I recently wrote the following e-mail to a dear lady who was having difficulty writing her testimony. If you are in the same situation, please consider these suggestions:
May I suggest some things you could do to order your testimony? If you simply go through this e-mail and just answer the questions on paper, you will already have made significant headway.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you are telling a story about God more than you are telling a story about yourself. You are telling people what God has done, and you happen to be the person to whom God has done that in this story.
Your testimony should consider two things (the same as preaching):
The fallen condition focus.
This relates to the life the Lord saved you from. One of the key features of these thoughts is the misery you were in. Because your story is going to be about God, your misery before God saved you could begin with the home you were born into.
Let me give you some examples from what you have given me:
You could say you were born into a home where you had no chance of knowing God. You were not taught about God.
Because you were not taught about God, you lived with a sense of crushing guilt because you were living in a way that made God angry and you didn't know how to be right with Him.
You had overwhelming desires that you couldn't satisfy. You chased after things that you thought would satisfy you, but you found they brought you into misery rather than joy. What you said to me in your second e-mail today is the kind of thing I am speaking about.
You could then describe some of the things that have made your experience of life the most miserable. Take a pen and some paper (or computer if you use one) and brainstorm. Write down the things you remember most vividly, such as those you have written down. After you have written them down, try to think through the sequence in which they happened, but it really isn't crucial if you get some details wrong. The Lord knows your intention is to speak about the great work He has done. Your lack of ability to remember simply makes His salvation look even more wonderful--you couldn't save yourself from your misery, in fact, you can't even remember it all! Take hope in our Great Saviour!
When you write about events that made you most miserable, you could think of things in different categories. You could think of each person in your family and how each of them impacted you in growing up, and what a hopeless state their influence left you in. You could also (most people don't remember these details very well because we are sinners) write down the ungodly ways in which you personally responded to each person in your family. You have started on this by sharing something of your father and mother's influence on you. You could speak about your spiritual condition. How you dealt with nagging guilt. How you felt every time you did something you knew you shouldn't be doing (drinking, drugging etc). You could speak about your economic condition. How did your life look financially? You have explained something of that, and I see that your sin ruined you. You could describe how you felt after selling your car and how you explained it to other people. What were the thoughts in your head. These things should all point to the misery of living in sin. These are only a few samples of categories you can consider, others include your health, your living conditions, your understanding of the reason for life, your thoughts on the future (hopes, dreams, plans).
Most importantly, don't miss this in your testimony, is your personal desires. You should spend some time thinking about the things that drive you in life. What motivated you in the past? For what reason did you get out of bed in the morning? What motivated you to keep going to school/college? Try to describe the desires that continued to drive you. When you sat with your dad and smoked joints, what were you longing to receive through that practise? When you sat in your room with your friends, what were the deepest longings in your heart, why were you doing it? Why did you look forward to those times? What excited you about getting more alcohol/drugs?
Then, just as crucial, answer the question, "What was I willing to do to satisfy those desires, longings, cravings, lusts." How far were you willing to go to get what you really desired? Think through this question as you consider the categories above. Were you willing to deceive your father, mother, brother/s, sister/s to get what you really wanted? Were you willing to sell all of your belongings (you seem to have done that) to get what you lusted for? At what point would you stop? Would you stop at the essentials, like a roof over your head, food in your mouth, transport or were you willing to sell those too? Were you willing to make and break friendships that were in the way of you getting what you wanted? Were you willing to cross moral boundaries to get what you wanted? Were you willing to use your sexuality to get what you wanted? If you have done that, how did you feel afterwards?
When you found yourself in that position, where you were giving everything you have answered to these questions to get what you wanted, were you satisfied or did your longings/cravings/desires/lusts continue to grow into a beast that drove you on and on to your own destruction. Was there anything you could have done to rescue yourself from that misery? Were you confident about the future? Heaven/hell? As you think back, describe the danger you were in, not only of losing the things you have described here, but the danger of facing God whom you have been insulting with your lifestyle and pursuit of lusts.
What I am hoping for you to do is the vividly describe the misery you were in, which is the very misery from which God is rescuing you. This brings us to the second part of your testimony:
2. The Redemptive Focus
As you describe your misery, think about how Christ has become the solution to that misery. You were lost in a family who was not God-fearing, you were lost under a sense of guilt without a knowledge on how to be right with God, You were lost because you had no desire to know God and felt condemed before Him, you were lost because you had no joyful prospects for the future, you were lost because you were driven by your lusts uncontrollably, you were lost because you had no self-control, you were lost because you had no desire for the church and teaching from God's word, you were lost because you had surrounded yourself with a group of friends among whom you would never see the light, you were lost in many ways, you will be able to describe them.
Describe the first moments you can remember when God began to work with you. Was it through someone speaking to you, reading the Bible, preaching, a tract, a book, a Christian song etc. How did the word of God come to you?
How did the word of God impact your craving heart? Did you struggle against God's word? Did you laugh it off immediately or did it haunt you and nag at you until you repented? How did you repent? Did God drive you to a point of exhaustion to break you or did you have a less dramatic repentance? What did you say to God when you repented? Did you know at the time that it was God drawing you to Himself or did you think you were the one in control, giving God access to your life to fix up the mess? How old were you? Where were you living? What drove you to your knees? How did you feel after you repented? (See Psalm 32).
How did everyone around you respond to the news that you had become a Christian, or didn't you tell them? How did you have to relate to your father, your mother and your friends who had been so influential in your addictions? Have you joined a local church (if not please tell me and I would like to recommend one for you). Have you found that the memebers of that church have become good friends and have helped to encourage you in your struggle against sin?
Very importantly, what about your present desires? Please understand that I'm not attempting to force you to declare that all of your old desires are gone and that you only have completely good desires now. 1 John 1:8-10 says that you will still have sinful desires. You may freely confess in your testimony that you still have sinful desires (like the desire to solve your economic problems through gambling rather than trusting God and working in an honorable way for your income). You can even say what those desires are, providing you don't go into enough detail to cause people to sin in their minds when you speak about them. My point here is to describe how the trend of your desires has changed. You do have some new desires, describe those. Do you have a new desire for the word of God? Do you have a new desire to be close to God rather than living as His enemy? Do you have a desire to be friends with God's people rather than your old friends? Do you have a desire to pray to God? Do you have a desire to life the kind of life that people look at and say, "I wish I had such a godly life"? Do you desire to tell other people about Jesus? Do you really believe in your heart that it is God who is working in your heart and changing you at the level of your desires?
What are your hopes for the future? Do you believe that even if you have to struggle for the rest of your life as a result of your previous lifestyle, you would rather be poor and delighting in God than rich and godless? Consider your condition before God forever, does He still look at you with an angry frown or has He welcomed you as His child, forgiven completely forever? What do you look forward to when you die? What will delight you most about heaven? Do you really desire to be with God forever? Why?
Consider specific passages of Scripture that you base your faith on. How can you be sure you are really saved? When you sin, do you feel as if you have lost your salvation? How do you fight against that deception? How good does your new life have to be to please God? Are you pleasing God? What Scriptures do you use to defend your faith against the attacks of the destroyer (satan)?
Your point in this testimony, as I mentioned in the beginning is to show the misery you were in and your helplessness in that misery, and then to show how the invisible God is actually rescuing you personally in actual experience, even down to your most secret personal desires. This is what brings God most glory. This is how you can avoid the trap of simply telling your story about how bad you were and how good you are now.
My dear sister, I hope you find this helpful. There is so much more to say, but I think with what I have said here, you will be able to write a really good testimony.
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