walked by night, and yet you showed me not the light. You let me live, and love and die; you knew I’d never live on high.

Yes, I called you “friend” in life, and trusted you through joy and strife. And yet on coming to the end, I cannot now call you “my friend”.

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GOD KNOWS

• When you are tired and discouraged from fruitless efforts… God knows how hard you have tried.

• When you’ve cried so long and your heart is in anguish… God has counted your tears. – If you feel that your life is on hold and time has passed you by… God is waiting with you.

• When you’re lonely and your friends are too busy even for a phone call… God is by your side.

• When you think you’ve tried everything and don’t know where to turn… God has a solution.

• When nothing makes sense and you are confused or frustrated… God has the answer. – If suddenly your outlook is brighter and you find traces of hope… God has whispered to you.

• When things are going well and you have much to be thankful for… God has blessed you.

• When something joyful happens and you are filled with awe… God has smiled upon you.

• When you have a purpose to fulfill and a dream to follow… God has opened your eyes and called you by name.

Remember that wherever you are or whatever you are facing… GOD KNOWS.

A great evangelist closed his sermon with an appeal for his hearers to surrender their lives to Christ. A score or more responded, among them a woman of wealth, who was well known in social circles. She asked the minister if she might say a few words. Imagine the surprise of all when she said: “I wanted to tell you why I have come forward tonight. It was not because of the excellent sermon delivered by the preacher, but because of the sermon I have seen from day to day in the life of this little woman sitting near me. Her hands are disfigured and hardened by daily toil; the burdens of years have stooped her frame. She is just a humble washerwoman. For a number of years she has served my home, but in all this time, her life has been above even the slightest reproach. Not one unkind word has passed her lips; not one frown have I seen upon her brow; not once has she become impatient, although she might have found many excuses for so doing.

“Under the most trying conditions she has manifested a sweet Christian spirit. Quietly she has done countless little acts of love for others. I am sorry to say it, but I have sneered at her simple faith, and taunted her for her childlike trust in God. But when trouble came to my home, when my little girl was snatched from me by the cruel hand of death, it was this humble child of God who brought the first ray of hope to my troubled soul. There is a sweet magnetism about her consistent life that has drawn me to the Saviour, and there is a longing in my heart to love and follow her Master.”

The minister asked that the godly washerwoman should come forward. Happy tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her face was lighted up with joy. “I want to introduce you,” said the evangelist, “to the real preacher of the evening.”

A wonderful young lady from our home church is involved at the college level with a student ministry. In her most recent prayer letter, she talks of witnessing to several Chinese students. Recently, one of them said to her, “Since it is difficult for us to communicate, (language) … I’m going to watch you — watch how you live and act and speak — and this will be how I determine whether the Bible is true or not.” Wow — wouldn’t that put you on your toes?

Truth is, those around us are doing that all the time — they just don’t verbalize it like that. As you’ve often heard, we are the only Bible that most people will ever read. So, are we giving them a clear translation? It’s a soul-searching thought that should make us rethink the depth of our commitment to Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 12:1 (NLT) says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.” There it is in plain English — we do have an awesome responsibility. At the same time, fulfilling that obligation brings joy — real joy. Get in on it

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all. – Laura Ingalls Wilder

Jowett, the great preacher, used to tell of a girl who came to join his church. She was a servant girl, not well off, and not well educated. He wished to make sure that she knew what she was doing and that she was in earnest about her profession, and he asked her how she proposed to live the Christian life.

“I haven’t much time off, sir,” she said, “and I can’t attend many meetings or even many services.””Well,” said Jowett, “what do you do?”

“Well, sir,” she said, “I always take the daily paper to bed with me at night.”

Jowett was puzzled, as well he might be. “What’s the good of that?” he said.

“Well sir,” she said, “I look at the first page and I read the birth notices and I pray for the babies that have been born; and I read the marriages and I pray that they may be happy and true; and I read the

deaths and I pray that God’s comfort may come to these sorrowing homes.”

Illustration: I stopped into one of our landmark “greasy spoons” the other day. Many senior church members have sworn by the personnel and the menu. I decided to give it a chance. Nothing on the menu caught my eye, so I ordered that old standard chili, topped with onions and grated cheese. I canceled the cheese after learning it cost an extra 50 cents (that’s over $30/lb. if you’re interested).

