Witness
WITNESS
Growth in Quality of Life
Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 4:16; 6:11; Hebrews 12:1
In Mark 13:9 (RSV), Jesus says to his disciples: “Take heed to yourselves.” Why? So that you might escape coming calamity? No. “Take heed to yourselves” so you will be prepared to bear testimony.” Be spiritually fit, he says, so that you may not be taken unawares when called on to give your witness before high and low. For that hour depends not on your circumstances but on you. Therefore, let everything go that will not help you in that hour. Grow in quality of spiritual fitness.
Victorious Living
(Week 46, Monday)
The Universal Witness to This Way
Romans 8:14-16; 14:17; Galatians 5:22-23; Hebrews 12:1-2
Universal witness to a universal fact is one of the most solemn and reassuring things in life. This Way is verified on a world scale; it works to the degree that people work it. On the contrary, life lived against this Way breaks down, becomes snarled up, is self-frustrated, won’t work. If all this be so, then you may add, very quietly, “I too find it works.”
Abundant Living
(Week 47, Wednesday)
Witnessing before Faithless Friendships
Psalm 41:9; Matthew 10:34-36; John 13:21-30
Again, you must witness before faithless friendships: your Judas. Often those who dip their hands in the same dish will betray you. When money or position or self-interest beckons, these friends fall away. It is not easy to keep from being embittered toward those who were once comrades in a cause and are now indifferent, or on the other side.
What shall we do? We can still do what Christ did in Dostoyevsky’s story: Christ came to preach in a town in Spain. The Grand Inquisitor arrested him, and said: “Why did you come back? You left everything to us, the church—go back.” Christ made no answer, but came and kissed his ninety-year-old, faded lips and went away (Based on Ivan’s story of the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, book 5, chap. 5).
Abundant Living
(Week 52, Tuesday)
Concerning Class and Race Relations
Acts 10:34-35; 17:26; Colossians 3:10-11
Christianizing our relationships: . . .
Become a witness to the new life. Nothing is yours that is not shared. . . . The simplest and most effective thing you can give away is just the thing you have received. Share it.
The Way
(Week 12, Wednesday)
It Must Work or Be Worthless
1 Corinthians 4:20; Acts 6:8-1
[For some,] Christianity is not bad; it is just dull. And that is bad, for the gospel is good news, the greatest good news that ever fell upon human ears. We make it into something that is as mechanical as a Buddhist prayer wheel. Hence our people do not have enough conviction to share it. Our faith is noncontagious.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 17, Saturday)
A Life Set to Obey
Hebrews 11:8-10
In your obedience obey the law of sharing. Now that you have launched out by faith and have become possessed of the Spirit, share the Spirit with others. Humbly and simply share whenever the Spirit prompts you to share with those in similar need. The Holy Spirit is like electricity; the Spirit will not come in where he cannot get out. “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt 10:8 KJV).
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 26, Friday)
He Knows the Shepherd
Ephesians 3:14-16
A man with no legal help was assigned two lawyers by the judge, good lawyers. He shook his head and said, “Judge, is there any way I can swap two good lawyers for one good witness?” The disciples [after Pentecost] were no longer lawyers arguing the case for Jesus, they were witnesses who witnessed to the mighty power of Jesus in their lives to save, and to save now. It was all living and fresh and firsthand and vital. Their spiritual lives were no longer in quotes; they were no longer in quotation marks, but in “creation” marks.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 35, Saturday)
The Past Can Be Used
Psalm 40:1
There are no skeletons in the Christian’s closet, for they have all come out and are clothed in flesh and blood and walk as witnesses of the saving power of Christ.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 3, Tuesday)
The Life of Jesus May Come Out
Luke 11:9-13
Recently I was put on a diet, and the nurse, when she handed me the diet sheet, said, “Don’t read it now. You won’t like it.” To my surprise I found it fun to try to live according to it in the midst of evangelistic campaigns. And I found myself saying, “I don’t mind, Lord, if you feed me charcoal, just so the fire of witnessing to you is kept burning in my heart.”
Lord, give me as little or as much as I need, but keep the fire burning within so I can witness effectively for you. Amen.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 42, Friday)
My Business Is Witnessing
Acts 13:2-4, 47
Yesterday, I . . . [asked each member of a group of] Japanese pastors and laymen . . . to tell his profession or business. One old man of eighty-two, with a very radiant and intelligent face, said: “My business is witnessing for Christ.” And it was! And an interesting story lay behind it all. He had been the town roughneck, a seller of fish. He came to a church, and as he lifted up a long pole, said: “You kill the devil in me, or I’ll kill you and the devil in you too.” (It was the day in which the Christians were supposed to be possessed of devils.) That night he was soundly converted; the devil was killed in him. And now he and a lady of sixty-four are prayer partners and go out together to win people [to Christ]. And they do! That town roughneck is an honored, respected citizen of the city.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 46, Monday)
Mine Has Left Me with Answers
2 Corinthians 1:20-22
You don’t have to be a saint to be a witness. For you’re not witnessing to your self or to your attainments—you’re witnessing to Christ. And don’t argue with people; witness. A man who was very argumentative tried to argue with “Mary.” She said nothing. When he was through, he said, “Aren’t you going to answer me?” “No,” said she, “for I was just thinking what a wonderful person God is going to get when he really gets you.” He was disarmed! Another, a liberal, put up all his objections and questions; and “Mary” quietly answered at the close: “Your way has left you with questions; mine has left me with answers.” Give that answer through witnessing!
