Testimony Series Opener

Open your Bibles to John Chapter 4.

Now in John Chapter 4, this is early on in Jesus’s Ministry, Jesus and his disciples are heading through a town called Samaria. Now in this story, the disciples spilt off from Jesus to go get some food, and Jesus heads to Well to grab some water. At this Well, there is a samaritan woman. Now what a samaritan is, is a person whose parents were Jew and Gentile, this violated Jewish law because Jew and gentiles were not allowed to marry or have relations with each other, so samaritans were frowned upon by Jews, as well, Jewish people viewed women as lesser than. So here we have Jesus talking to a Samaritan Woman, 2 strikes right there, then later we find out that this woman had been married 5 different times, strike 3, why is Jesus talking to this Woman? Well Jesus is going to reveal to this woman at the end of the conversation that He is the Messiah, the first time he has revealed this to Anyone. Starting in verse 29 we see the womans response

John 4:27–30 “Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They left the town and made their way to him.”

John 4:39–42 “Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. Many more believed because of what he said. And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.””

Just like that, this lowly, socially rejected, sinful samaritan woman became the first ever Christian Evangelist in History

And how did she Evangelize? Not with a script, not with a sermon, not with apologetics or doctrine, but with a personal testimony.

So for the rest of the semester, there won’t be anymore sermons( not to say they aren’t important), you are just going to hear a bunch of different testimonies

Testimonies from each of your different adult leaders, I’ll share my Testimony, maybe different testimonies from members of our church.

So throughout this series I want to encourage you all to do a few things

Lock in, really listen to these testimonies, you have adult leaders around you who are invested in you and want to pour into you, and they are gonna be vunerable with you and share you their stories of radical life change. You are going to here stories of salvation, sanctification, of God using hard times and Broken People for his Glory and the Advancement of his kingdom, you may hear stories of God delivering your leaders through sins or situations that you yourselves might be struggling with, so be encouraged by it.

Take this semester to get to know your leaders, like I said, your leaders want to invest in you, let them, be vunerable with them, allow them to pour into you and shepherd you

then lastly, if you are in Christ, think through what your testimony might be, share it with other believers be vunerable, and be bold in sharing it to unbelievers

Pray