However, the waitress forgot to tell the cook “no cheese,” so it arrived with onions and cheese. When told, the cook (visibly irritated by this infraction of the rules) grabbed the bowl and scrapped the cheese off. Unfortunately for me, he also scrapped off a ½ inch of my chili and the nice pile of finely chopped fresh onion. When I eventually got my bowl of cold, canned, microwave chili it was sprinkled with large and “potent” chunks of onion.

Now, as I tried to smother the quickly coagulating lump with a ½ pound or so of stale soda crackers, I was distracted by loud coughing. It only took a second to realize it was the cook. With uncovered and open mouth, he wandered about the kitchen hacking his nicotine clogged lungs onto everything not covered or in a cabinet.

Trying to be fair I thought to myself, “It’s okay, after all I’ve probably consumed worse raising six kids.” But then the cook applied the coup de grâce by inserting his index finger to his second knuckle in the nostril of his choice.

I don’t think I’ll tell anyone at the church I ate at the Village Inn, I’m afraid they’ll ask me how I liked it.

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Commentary: Many believers are allowing their churches to become the “greasy spoons” of the spiritual community. Only the Mormons seem to avoiding this public relations disaster. Worse, many members of these churches, as well as members of some of our finer churches seem to be unaware that they are being watched.

I used to think religious people were ignoramuses. Then I got smart and took a chance on God. [condensed version used in sermon is at the end]

________

As early as grade school, when I was a voracious reader and a straight-A student, I identified with being smart. And I believed smart people didn’t need religion. As a result, I declared myself an atheist and dismissed people who believed in God as uneducated.

In high school, I led a classroom debate team arguing for a godless form of evolution, confident my side would win because “this was science.” When the class voted and awarded victory to the creation side, I was dumbstruck. Most people didn’t understand science, I figured — either that, or they were unduly swayed by the most popular girl in class. She had a swimming pool in her backyard and threw fun parties.

At the time, I babysat to earn money. One of my favorite families was a young couple; both the husband (a doctor) and the wife were really sharp. One night, after paying me, they invited me to church. I was stunned — people this smart actually went to church? When Sunday morning came around, I told them I had a stomachache. They invited me again the following week, but once more I came down with another phantom stomachache. The more they persisted, the more I struggled to invent convincing excuses. (You try faking an illness to a doctor.)

Just a Phase?

Eventually, the couple tried a different tack. “You know,” they said, “going to church is not what matters most. What matters is what you believe. Have you read the Bible?” I figured that if I wanted to be an educated person, I needed to read the best-selling book of all time. The doctor suggested starting with Proverbs, reading one chapter daily for a month. When I first opened the Bible — this was the King James Version — expected to find phony miracles, made-up creatures, and assorted gobbledygook. To my surprise, Proverbs was full of wisdom. I had to pause while reading and think.

I quietly bought a modern translation called The Way and read through the entire Bible. While I never heard actual voices or anything to justify summoning a neurologist, I felt this strange sense of being spoken to. It was disturbing yet oddly attractive. I began wondering whether there really might be a God.

I decided to work my way through the Bible again, thinking that perhaps my experience was common for first-time readers. This time I would step back and read it more carefully, the better to debunk it. I also vowed to learn more about the Bible’s origins and to study other religions. Maybe, I thought, my culture — in which most people were Christians or Jews — was conditioning me to find Christianity attractive.

A favorite Jewish teacher at my high school ran a “gifted” program that let me devote one class each semester to whatever I wanted. I studied Buddhism, Hinduism, and several other faiths. I visited temples, synagogues, mosques, and other holy places.

More than anything, I wanted to get past this “religion” phase, because I knew I didn’t want religion. But despite my wishes, an internal battle raged. Part of me was increasingly eager to spend time with the God of the Bible, but an irritated voice inside me insisted I would be happy again once I moved on.

There were two passages I found especially troubling: Matthew 10:33 (“But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”) and Matthew 12:30 (“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”). I resented what felt like an unwelcome ultimatum. I didn’t want to believe in God, but I still felt a peculiar sense of love and presence I couldn’t ignore.

During my freshman year in college, I reconnected with a friend I had met at a summer honors program. He was a straight-A student and a star on both the basketball court and football field — I had never known anyone so smart and athletic. He helped me with difficult physics homework, and then he invited me to his church. This time, I felt fine.

