{"id":4484,"date":"2019-08-19T14:06:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T14:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=4484"},"modified":"2019-10-18T22:17:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T22:17:00","slug":"your-church-needs-more-time-for-personal-testimonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=4484","title":{"rendered":"Your Church Needs More Time for Personal Testimonies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&rsquo;re reading this, you probably have a strong view of <a href=\"https:\/\/9marks.myshopify.com\/products\/expositional-preaching-by-david-helm?_pos=1&amp;_sid=b9aff81b8&amp;_ss=r\">expositional preaching<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/9marks.myshopify.com\/products\/prayer-pre-order?_pos=1&amp;_sid=fce81ee2a&amp;_ss=r\">corporate prayer<\/a>, and the church ordinances (<a href=\"https:\/\/9marks.myshopify.com\/products\/understanding-baptism?_pos=1&amp;_sid=4854b44a2&amp;_ss=r\">baptism<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/9marks.myshopify.com\/products\/understanding-the-lords-supper?_pos=1&amp;_sid=ece993088&amp;_ss=r\">communion<\/a>). You also might get nervous when someone emphasizes the value of personal experience. It might send a small shiver down your theological spine.<\/p>\n<p>After all, you don&rsquo;t want experience to crowd out exposition. I get it. There are a lot of cautions and concerns we might justifiably have about people giving testimonies. Nonetheless, we should consider implementing personal testimonies, that is, the practice of remembering God&rsquo;s wondrous works and celebrating his mighty deeds in our lives and churches.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THREE BENEFITS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Throughout Scripture, God&rsquo;s people publicly talk about God&rsquo;s work in their life. That&rsquo;s all a personal testimony means to be.<\/p>\n<p>Here are three benefits of building more testimony time into a church&rsquo;s life&mdash;either through the corporate gathering or other ministries throughout the week.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Through testimonies, we exalt God. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>See Psalm 40:5; 73:28; 77:10&ndash;20; 78:4&ndash;6; 105:1&ndash;5; 118:17; 145:4&ndash;12; Isaiah 42:10; John 4:28&ndash;29.<\/p>\n<p>As we share testimonies about God&rsquo;s work in our midst, we glorify him through our praise and thanksgiving. We give credit where credit is due. Consider David&rsquo;s words:<\/p>\n<p>I have told the glad news of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We should consider implementing personal testimonies\u2014the practice of remembering God\u2019s wondrous works and celebrating his mighty deeds in our lives and churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[334,328,327,342],"class_list":["post-4484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-corporate-worship","tag-discipleship","tag-life-together","tag-the-gospel","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4486,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484\/revisions\/4486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}