This marketing scheme has gotten me thinking about what are we a witness to. When people think of this word, it is often done so in a court room type setting. A witness is someone who testifies accurately to what they saw. In Biblical times, for charges in a courtroom to stick, there needed to be two reliable sources.
The Gospel of John has a lot to say about what it means to be a witness. In John 1, the author shares a story of Jesus being baptized John the Baptist. One of the themes of the story is that John is a witness and is to testify to who Jesus is and why He came. Here are a couple of things that I find to be crucial to be a witness.
The first one is that the witness is that they are willing to share what they have saw. A witness doesn't sit on the sidelines, because who really has seen anything cool or exciting on the sidelines or doing nothing. The witness is not only actively participating in the mission, but it is providing life change for others. It would be hard to witness Lebron's greatness if one never went to games to watch it. How can one testify to what they have not seen. If we call ourselves Christian, we can not fully testify or be a witness to Gods grace and transformation if we are not letting it change us first.
The second point to be a witness is that we care more about the message and where it comes from. We constantly live in a culture of self promotion and looking what I can do. Being a witness takes a stance that I am third mentality. It is sharing what they saw or experienced, not to gain anything personally out of it, but for the better of others. It is the attitude that they will do whatever it takes to share this particular message and humility is usually a big component of the messenger to say it is not about me. Simply put, being a witness is just telling what you just saw. It is the tough realization that the servant isn't greater than the master nor is the messenger greater than the one who authorized to send it. It is about knowing our place.
The third idea of being a witness and this can be found through out the Bible and especially the Gospel of John is the idea of being relational. We can not be a witness, especially a reliable one if we do not have a relationship with the sender. Throughout the Gospel of John, there are countless references that the only way Jesus and God the Father are one and they have a very intimate relationship. In order to share Gods' grace and redemption fully, we need to seek it ourselves because anything else is just pure manipulation. Here is the thing, manipulation brow beats you with the information, and being a witness shares the information as is and let the people decide for themselves. Being a witness, we walk along with people, but we never forcibly drag people against their will
When we have that growing relationship with God, we become Spirit filled and Spirit led. This means that we become more aware of spiritual things and that our heartbeat is developed into what Gods heartbeat is. Its growing up to realize that if we our left to our own desires, it will be a path of destruction. Where this falls into being a witness is that it gets back to sharing what we have experienced ourselves and wanting others to have the same thing. Why do you think that all those infomercials have the "personal stories" its because things are easier to understand and believe not only when we here people share those stories, but we see the life change.
