In my last post I shared some testimonies of our group members for which we give thanks to God. I wonder what you think of them when you see God’s marvelous works in these people’s lives. Today let me tell you what I’ve learned about the nature of testimonies in the past year, I am sure you will be very excited once you hear about it. I owe the understanding mostly to the book by Bill Johnson entitled Release the Power of Jesus. One year ago all I had was head knowledge, although I was so excited I treated it like nothing less than an important revelation, but today I can tell you that I have seen with my own eyes the actual manifestation of the truth revealed in the book. Nothing beats real life experience in the power of Jesus.
The basic understanding comes from the verse Revelation 19:10. It’s a real amazing revelation: the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10, NKJV). In a nutshell, what it means is this: whenever a testimony is spoken about the miraculous works of Jesus, what’s spoken has actually become a prophecy of things to happen. We are always happy to hear testimonies, having been encouraged by them we even hope that with a bit of faith on our part the same can happen to us. But with the understanding of Rev 19:10, we can go much further than that. When the Lord causes you to hear a testimony of His works, He is actually saying to you that the same will happen to you, or at the very least you have become the carrier of this prophecy for the benefit of someone else. It is in a totally different dimension than what most of us have understood about testimonies.
I remember it was in March last year that I first introduced the concept to the group. At the time I was preaching on the second of a series of messages on the Much More Life. Earlier on after my first message a sister had spoken to me regarding her son’s experience of the Much More in his examination results, which was no less than a breakthrough for him. She spoke with so much conviction of the Much More Life I asked her to give a testimony in our group meeting. In the meeting I was to deliver the second message on Much More Life, and I arranged to have her speak her testimony as part of the sermon. After the testimony I told the group about my new understanding on Rev 19:10 and using the testimony of our dear sister I actually prophesied Much More Life in general to all. To be frank I cannot remember if I had particularly stressed on students’ examination results. I could have, even though it was not my main point. In less than a month a sister who had attended the meeting and heard the testimony reported that her son scored eight A’s out of ten in his external (government) examination. At year end four children of another three sisters (including the one who gave the testimony) in the group who attended that particular meeting did very well in their external examinations too. This is no coincidence. What happened? Our sister’s (or her son’s) testimony became a prophecy that brought all the good results into being!
Only a few days ago I learned of another story from a brother. On Christmas Eve he heard from a sister that she had an unexpected increment and also a bonus as per her heart’s desire. I was thinking it would be good to get her to share in our next meeting so that some will benefit from the spirit of prophecy. But before I even had time to think about when we will have the next MMG meeting the brother got his bonus! To him it was really unexpected because his company normally issues bonus at Chinese New Year. Jesus is so impatient in doing good!
Surely you will have a very different attitude towards testimonies from now on. They are not simply incidences for which we can give thanks to God. Much more, they are prophecies to you waiting to come to pass. You may ask if it’s really so easy? It is, because Jesus is really so good. If you do not actively look out for things that God has done for His people, at least open your ears wide every time you hear someone boasts about what God has done for him. You never know, it may just be what you need.
I have a prophecy for you. Do you want to know what it is? Check out my last post.
Scripture Reference Link: BibleGateway.com
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