To Testify and Persuade

Transcript:

Greetings in Jesus name. Welcome to this amazing new morning. Congratulations on spending an entire month at the feet of Jesus, listening to HIs voice, reading His word, understanding His heartbeat and continually growing closer to God. Not a single revelation or a single scripture or word that we receive from Lord is going in vain. It is depositing everything inside of us, the strength, ability, desire that we need to become what God wants us to be. One of the calling upon the new testament church is to be a witness in the name of Jesus to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. It is necessary that we are equipped, that we read and study the word of God well enough so that we are prepared to testify to others about Jesus.

Let me take you to Acts chapter 28 and verse 23. It says, “So a time was set, and on that day a large number of people came to Paul’s lodging. He explained and testified about the Kingdom of God and tried to persuade them about Jesus from the Scriptures. Using the law of Moses and the books of the prophets, he spoke to them from morning until evening.”
Paul witnessed about two things; the Kingdom of God and the testimony of Jesus. He use two tools, one is the law of Moses and the other is the books of the prophets; these are technically the old testament of our bible. Before the new testament was written, the old testament was the only bible that the apostles and 1st-century church had and that was the basis for them to preach the gospel to people everywhere. For apostle Paul to reach a place where he t could sit from morning to evening talking about the kingdom of God and about the person of Jesus based on scripture, he have had to study the scripture and read it again and again and again. We should know that when Paul was being taught under Gamaliel, he dint learn about the kingdom of God, he learnt about how to be a great Pharisee; when he went through the old testaments, he didn’t have a revelation of Jesus and that is why he didn’t receive Jesus until he encountered him personally. So, this is not talking about his previous learning, before he met Jesus. But after he had an encounter with Jesus he spent day and night trying to understand scriptures, trying to understand the kingdom of God, the person of Jesus in the books of law and books of prophets. When we want to understand the person of Jesus, we go to the new testament, but it was not so for apostle Paul. He had to decode the meaning and interpret it, he had to depend on the Holy Spirit to try and understand where in the old testament is hidden the revelation of God’s Kingdom and revelation about Jesus. It would have taken a lot of time and sweat and hard work and that is why now when he has a large number of people coming in his lodging, he can teach them and equip and persuade them and testify to them from morning until evening because now he is well versed with the scripture.

To all who listen to this podcast every morning, my hope is that when you sit with somebody you will not lack inspiration, revelation, testimony about Jesus. The basis of apostle Paul evangelizing was the word of God. We have to study and equip ourselves with the word of God, both the new and the old testament. We cannot be in a habit of the old testament. We have to study the word from the beginning to the end, to try to get glimpses of kingdom of God and the person of Jesus. And every time we get this glimpse, we go a step further testify and persuade people about it. We male sure it just doesn’t remain in our diaries and head. It has to go beyond that, lives being transformed, where souls are being saved, baptized and added in the kingdom of God, have a relationship with Jesus about whom we have been reading and studying in the word of God.

My desire is that you and I will encounter the word afresh that you will fall in the love with the person of God which is revealed in the scripture.