It's always great to hear about how God has worked in people's lives to bring them to faith in His Son. It encourages us to praise God; and reminds us that no-one (including our own non-believing friends and family) are beyond His reach.
And real-life stories of conversion also show those investigating Christianity that real people really do follow the Lord Jesus—that He makes a difference to people's lives.
As Tim Keller, Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, says: "Testimony shows how comprehensive Christian fulfilment is. Christ not only appeals to our minds, he fills our hearts. Testimony enables more experientially oriented cultures and temperaments to see the attractiveness of Christianity."
Below are two amazingly moving testimonies, introduced by Carl Laferton, one of the creators of www.christianityexplored.org.
Deb Stein
"Deb's story needs very little introduction—it's best just to let it speak for itself. But I do remember filming her. She did a couple of trial runs and then we switched the camera on. She told her story in a single take. When she finished, we were absolutely silent. I was on the verge of tears."
Rob Prendergast
"Rob is one of the nicest guys I've met. His is a great story of being saved out of both nominal Christianity and then a lifestyle that left him a long way from Christ. When we finished filming his story, Rob mentioned he does some rapping—and he just started rapping to camera, without any prep. It was fantastic, and so we put one of his raps on the end of his story as a bonus feature… to reward people who watched to the end of his story!"
How could you use these testimonies?
You'll find all the real-life stories at www.christianityexplored.org/real-life-stories. There's also a page of people sharing their experiences of going on a Christianity Explored course at www.christianityexplored.org/course/who.
