A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Calvin Brown is the pastor of First Church, Nelson, B.C. and Worship Editor of Channels.

Witnessing conjures up all sorts of images in peoples’ minds. In some mainline churches the idea creates a feeling of discomfort. This may especially be true if witness is thought of as involving a personal testimony. Personal testimony, however has been a part of every revival. The sharing of our story as part of God’s story is not only common practice among evangelicals but has in every age been part of Christian witness everywhere. The World Council of Churches in Vancouver produced a document entitled Witnessing in a Divided World which summarizes what witnessing is: “To be a witness means to live the life of Christ in the place where you are; it means listening and seeking to understand the faith and perspectives of our neighbours; it means speaking about Jesus the Christ as the Life of the World.” Our own Board of Congregational Life reported to Assembly that “the present need is to encourage Presbyterian people to share their faith in Jesus Christ in the everyday circumstances of their life.” Personal testimony in the context of worship can be useful in modelling how we can elsewhere also share what God is doing in our lives. As well the testimonies themselves provide the opportunity to declare the immanence of God at work in our own lives which in itself encourages faith. Easter time is an especially appropriate time to witness through personal testimony to the power of the Lord of Life. Last Easter we at First Presbyterian Church, Nelson, B.C., included several such witnesses in the service as follows:

Easter Sunday Order of Service

Prelude
Welcome, Announcements, and Offering
Doxology, and prayer

Resurrection Declaration

Minister: Jesus Christ is risen today!
People: He is risen indeed!
Praise 190: “Jesus Christ is Risen Today”
Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 25:6-9
Chorale: “Glory to God in the Highest” (with dance)
Prayer

Resurrection Power is Becoming Childlike

Children’s Time: Walking in the Kingdom of God
Responsive Reading: Psalm 126
Congregational Singing
Prayer

Resurrection Power is a Changed Life

Chorale: “Lo He Comes”
Scripture Lesson: Acts 10:34-38
Witness to Resurrection Power – Bob Eddy

Resurrection Power is the Comfort of His Presence

Chorale: “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”
Scripture Lesson: John 20:10-18
Witness to Resurrection Power – Sue Filyer

Resurrection Power is Assurance of His Healing

Solo – “Risen” – Marni Jacquest
Scripture Lesson: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Witness to Resurrection Power – Wendy Evans

Resurrection Power is Communion With God

Meditation – Calvin Brown
Chorale: “Allelu Yahweh” (with dance)
Invitation to Participate
Confession: Living Faith (3:5) Jesus is Lord
Distribution of the Elements
Sharing of the Bread – Instrumental: “Allelu Yahweh”
Sharing of the Cup – Organ
Praise 201: “Thine be the Glory”
Benediction
Three-Fold Amen

Here follow the three “witnesses” from that service.

Resurrection Power is Changed Life – Bob Eddy

I am very much a beginner at Christianity. I can remember clearly the night last July when I spoke my first tentative, self-conscious words to a God I could not begin to understand.

Love’s failure in my life brought me to that place that night. For thirty years I had struggled with the duality of love and fear, love and pain. The circumstances of my upbringing had conspired to leave me with a near total absence of self-acceptance – an all-pervasive sense of worthlessness. Superficially, everything looked good – a thriving business, nice home, good car, active in the community. But inside was a forty-five year old who was unable to love or be loved.

One can’t help but realize how banal it sounds to complain about low self-esteem at a time when people are starving in Africa, dying in Nicaragua, and suffering political oppression around the globe. But, nevetheless, I believe the failure of love is the most profoundly destructive problem in North America in our time.

Family violence, divorce, child abuse, sexual abuse, pornography, rape, suicide, teenage suicide – all these are about the failure of love. Addictions of every sort – to alcohol, nicotine, sugar, work, TV, money, prescription drugs – these, too, are about the failure of love. It is even possible that diseases such as cancer bear a relationship to the failure of love.

In my pre-Christian days, when I would see a billboard or a bumper sticker proclaiming JESUS IS THE ANSWER, I’d scoff and say, Yeah, but what’s the question?

Now I know. How do we heal love in ourselves and in the world? Jesus is the answer.

As a humanist I looked for answers in science, philosophy, psychology, pharmacology. I went to astrologers, psychics, the Maharishi. I tried psychiatry, Primal and Gestalt therapy, rebirthing. I looked to myself … be here now! And I learned a great deal about the nature and dynamic of a distorted relationship to love. I learned how the problem related to upbringing, and I learned how to relieve some of the symptoms. But I was not healed.

The cruelest fallacy of humanism is that it makes us the source of love. It makes us the source of healing.

“Before all worlds, I am.” These are magnificent words with magnificent implications. God had no need to create this universe. God has no needs. Neither did he create it out of curiosity. He knows every second of its progress through all time. To suppose that it was loneliness, or restlessness, or boredom is to truly misunderstand the nature of God.

