THE POWER OF CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY By Ps James Loke

The power of Christian testimony The power of the testimony is sometimes overlooked in the lives of Christians. We don’t acknowledge and thank God enough for the things He has done in our lives. When experiences with God become merely historical archives in our head, they lose the potential of being life-changing experiences to ourselves and to others as well. 


Numbers 13 was a watershed event for Israel.  The nation was on the verge of receiving one of the most well-known promises of God – The Promised Land. After being set free from Egypt for just over a year, Israel had reached the edge of Canaan land. During this period, Israel’s first-hand experiences with God included:-

• The 10 plagues in Egypt 
• The Passover Feast in Egypt which terrorized their ex-masters 
• The parting of the Red Sea
• The manifestation of God at Mount Sinai
• The daily supply of manna and water
• The tabernacle which Moses erected
• The glory of God which came upon the tabernacle
• The pillar of fire and cloud which led them 

With those experiences under their belt, Israel was on track to enter Canaan land. Twelve leaders were selected to make a reconnaissance trip, which was rather thorough involving a 500 mile round trip over 40 days. God had set them up to succeed, choosing the optimal time of the year, namely, the harvest season where they could produce the best exhibit of a fruitful land. Imagine them coming back with a gigantic cluster of grapes (Num 13:23) which required two men to carry on a pole!

Unfortunately, most of the leaders forgot all the previous experiences they had with God and came back with a negative report. A solemn indictment against the Israelites can be found in Psalms 105 and 106 in addition to Numbers 14.

The above-cited experiences which should have been great learning episodes with God were wiped out. In our lives too, our history with God can be sidelined as: 

1. We plain forgot and lessons in faith disappeared from our spiritual archives; 


2. We rejoiced at what God was doing during that moment but since then other things crept in and took centre stage. These could be human reasoning, other contrary experiences, doubts, and so on. The 12 apostles had bread multiplied through their hands but later when similarly faced with a hungry crowd allowed human reasoning to displace their life experience and reasoned that they did not have enough financial resources (Mark 6 and 8).

When Israel finally went into Canaan land 40 years later, Joshua sought to teach the Israelites about the power of the testimony.

Josh 4:4-7 4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever." 

Milestones of our experiences with God are meant to be wonderful teaching and life-transformation events. We should preserve them in our own spiritual DNA, stand on them and move up in our walk with God. 

Written by Pastor James Loke