Mastery
(Week 38, Saturday)
The Mastery of Trying to Change Others First
1 Peter 4:17-19
The disciples didn’t fall into the snare of beginning with others; they began with themselves. They didn’t start out trying to change the world; they began to change themselves. If they had begun by attempting to change the world, they would have been meddlers; but they began with themselves and became messengers.
Waiting for ten days to settle their own spiritual problems first was one of the wisest moves in history. Those ten days changed the people who were to change the world and made them witnesses instead of moralists. They told what had happened to them, and those who heard them wanted what they saw and heard.
Mastery
(Week 49, Thursday)
What Is Your Name
Genesis 32:22-30
Nothing reaches the heart that does not come from the heart. To preach and to witness out of the overflow are the only effective preaching and witnessing. Anything less than this reaches the head but not the heart.
Mastery
(Week 49, Saturday)
No Longer Religious Busybodies
John 15:16, 26-27
For ten days [the disciples] waited to have themselves changed, and for twenty centuries we have felt the impact of that change. They were no longer religious busybodies meddling in other people’s problems; they were radiant witnesses to a mighty solution, a solution that had begun within and was now working out to others. They weren’t meddling moralists; they were messengers, and their message was a witness. That struck the world as new. The word of the kingdom had become fact.
Mastery
(Week 52, Monday)
Contrasts of Eros and Agape
John 15:9-10
Eros never produces witnesses. It produces the exhorting, struggling, tense type of religion. But the note of witness is absent. It cannot witness, since to witness would be a witness to its own attainments or lack of them. Agape, however, can witness, for it is witnessing to the grace of Another. It is laying its tribute of gratitude at the feet of Another. It is Other-conscious, and hence its witness has the note of the Other in it.
Christian Maturity
(Week 21, Monday)
Psalm 40:1-3
In Korea, one would have expected the tides of war to leave the church in ruins. Instead, the Korean church doubled its membership during the war, from five hundred thousand to one million. Why? Because when the members were scattered they witnessed, set up little groups, for evangelism is an integral part of their Christianity. Before people are baptized they have to show someone they have been won to Christ, as a sign that they are real Christians. That is mature immaturity.
Christian Maturity
(Week 45, Thursday)
Not in Until They Get Out
New converts make the best evangelists. They cannot preach, so they do what they can do, witness. Witnessing is more effective than preaching in winning others. Witnessing comes from the heart; preaching may come from the head. That which is to reach the heart must come from the heart.
In Christ
(Week 23, Sunday)
Jesus Has Got into Your Blood
2 Corinthians 4:4-6
We linger on the preaching which is essentially witnessing. That which is to reach the heart must come from the heart. Deep must speak to deep.
A student came to me one day in India and said, “Sir, tell me how to find God.” I took the Bible and began to go through it, pointing out the passages that pointed the way to find God. In the midst of it he leaned over, closed the book in my hand, and said, “Now, sir, you tell me how you found God.” It was a real challenge, so I told him how I found God, or rather how God had found me and my response. At the close he said, “Thank you, that’s what I want.” Of course, we cannot close the Bible, for from its pages is revealed Jesus who is the Way—the Way to the Father. But unless the truth in the Bible becomes truth in the blood, it is bloodless truth, anemic and ineffective.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 19, Friday)
I Adjure You by the Jesus Whom Paul Preaches
Galatians 2:6-9
[The] “this-ness” of Christianity sets the pattern of the proclamation of the Christian gospel by its very nature (see Acts 3:32-33). If the experience was the Word become flesh, the expression would also be the Word become flesh; it would be a witness, as Jesus said it would be: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). “My witnesses”—not “my lawyers” to argue my case—but “my witnesses” to tell what has happened to you, of what you’ve “seen and heard.” This was one of the secrets of its power. If “all great literature is autobiography” (Jorge Luis Borges, 1899–1986), so all great preaching is witnessing.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 29, Wednesday)
Things We Have Seen and Heard
1 Timothy 1:4-6
“We are witnesses . . . and so is the Holy Spirit” (Acts 5:32): we have seen it with our eyes and we have known it in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is within. We witness and the Holy Spirit witnesses to the same thing, the human and Divine blending in the witness. This fulfilled the promise of Jesus: “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father . . . he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses” (John 15:26-27). Here was the double witness: “He will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses.” It was a double witness, and yet one and the same witness, the witness of the Word become flesh.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 29, Thursday)
Take Heed to Your Reactions
Luke 15:25-30
“But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them” (Mark 13:9). Here the emphasis is upon yourselves, upon yourselves at the moment of deep, unmerited injustice and suffering. Be sure that through this injustice you bear witness! This is an important word, for it clarifies the whole attitude toward unmerited suffering. It was the passage upon which my whole attitude toward unmerited suffering turned. I saw you could not merely bear it, you could use it. Every injustice was opportunity, every wrong an open door, an opportunity and an open door to witness. Not to preach at others about their wrongs but to witness by your rightness of demeanor and your deeds that the Word has become flesh in you. Don’t bear evil, use it!
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 30, Friday)
The Place of Authority: At the Junction Where the Historical Becomes the Experimental and Is Corroborated By the Collective
Hebrews 12:1-3
So the Christian faith does not rest on the historical alone, nor the experimental alone, nor the collective alone. Each one alone would be weak. But all coming together and witnessing to the same thing brings the highest certainty that the human being can know. It is a threefold cord that cannot be broken; all other authority compared to this is weak.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 33, Thursday)