It was a pure act of love that created the universe – a literal explosion of love. We are the fruits of that love. We are certainly not the source. God is love. Without him we can understand, but we cannot heal.

As a beginner, I’d like to share with other beginners these words from Saint John which have been so meaningful for me (John 16: 24): “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

And finally from John 17:25-26, “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

Amen, and may you all know the joy of Christ in your lives.

The Power of Christ’s Absence – Susan Filyer

I was supposed to talk to you today about the comfort of Jesus’ presence. Instead, I’m going to tell you about the resurrection power of his absence.

I have a calling in my life to contemplative prayer, which is essentially silent prayer: a looking on and adoration of God in silence; being there before God and knowing he is there for you.

While living in the Community Houses of First Church, I received permission to start a prayer house. It’s name was Kieran, which means “little one, blessed by God.” I used to experience the presence of God there as peace, and it was so real to me, it was almost tangible.

We began to have a healing prayer team meeting there, where we learned what it meant to pray for healing for members of the Body and beyond. Eventually, we attended a conference called “Teach Us To Pray,” where the Lord healed me of epilepsy. Those were great highlights for me, and they were very real experiences of the presence of God.

Rather suddenly, because of events beyond my control, I had to leave the little prayer house. That move marked the beginning of a period in my life that I can only describe with the word “poverty.” Poverty is a lack of resources, which I began to experience both outwardly and inwardly.

I entered what is known in contemplative prayer as a “desert” experience. Many of you have described similar experiences as “dry times.” God seems far away; you have little sense of his presence; you’re very aware of your own weaknesses; you seem lacking in spiritual power.

This experience produced anguish in my life. How could I give myself to God in prayer, have all sense of his presence disappear, and still lead a meaningful life? Prayer remained dry and painful.

Months later, I experienced another movement. In one day, God suddenly moved me into a place of peace. It wasn’t the tangible, peaceful presence of God I had once known. But instead of anguish, there was almost serenity – the faith that God, unseen, unfelt, was there “just behind” the desert.

I began to understand something I had read: that the true nature of the “dark night” is Jesus moving underground in our lives, transforming deeper levels of our being. We are told that 90% of our potential lies hidden from our conscious mind; that we live out only 10% of who we really are. And I wonder: who can heal and free us? Who will heal the parts of me that lie hidden from myself? Jesus can, as he moves ever deeper in our lives. There’s some work in our lives that Jesus has to do in private. You can’t direct or control God as you allow him into the deepest places of your life to heal and change you.

This is what Jesus was doing while he was in the tomb. While his friends felt abandoned or betrayed, Jesus was moving in the underworld and there he was taking authority over death and hell and sin. He was delivering his friends of things over which they had no power.

Just in time for Easter, on Maundy Thursday, I experienced another movement. It’s rather new, and the image I have to describe it is that of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. A painful, constricting time is over, and a new phase of life is about to begin. This, too, happened to Jesus. He was buried by his friends with spices and strips of linen wrapped round and round his body, sealing him in a kind of cocoon. When Jesus left that cocoon, he entered into a new level of being. When he returned, some of his friends, like Mary, didn’t recognize him.

When Jesus returns to us after our dry times, things are a little different. The “good old days” don’t come back. Jesus seems different, but mostly we are different, and we are different because of his absence.

One of the critical things that happened to the disciples during Jesus’ time in the tomb was the revising of their expectations. They had thought they knew what it meant to bring the Kingdom of God to earth.

When Jesus returned, and Mary realized who he was, she reached out to grasp him, and he said, “Don’t cling to me.” We can’t control God in our lives. Jesus always has to go on. In Mary’s case, he had to go to the Father. In ours, he may only have to go deeper within. Like Mary, you might be weeping on Easter Sunday. Like me, you might not always feel like an Easter people. God seems far away; you’re confronted by your own weakness; some of you don’t know how to live in your relationships any more – the old ways of relating aren’t working for you; some of you don’t know what’s happening to your ministries.

But that is part of Easter: dying and rising, dying and rising. And the thing we sometimes forget is that when we rise, we rise to a new level of existence.

So I want to remind you that, even when you’re weeping and you feel you’ve lost your God, you too are the Easter people.

Resurrection Power is Assurance of His Healing – Wendy Evans

As I prepared this testimony I felt the Lord gave me a picture of all kinds of flowers – all different – all coming together into one huge bouquet. Each one of us is one of those flowers – each uniquely different – each of us with our own story to tell. I’d like to share part of mine with you. I hope that as you hear it, it will become more than “Wendy’s story”, that it will prompt some inner stirrings and perhaps allow you to open in a new way to what Jesus might be saying to you. He has something very special planned for each of us. He only asks for a willing heart.

