By: Aniebiet Effiong
Have you said a new year testimony in your church yet? If no is the answer, then you aren’t doing well at all. You are making it look as though the God of your church is not good enough to be testified of. I therefore implore you to do so as quick as possible as I’ll be writing for you a close to perfect guideline. You should testify.
Below are few guidelines. Please do well to pay attention to the listed directives. I have attended local and international churches, so I know what I am saying.
1. Ensure you do not attend all those big churches where they’ll ask for your storyline before you are given the chance to say what God has done for you. No one should scrutinize your testimony before you say it. It must come fresh, new and original to the hearing of everyone. You are the only one who had the experience and no one has ever had same.
2. Another strict warning. On the day you want to return all the glory to your God, do not attend those churches where a protocol or usher is assigned to hold the mic while you talk. These kinds of churches will want you to summarize a story that would make an award-winning Novel into three to four lines because of time. Who does that?! Your story, I mean your testimony, requires time. You need time to say the testimony smoothly. Attend where you will be handed the mic.
3. Once you’re handed the mic, your brain should automatically forget the five minutes you nodded to while getting the mic from the coordinator. If the coordinator was you, would he say an ideally hours-long testimony in five minutes? To narrate the wonders of God is not a five minutes something. They know it but they just want to tempt you. You are given the floor so make good use of it. You can even use the whole day to testify. This year is your year. Take charge. Take control. Conquer.
4. Shout ‘Praise the Lord’ as if everyone is deaf. Of course they may as well be deaf to have not heightened their voices like yours. Scream the ‘Praise the Lord’ again. Repeat it as many times as possible. You can do something like, “Praise, Praise, Praise, Praise, Praaaise the Lord!” You can only choose to stop when their ‘Halleluyah’ corresponds with your energy. The Nigerian God is not deaf; you just need to alert everyone that you are about testifying.
5. You can now start thinking of a song that will match your intending narration. If the testimony is about God’s protection, there are songs for that. If the testimony is of God’s provisions, there are songs for it. If your wound got healed, we have myriads of songs for it. And so on.
By this time, the five minutes is exhausted but, nonetheless, sing your song. Every true testimony must be preceded by a song. If you choose to sing a worship song then you must ensure you see people raise their faces and hands as they join you before you can even think of stopping. If it is a praise song, then they have to dance before you signal the instrumentalists to stop.
6. As you begin the main thing, ensure you smile sheepishly and start by saying how grateful you are to the God of your church. E.g, “I thank the God of this Land for what he has done”. In Ibibio you can say, ‘abasi oto isong ami okpon eti eti’ (the God of this Land is very great).
Be well detailed in your narrative. Do not omit any action. I suggest:
“Church halleluyah! It was one evening like that… when I slept that night, I woke up the following morning. As I woke up, I said my morning prayers… praaaaise the Lord! Church, halleluyah! So as I was saying, I started thinking of what to eat in the morning. In that morning there was nothing to eat. I sent my child on an errand to the market…”
Please neither be concise nor precise while narrating a testimony in your church. People who are precise are trying to save time and they will go to hell.
Image credit: Splendid TV/YouTube
