2 Chronicles 13

One of the things in Christianity that I find so curious is the "witnessing education" that goes on from time to time in churches. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Those classes or workshops that purport to teach you about how to witness for Jesus. How to tell others about your faith. I’ve never understood the reason for these classes. Well, perhaps there’s a better way to phrase that. If, in the church, we are cultivating a real relationship with the living God, I’ve never understood the need for these classes.

When I talk about the subject of witnessing, I usually refer to the Gospels. I mean, did you ever see Jesus give a witnessing seminar to someone He’d had an encounter with? Did He ever have to tell people how to tell others about their experience? On the contrary, He was usually trying to keep people quiet! When people came into contact with Jesus, when they encountered the living God, the first thing they did was run out and tell everyone they could find. Witnessing was not a problem.

So, since I usually point to the Gospels to illustrate that point, it was ever so refreshing to see it illustrated right here in the Old Testament. In the previous chapter of 2 Chronicles, the Lord gave the tribe of Judah over to the Egyptians in order to educate them on what it was like to have Him as their God versus being subject to a heathen king.

And, what do you know? It worked! At least for a little while, they got the lesson. And what did they immediately do? They told the other Israelites about the lesson they had learned through their experience: "Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?... And now you plan to resist the kingdom of the Lord, which is in the hands of David’s descendants. You are indeed a vast army and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made to be your gods... [But] God is with us; he is our leader. His priests with their trumpets will sound the battle cry against you. People of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your ancestors, for you will not succeed."

If the people of Judah had learned anything, it was the lesson that fighting against the Lord doesn’t lead to success. They had had an encounter with the living God, and they were ready to tell others! This is witnessing, plain and simple. And God inspires that witnessing, just by seeking us out and interacting with us. So if we’re wondering about how to witness, it could be that we really haven’t had an encounter with God. Once we’ve been in His presence, it is very, very hard not to tell others about Him!