I want to show you a couple pictures here. This first one is a Christian woman who lives in China. She spends most of her time helping mothers who are in a pregnancy related crisis find the means by which they can trust in God and give their babies life. I have shown her picture and shared her story in many places all over the world, and she is not really aware of it. She has no idea of the power her testimony wields as it goes out around the world.
The second picture is a young woman I met in Zambia some years ago, and she had been rescued. She was a woman in crisis and the Christians in her area had rescued her from abortion and provided a safe home for her to live in. They taught her how to raise chickens and pigs as well as how to sell eggs and make a small living for herself and her young child. She was so happy and transformed by her new faith. It was one of those examples in which when you help a woman save her baby and by the grace of God, the baby ends up saving the mother. Her story is such a beautiful story. You can see by the smile on her face, how happy she is.
This third one was a picture taken in Cuba a couple of weeks ago. It is a group of mothers who have their babies in the back row and a group of mothers expecting their babies in the front row. These people live in a small community. All of these mothers have been rescued by the Christians in their community over the last 1-2 year(s) and are now gathering to encourage one another and to help others by spreading their testimonies to towns across Cuba. As this story gets shared and shown to more and more people–I think that is the way it is with most of us–we have no idea of the true power of our living testimony.
If you are a Christian and you are faithfully obeying the call of God in your life, then you are a testimony to the power of the resurrection that causes transformation in a life. It is just that most of us are not aware that we are giving off this testimony on a day-to-day basis. I get to see it all over the world and I get to share people’s testimony from China with people in Columbia and people in Columbia with people in Cuba. These people are missionaries and they have never left their hometown, and I think that is true for a lot of us. We underestimate the power of our testimony.
There is a scripture I ran into this weekend that really drove this experience that I have been seeing through all these people home to me is found in 1 Peter 1:3 which says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Here we have a scriptural connection between what Christ accomplished on the cross and our experience of being born again.
If you are a born again believer, you are, by definition, living in the power of the resurrection. Your new life, that transformation, is the same power at work in you that raised Jesus from the dead. I really want us, as we grow and mature in the faith, to take what is sort of a passive unrealized power and make it more of our intentional pursuit.
The apostle Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.” I am 67 now and as I get older I want to know those two things: Christ and the power of his resurrection. It started when I was born again many years ago, but it is still at work in us and it will continue to be at work in us as long as we pursue him.
Here, at Passion Life, we get to see the power of the resurrection as we go all over the world. We see people’s lives transformed and become living testimonies to their neighbors and to their friends. That is really a privilege that all of us share. Recognize that you have a lot more power and it begins the moment you are regenerated into a new human being with a new heart and a new desire in life. Come, join me and others in pursuing this as a living testimony. Jesus said, “You shall receive power to be my witnesses throughout the world,” and this is the great work of the gospel. Glory to God.