The Word Of Their Testimony
Roy Blizzard III © 2014
Text: Revelation 12:11, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
Are any of you in business? Let me ask you a question, how does someone who has a business convince someone to come to their store over any other store out there in the world and either purchase goods or services? What do you have to do to convince someone to get what you are selling? Is it your low price guarantee or your breakage guarantee or just your smile and personality that is convincing?
Let me tell you, I’ve been involved in sales in one manner or another since 1985 and no matter what anyone says 9 times out of 10 when someone comes to you or your store and buys from you, they will buy from you because you have a personal testimony about your service or goods. Sure sometimes discounts or some other factor pulls weight for some people, but almost to a person, people want to know what something has done beneficial for you. If you can’t tell someone what this or that has done for you, the other person won’t buy what you are selling. The same is true with Jesus.
Testimonials work and in this vein this power of the testimony in the hands of the believer. It is really amazing how fast the devil and his minions and the unbelievers of the world have silenced the testimonials within the Churches. How many Churches have you ever attended where the testimonies of the congregants are the focal point of the service? They are now here at Joppa. Like I’ve told you many times, if you have no testimony of what God is doing in your life, why are you here? It doesn’t have to be some tremendous testimony of raising someone from the dead or walking on water to be a powerful testimony. It can be what you may perceive as the smallest of things that wind up being a powerful testimony for you.
To me there is nothing more exciting than listening to testimonies of what God has done in the lives of those around me. To hear a person rise up and describe in his own words how God has worked in their own life, usually with an otherworldly glow on their faces, is priceless. You can usually sense the Holy Spirit moving upon the person and giving him a freedom and unction to speak. This is what chases the devil away and sets a congregation on fire for God. Some sinner who hears these testimonies from a pastor can always discredit them by saying that the pastor was mistaken, but when a sinner hears first-hand about a miracle from God, it can’t always be so easily dismissed because personal testimony challenges the ungodly as perhaps nothing else is able to do.
King David says in Psalms 107:2, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy.” In II Kings 7:9 four lepers were speaking amongst themselves and said this, “We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household.”
If you want to be strong and experience victory in your life then you better obtain a testimony. Fear and defeat will follow you all the days of your life until you do and if you have a testimony and withhold it from others then you have condemned others. Yes you heard me right. By withholding your testimony from the unbelievers, you could be condemning them forever to a life without God and the blessing of the Kingdom because who else are they going to hear YOUR testimony from?
There was an experiment not too many years ago that was done by college students using calculators in a math class. They were able to change the computers to make the answers one digit off. If you punched in 2+2=4, it would answer 5. Did you know that most students just put down the wrong answer because the computer told them it must be right even though they knew it was wrong. Isn’t this is the way the world operates; what you know is wrong, the world tries to convince you it is right because everyone else believes it to be right?
The molders of public opinion understand that the average person needs to not feel alone in his or her beliefs. Propaganda is carefully tailored to sway you, to make you FEEL that you are utterly ALONE in your beliefs, even though there are many out there who probably believe the same way as you. This is one reason there are so many surveys and petitions and so many famous people are questioned publically about what they think on certain issues because the devil knows most people don’t want to feel alone and will quickly bow to popularity and pressure.
John told us in Revelation that we overcome the devil by the WORD of our Testimony. You don’t have to try hard to hear the deniers of Jesus or His shed blood. In John chapter 3 verse 11 this scenario was extant even then, ““Amen, Amen, (listen to what was just said) I speak to you about that which we know (intimately), we speak that which we have seen, we give witness to those miracles (signs of God’s presence) which we have seen with our own eyes, and You All have not received us or our witnesses.” (you have been unwilling to accept the fact that God has been working either in our testimony or in the miracles) The Gospel of John, An Actual Translation, © 2102, Roy Blizzard III
Today people are quick to deny the power of God because most have never heard a personal testimony of God’s power from the mouth of a believer! You hear people deny there is a God, that sin is a figment of an overactive imagination and that there is no power outside of one’s own self.
But then you have the testimony of someone like Lillian Roth, a famous actress of early film who said in her autobiography I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1954), “I don’t know yet what stopped me from taking my own life. I was ready to jump out a hotel window. Something held me back. I know it was God, but I don’t know why He stopped me. I had always believed. I had prayed for help again and again, yet for 16 years I had sunk lower and lower. I had sunk so low by then that I was ashamed to talk with God. Then I finally submitted to His plan. I stopped pleading and demanding and accepted His will. And it was not in His plan for me to die…He had died for me…”
People, one testimony, first hand from someone in deep trouble, can overcome more devils and doubts and problems in people lives than a thousand words form a thousand pastors.
Today, evil forces would have us believe that it is impossible to live your life for God and that we just need to succumb and give in and live our lives for the moment since we are just going to die, fall into a hole and turn to worm fodder. But I’m here to tell you that there are literally millions of people of whom God is alive in their lives and they can bear witness to the transforming power of Jesus. Today as never before we need to stand up for Jesus and declare what He has done for us.
The fact is that every question that may be asked about the Gospel of Jesus, the power of God or the miracles within the Jesus’ Kingdom can be answered through the personal testimonies of believers today because they have already lived them and experienced them but they can only answer your questions if they open their mouths to tell others about them. John told us in 1John 1:1-4, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; 2) (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) 3) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4) And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.”
The victory wrought at Calvary built the largest organism and organization the world has ever seen, The Kingdom of Jesus. It is bigger than GM, Wal-Mart, The US of A, China or any other world power. And you know what; this whole organism was based upon an accomplished and proven fact. Jesus died upon a cross for all our sins. He became our Passover, He became our atonement, by his stripes we WERE healed. The power of evil is broken in our lives when we accept Him as our own personal savior.
That is why John says, “…And they overcame him-the devil- by the blood of the lamb.” When you accept Jesus as Lord of your live and begin to walk in His Kingdom you will begin to experience a testimony that nothing can shake. Believers have faced lions in Rome rather than deny Jesus. Believers have been drawn a quartered rather than deny Jesus. What did they have that you may not have that gave them the strength to face death and dismemberment? They had a testimony of an intimate relationship with a living Jesus, one that was experiential in nature, not just some fanciful head knowledge of some remote godlike entity like budda or krishna. John said, “…and they loved not their lives unto death…”
People, in order to face death willingly, you have to really know that something powerful has happened to you. Yes, what God does is so real that the devil can’t destroy it. Did you understand what I just said? What God does is so real that the devil can’t destroy it. Here is the answer folks; God creates life, satan destroys. What we experience with God in His kingdom is so real that the falsities of satan have no effect within that Kingdom.
No matter what problem you are having in this life right now, Jesus is bigger than that problem. No matter what sin you have committed in your life, Jesus has forgiven that sin. No matter what sickness you are experiencing right now, Jesus has given us the healing within His kingdom. No matter what, Jesus is the answer. God created everything and has given the Kingdom over to Jesus. All we have to do is say yes Lord, I repent and I want to become a member of your Kingdom and I want to receive all that Jesus has for me, I want to be baptized so that I can begin to experience the power of God in my life. I want a Testimony!
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