New Believer’s Path · Lesson 6 of 7 · Always Ready to Give an Answer · about 5 min
Besides repenting and bearing fruit, what else is asked of me?
The book’s answer: He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15)
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear.
1 Peter 3:15 · WEB
Around 1857 in Ningbo, after Hudson Taylor had preached the gospel, a middle-aged man stood up and told the people gathered there, ‘I have long sought for the Truth, as my fathers did before me; but I have never found it. I have travelled far and near, but without obtaining it. I have found no rest in Confucianism, Buddhism, or Taoism; but I do find rest in what I have heard here to-night.’
He had been one of the leaders of a Buddhist sect in the city. Soon afterwards he went back to a meeting of the sect he had led and told his former companions of the peace he had found in believing; later one of them came to faith too. A few days later he asked how long the English had known this gospel. Told it had been some hundreds of years, he was amazed: ‘My father sought after the Truth for more than twenty years, and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner?’
Source: Hudson Taylor, A Retrospect, chapter 15 (the original does not give this man’s name)
In the last lesson we did one small thing for one person. This lesson is the last step: telling your own story to one person.
‘Testimony’ sounds hard, as if you need to be able to preach and answer every question. What the Bible says is quite ordinary: “Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15) It is when someone asks that you answer about the hope in your heart—telling your own story, not winning a debate.
And the sentence just before it is “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.” (1 Peter 3:15) Testimony flows out of the heart. You don’t have to become a perfect person first; you only need to say honestly what God has done in you.
Start by writing three sentences on paper: what I was like before I believed; how I came to know Jesus; what has been different since. Three sentences are enough. Once they are written, you will be able to say them when the chance comes.
This week: write ‘how I came to faith’ in three sentences, and look for a chance to tell it to one person. If no good chance comes this week, writing the three sentences counts as done—you are already ‘always ready’.
“Always be ___ to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear.”
According to this lesson, what is testimony mainly about?
Write ‘how I came to faith’ in three sentences, and look for a chance to tell it to one person.
Just this one thing, so small you cannot fail. Write it down and it goes into your Rule of Life card.
Added to your Rule of Life card. Tap each day you do it this week: