A WORD FOR TODAY, August 7, 2025
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, August 7, 2025
“When I came to you, brothers, I didn’t come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, WEB
We spent several months preparing for our trip to Honduras. Each meeting was designed to help us with cultural differences, plan what we should take, establish a plan for our week, and help us to be ready to share our story. We knew that we’d have to give a testimony (or more!). Some mission teams during previous trips had the experience of going into the homes of local people, but our schedule was a little different. We served the children of two communities with games, treats, and words. Though we were focused on the children, there were many adults in the background listening. Our testimonies reached not only the hearts of children, but also the minds of adults. Our words might even have made it home to the families of those children, who shared their experiences with them at the end of the day.
We do not feel qualified to share our testimony because we think that’s the work of an evangelist. Who am I to preach the Gospel? We’d rather let those who are trained to do the preaching and teaching about Jesus. We happily serve; we don’t mind standing at a carnival station or work at filling cups of lemonade for others, but we don’t want to talk to dozens of people about our faith.
To give us courage, our team time included two stories of people who were sent to tell their stories. Neither one knew the whole story of Jesus because His story was not yet complete. In John 4, Jesus met a woman at a well and touch her life in a way that made her go outside her comfort zone to tell others about what Jesus said. In Mark 5, Jesus cast an unclean spirit out of a man that was destroying his life. We are well familiar with these two stories, but we think more about their interaction with Jesus than the affect it had on their life after their encounter.
The woman at the well was an outcast. We don’t know exactly why she’d had five husbands or why she was living with the sixth, so we assume that she was a wanton woman. We don’t think about the other reasons why her marriages failed. Did she lose five husbands to death? She lived at a time when men could divorce a woman for any reason. A common reason for such divorce was barrenness. Did five husbands divorce her because she could not give them children? If she’d been a loose woman, she would have likely been stoned. These other reasons (five times widowed, barrenness) would have been reason enough to ostracize her: ff she was faithful, blessed by God, she would not have suffered such tragedy! We aren’t surprised by the ostracization of the man with a demon; he most certainly was far from God because a man of faith could not possibly become demon possessed.
When Jesus revealed to the woman at the well that He was the Messiah, she went back into the village and told the people her story. At that point she was not yet sure about Jesus. “I met a man who told me everything about myself. Could He be the Messiah?” The people who heard her testimony were curious. They went to meet Jesus for themselves. When they heard Jesus, they believed. When the demon possessed man was healed, he wanted to join Jesus, but Jesus sent him home. “Go tell people what God has done for you.” When others went into the Decapolis years later, a spark of faith already existed because that man told his story.
You may think, like Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, that your speech and preaching is not persuasive, but it doesn’t have to be. You are not sent to convert people. It is not your job to save people. Jesus simply sends you into the world to tell others what God has done for you. This may lead to questions about the Gospel but have no fear because God will give you the words. What it will do is open their eyes to the possibilities, make them curious enough to go and meet Jesus for themselves. It is God’s Word that will save them, but He has called you to invite them to hear Him speak. You don’t have to be trained; you just have to trust that God will open hearts and minds to receive Him. You may never see the impact of your stories. We certainly will not know how our testimonies will affect the lives of the children and adults who heard us, but we can trust that God put us in that time and place for a purpose and that He will make good things happen according to His promises.
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