Testimony Unleashes Breakthrough
I remember as a young pastor having an unusual experience while reading the book of Revelation. It happened when I came upon the verse, “the testimony of Jesus in the Spirit of prophecy” (see Rev. 19:10). I could feel the presence of God on that verse. I know He blesses the entire Bible, but this was different. It’s really hard to explain, but I felt drawn to it, longing to understand it better. Looking back, it seemed to be an assignment. In that moment, I stopped reading and asked the Lord to show me what it meant. Little did I know that this simple one-sentence prayer would have such a profound effect on the rest of my life, but it did. That was about thirty-five years ago.
A few hours or so later a member of our church family stopped by to tell me a story. He was in somewhat of a hurry, so he stood in the doorway. He began to explain how God had healed his marriage, and he was so grateful. When he turned to leave, he stopped, and turning back around, he said, “You are free to share this story with anyone you want.” I knew immediately that this moment was connected to the prayer I had prayed earlier. God’s presence becomes manifest when He breathes upon someone’s words. My friend had shared a testimony with me that I could share (prophesy) with others.
God’s presence becomes manifest when He breathes upon someone’s words. My friend had shared a testimony with me that I could share (prophesy) with others.
I began to ponder what had just happened, and came to this understanding. First, the testimony of Jesus is a spoken or written record of anything that God has done. Second, the spirit of prophecy is the anointing for the prophetic. Third, prophecy either foretells the future or changes the present. It started to make sense to me. Anytime we give a testimony of what God has done, it releases the anointing to change present circumstances through the reoccurrence of the spoken miracle. Several years ago, Randy Clark sent this quote to me from Charles Spurgeon that showed me he had this same understanding:
"When people hear about what God used to do, one of the things they say is: 'Oh, that was a very long while ago.'… I thought it was God that did it. Has God changed? Is he not an immutable God, the same yesterday, today and forever? Does not that furnish an argument to prove that what God has done at one time he can do at another? Nay, I think I may push it a little further and say what he has done once is a prophecy of what he intends to do again .…Whatever God has done…is to be looked upon as a precedent .… [Let us] with earnestness seek that God would restore to us the faith of the men of old, that we may richly enjoy his grace as in the days of old. (Emphasis mine).
"Spurgeon was one of the most important pastors in church history. And he understood this concept that has tragically been forgotten or pushed aside until recent days. Interestingly, Spurgeon uses the word precedent. In our court systems, they frequently research the court records to find a similar case to the one being tried. They do this to see what the courts decided before. It’s called legal precedent. Once a legal precedent has been found, the case being tried becomes an open-and-shut case.
I like to think of all testimonies as invitations by God for us to come to know Him in the way revealed in the story.
Every time we hear a testimony of what God has done, we are looking at a legal precedent. God has already revealed His will, His nature and His promises through the miracle spoken of. And since He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He is no respecter of persons, we have the grounds to contend for our own breakthrough revealed through the testimony. I like to think of all testimonies as invitations by God for us to come to know Him in the way revealed in the story.
The Journey
A number of years after my original question and experience with the testimony, I discovered more of what God intended for me in the beginning of this story. I began to notice that the weightiness of God’s presence was sometimes released during a testimony. I would then experiment with the concept by looking for people who had the same condition that was healed in the testimony. I was shocked to find that often people would be healed after the testimony was given, especially if we took a few minutes to give instruction. Interestingly, I remember many testimonies while growing up in church, and yet I don’t ever remember anyone getting healed. It seems that simply understanding how God moves through the testimony and then putting faith into an action was all that was needed to complete the equation. While there are many, many stories to support this concept, I’ll share one for illustration’s sake. A little three-year-old boy was healed of clubfeet on the coast of Northern California. The following Sunday I shared the testimony with our church family. Unknown to me, a woman visiting our church from another state had a little girl in our nursery who was almost two years old. Her feet turned inward so severely that she would trip over them when she tried to run. The mother heard the story of God healing the clubfeet, and then, hearing the concept of a testimony being a prophecy, she said in her heart, “I’ll take that for my daughter.” When she picked up her little girl from our child care services, her feet were already straight. No one had prayed for her.
These kinds of stories have been piling up for years. What we’ve noticed in this journey is MANY more breakthroughs happen when people understand the truth about a testimony being prophetic. Secondly, once the testimony is given, people need to act. The minimum is that they need to examine themselves to see what has happened. Certainly, it could be said that some are healed and don’t know it until they get home. But typically, an action of some sort is needed at the moment the story is heard.The power of the testimony is not limited to physical healing. It happens with healed marriages, deliverance from torments and addictions, financial provision, and more. To always keep God’s activities in our conversation is the wonderful privilege of God’s people. Perhaps this is what was meant in God’s instruction to Israel that they might keep His testimony as well as His commandments. (See Deut. 6:17.) Keeping the testimony is a part of the assignment we have been given and is the most practical way to sustain a revival long term.
The responsibility to sustain a move of God falls on the shoulders of the priesthood of the believer
Throughout church history, there have been great seasons of increase and seasons of decline. There have been seasons of the miraculous and then seasons with little to no supernatural activities among God’s people. The absence of the supernatural is often blamed on God’s sovereignty. I disagree. In Scripture, God lit the fire on the altar, but it was the priests that kept it burning. The responsibility to sustain a move of God falls on the shoulders of the priesthood of the believer, which is all who call Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior. It appears that one of the main ways we sustain a move of God and His supernatural activities among us is through our stewardship of His miraculous stories. It helps us to maintain an awareness of the God who invades the impossible, which dramatically changes how we do life.
One of my greatest privileges in life has been to minister alongside of Randy Clark. The miracles that happen during his meetings are stunning and life changing. They reveal God’s heart in such a magnificent way that people leave knowing why they are alive, even when the miracles happened to someone else. What you read in Randy Clark's book, Stories of Divine Healing is but a small representation of what has become normal. This makes me happier than I can explain, that the activities of God among His people are being restored to biblical standards. My prayer is that these stories will become the fuel for the fires of revival to increase throughout all the earth! And that He would use you, in profound ways to spread the Good News with power to the whole world.