Testimony - Chambers, Oswald
It is never our testimony that keeps our experience right: our experience makes us testify.
To testify is part of the life of every christian, but because you have a personal testimony it does not follow that you are called to preach.
To say what god has done for you is testimony, but you have to preach more than you have experiencedmore than anyone has ever experienced; you have to preach Jesus Christ. Present the object of your faith, the lord Jesus, lift him up, and then either give your testimony, or know you have one to give. To say a thing is the sure way to begin to believe it. That is why it is so necessary to testify to what Jesus Christ has done for you. The false mood creeps in when you have the idea that you are to be a written epistle of course you are! But you have not to know it. Whenever you meet a man who is going on with god you find his testimony explains your own experience. A true testimony grips everyone who is after the truth.
It is easier to stand true to a testimony mildewed with age, because it has a dogmatic ring about it that people agree with, than to talk from your last moment of contact with god.
Am i trying to live up to a testimony, or am i abiding in the truth?
The danger of experience-meetings when they get outside the new testament standard is that people.
Dont testify to anything that glorifies god, but to experiences that leave you breathless and embarrassed. It is all on the illuminated line, on the verge of the hysterical. People are precipitated into testifying before the vision they have had is made real now i have had this experience, or, now i have become that. What we need to do after the vision is to examine ourselves before god and see if we are willing for all that must happen before it is made real in us.
When we get the vision of what god wants us to be, we are put to the blush by what we actually are, and that humiliation is the precursor of the coming reality, a heart panging disgust at the realisation of what i am. That is what the holy spirit works in me; a disgust that will end in nothing less than death, then god can begin to make the vision real. Never give an educated testimony, i. E. , some- thing you have taught yourself to say; wait till the elemental moves in you. Be prepared to be unreserved in personal testimony; but remember, personal testimony must never be lowered into personal biography.
You cannot bring a knowledge of Jesus Christ to another, you can only tell him what he is to you, but until he gets where you are he will never see what you see. If my testimony makes anyone wish to emulate me, it is a mistaken testimony, it is not a witness to Jesus. The holy spirit will only witness to a testimony when Jesus Christ is exalted higher than the testimony.