The sermon prompted many questions. I started to raise my hand while the pastor spoke before realizing that everyone else was sitting quietly. I nudged my friend: “Can we ask questions?” He hushed me. How do we learn if we can’t ask? After the sermon I tried getting answers, but people mostly wanted to socialize. I started coming to Sunday School classes because the teachers let me ask questions. I also kept reading.

One Sunday, the pastor talked about the difference between believing there is a God and following God. I knew Jesus claimed to be “the way” to God, but I had been trying to avoid anything Jesus-related — I couldn’t help hearing his name with the word freak attached. But the pastor got my attention when he asked, “Who is Lord of your life?” He discussed what happens when “you, a human being, put yourself on that throne.”

I was intrigued: I was the captain of my ship, but was it possible that God would actually be willing to lead me? From there, I came to a deeper understanding of what it meant to have a relationship with God through faith in Jesus. It seemed silly to pray about this — after all, I still had doubts about God’s existence. But in the spirit of Pascal’s wager, I decided to run an experiment, believing I had much to gain but very little to lose.

After praying, “Jesus Christ, I ask you to be Lord of my life,” my world changed dramatically, as if a flat, black-and-white existence suddenly turned full-color and three-dimensional. But I lost nothing of my urge to seek new knowledge. In fact, I felt emboldened to ask even tougher questions about how the world works. I felt joy and freedom — but also a heightened sense of responsibility and challenge.

Learning and Exploring

Have you ever tried to assemble something mechanical, and it only kind of works? Maybe the wheels spin, but not smoothly. Then you realize you were missing a piece. When you finally put it together correctly, it works beautifully. This is how it felt when I handed my life over to God: I thought it had worked fine before, but after it was “fixed,” it worked exponentially better. That’s not to say nothing bad ever happened to me — far from it. But in all things, good and bad, I could count on God’s guidance, comfort, and protection.

Today, I am a professor at the top university (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in my field. I have incredible colleagues who have helped translate my lab research into difference-making products — including a smart watch that helps caregivers save the lives of people with epilepsy. I work closely with people whose lives are filled with medical struggles, people whose children are not healthy. I do not have adequate answers to explain all their suffering. But I know there is a God of unfathomable greatness and love who freely enters into relationship with all who confess their sins and call upon his name.

I once thought I was too smart to believe in God. Now I know I was an arrogant fool who snubbed the greatest Mind in the cosmos — the Author of all science, mathematics, art, and everything else there is to know. Today I walk humbly, having received the most undeserved grace. I walk with joy, alongside the most amazing Companion anyone could ask for, filled with desire to keep learning and exploring.

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Rosalind Picard is founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Sermon version:

Rosalind Picard was a smart kid. She got straight A’s. She believed smart people didn’t need religion. Those who were religious must be uneducated. In high school, she led a class debate that argued for a godless form of evolution but the student audience awarded victory to the creation side. Rosalind was dumbstruck.

At the time, she babysat to earn money. One of her favorite families was a young couple who were smart - the husband was a doctor. One night, after paying her, they asked her to attend church with them. Rosalind was stunned - people this smart actually went to church? When Sunday came around, she told them she had a stomachache. The next Sunday she invented another illness. This was not easy because she was trying to fake out a doctor.

Eventually the couple tried a different approach. They told her, “Going to church is not what matters most. What matters most is what you believe. Have you read the Bible?” Rosalind knew the Bible was the best-selling book of all time, so she gave it a shot.

The young doctor recommended she read the book of Proverbs so she did, in the King James version. She was surprised to find the book of Proverbs was full of real wisdom instead of the phony miracles she expected. Then she bought the Living Bible translation and read the whole Bible. Rosalind began to wonder whether there really might be a God.

A college friend invited her to his church and this time she agreed to go. During the sermon she started to raise her hand to ask questions but her friend nudged her - you don’t do that in church! One Sunday, the pastor talked about the difference between believing there is a God, and following God. He got her attention when he asked, “Who is the Lord of your life?”

Rosalind had doubts about God’s existence but she was willing to try an experiment. She prayed, “Jesus Christ, I ask you to be the Lord of my life.” Her world began to change dramatically.

She felt joy and freedom, but she still asked a lot of questions. She says her life worked fine before she believed, but after she turned her life over to God it worked exponentially better.

Today, Rosalind is a professor at MIT. She once thought she was too smart to believe in God. Now she knows she was an ignorant fool who snubbed the Author of everything there is to know. Once she asked him, she received a new level of knowledge of life.