The Power to Witness

When we think of powerful witnessing, it can be tempting to fall into the trap of focusing on the how. Ultimately, in the personal evangelistic endeavor we desire to be effective. Technique, presentations and methods are all well and good, but without the power source, we’ll be like a powerful machine (one with all the answers, techniques, and methods) that happens to be unplugged!

You see, the power to witness is found not in the how, but in the Who!

Jesus said, “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), while the Apostle Paul wrote: “I can all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

Moses was a witness for the Lord, and a reluctant one at that. God told Moses the plan to deliver the Israelites from bondage to Pharaoh in Exodus 3:

And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
(Exodus 3:7-8, 10)

Moses’ response to God, “Who am I that I should go…?” God responded in verse 12 with these powerful words: “I will certainly be with you.” And the rest as we know is history.

It was the power and presence of God that delivered the Israelites out of slavery, with Moses simply being the human vessel God utilized in the process.

As Christians, God uses us as His vessels, His ministers of reconciliation, as He delivers people out of the bondage of sin and into the Kingdom of God. And our power to witness is also the Lord.

Jesus said to His disciples just before ascending into heaven: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

After Peter and John had healed a lame man in Acts 3, they were arrested by the Jewish religious leadership (the Sanhedrin) and asked by what power or name they had done it. Peter, ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit,’ then witnessed to them, saying in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Remember the disciples were of no great pedigree. Jesus didn’t choose the best and brightest, those with the gift of evangelism, to be His witnesses. Rather their gifting was in the power and presence of God. In fact, when the Sanhedrin “perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Spend time with the Lord. Ask Him move mightily in and through all you do in your witness. And ask the Lord to move mightily in the heart of the one to whom you’re witnessing. For it is the Lord who is your power to witness.