Next to the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, your personal testimony is probably one of the most powerful ways to witness to someone. Yet many Christians do not know how to go about giving one. They know they are saved, but perhaps do not know how to tell someone else about how becoming a Christian has changed their life. They don’t know how to “verbalize” their salvation experience. In this article I will lead you through some simple steps you can take to learn how to give your Christian testimony to others.
Preparing Your Testimony
You will first want to write out your testimony on a sheet of paper. At the top, write:
“Before I became a Christian, I…“
Proceed to write a paragraph or two describing what your life was like before you became a Christian. Perhaps it was a problem you continually faced or things you were struggling with in your life. Perhaps it was a sense of meaninglessness or not having a purpose in life. Whatever it was that made you take stock of your situation, write a paragraph or two about it. Try to avoid using terms which I call “Christianese”. Those are terms which would probably not be well understood by a non-Christian. For example, the term “born again” in recent years has been used by a lot of people, especially celebrities, and has come to mean different things to different people. Many people in the media these days have taken up Oriental religions or had some type of experience they consider spiritual, but which are not biblical. So a term like being born again probably would not be understood in its true biblical sense. Try to use terms an everyday non religious person would understand.
Next, in the middle of the page write:
“After I accepted Christ as my Savior…”
Then write a paragraph of two about how your life has changed, since becoming a Christian and some of the benefits you have now. Remember to include how receiving Christ has helped you with the problems you wrote about in the first half of your paper.
Once you have these two sections written, read over them and revise them as you think best. If you have ended up with several pages, condense them down to one page. The reason is that you want to be able to give this testimony in one or two minutes at the most.
Learning To Give Your Testimony
When you have it polished like you want and it says what you want it to say, read over it a number of times to fix it firmly in your mind. You don’t want to actually memorize it. Doing this will make it sound rehearsed or like a “canned” presentation. You don’t want it to sound like you are reciting it. Tell it to several friends to practice giving it. As you tell it to people more and more, it will start to become second nature. You will also be able to change it according to the needs of your listener. Then, it becomes a great launching pad for presenting the gospel to those who seem interested.
Related Article: Preparing To Witness In Two Easy Steps