In our walk with the Lord it is often difficult to figure out how we’ve gotten to where we are now, but undeniably it has been the Lord who has been quietly and steadily urging us on. He never seems to move us faster than we can handle, although I’m beginning to appreciate that at times he makes it just a bit uncomfortable for us when he knows it’s time for change to take place.

I’d like you to reflect on a question that Calvin Brown put to us in a sermon. We were asked to think about “What is Jesus doing in my life today – right now?”

Something else I’d like you to think about is how we hear God’s still small voice. It’s something I feel I’m rediscovering in my relationship with the Lord – and it excites me! It also challenges me deeply. When I first experienced Jesus in my life in a new and alive way – in the spring of 1979 – I felt as if I’d never been happier. The Lord met me moment by moment through Scripture, questions answered by friends, through prayer and often through song. Music is a particular love of mine, and one example of how the Lord used it was a day when I was singing the Prayer of St. Francis. Suddenly I was caught up short when I heard myself singing “… not so much to be controlled as to control . . .” “… not so much to be consoled as to console.” I realized that what my heart was saying was very different from what the Lord wanted. He wanted to be in control – so we wrestled through that moment.

There are so many things that can crowd out the God thoughts. Busyness is probably one of my worst enemies, and also one of my greatest joys. I love being with people and doing things, but all too quickly I can drift off into the silence of the world. All too soon the world crowds out the tiniest sparkles of God’s lights and I find myself dulled and bored – and before long I’m in the middle of a spiritual desert.

In reflecting on some of the desert times in my life I tried to recall the “feeling” of those times. Mostly 1 felt a nothingness, a worthlessness, a non- acceptance of myself, hence of God, or of anyone else.

Then I tried to describe the times when I’ve known with such certainty that Jesus was indeed Lord in my life. It’s almost as difficult to do, if you’re in a desert time. We become so entangled in the moment. I’m a registered nurse and work on a maternity ward and the example there is so striking. Labour is so intense for the mother experiencing it and yet once she is holding her new child almost everything about her changes. Her whole being takes on a different look – it’s beautiful to watch. I wonder if the Lord watches us weave in and out of the fabric that makes up each of our lives – and smiles at the transformation? I think he does.

For most of 1985-86 I walked through one of the longest, driest deserts of my Christian walk. There were many moments where sheer obedience to a commitment kept me going. At some point I was quite shaken to realize that God really did know me in that dry place, and that what was happening was part of a process. That was so unbelievable for me. I knew I was beginning to harden my heart to the Lord and I knew that was an unforgivable sin. How were things to turn around? I was very much supported by the love and prayer of my church family during this time, and it did stir hope in my heart.

In May 1986 I had the privilege and opportunity of attending a conference in Vancouver, “Teach Us To Pray,” led by John Wimber. That week has turned my life around 180 degrees!

I was raised in the Anglican Church in Ontario, and have worked as an RN in various positions since graduating from high school. Needless to say, my profession gave me a good deal of skepticism regarding miracles of healing. I also was born with a degree of spina bifida which caused the vertebrae in my lower back to be deformed with my right leg shorter than the left, and my right foot turned in. I’d walked with a limp all my life. One doctor who was treating me said he’d never seen anyone walking with a deformity as high as mine. For several years I’d been experiencing almost continuous back pain which medical treatment helped, but never cured.

The first day of the conference I realized I was fairly angry as it became apparent that some inner things needed to be dealt with. In a brief prayer time I asked for release of his power in my life. Through my tears I also prayed for a change of heart because I knew there were more days of the conference to go and at that point they felt endless!

The next day during the lunch break I watched as people around me seemed to be delighting in all that was going on – while I on the other hand recognized that I was in my “conference mode” – there to learn, but not really believing God had anything special for me.

On the basis of that realization, and my skepticism, I chose to attend the Physical Healing Workshops, led by Ken Blue, pastor of the North Delta Vineyard Church. At the end of the first session, during the prayer clinic, I experienced such a rush of power through my body and also felt myself sway backwards and forwards as if someone had pushed my shoulder. I sought out one of the prayer team members who in a very gentle way prayed for release from the need to control, fear of being alone, rejection, anger, and fear of God and how he would work. I was also feeling a deep concern for my friend Susan who was dealing with a sudden onset of epilepsy. The woman prayed for her healing, and that I would be part of it. It was a very short, very gentle, very sure prayer.

That night I spoke with my roommate about what had gone on that day. It was becoming very evident to me that Jesus did know I was there. I also shared with her the fleeting thoughts I had had concerning healing for my foot and back.

On Thursday morning prayer was offered for those who had never experienced the empowering of the Lord – being overwhelmed by his Holy Spirit. Again I asked for prayer and the person praying blessed my eyes to see as Jesus sees, and my ears to hear as Jesus hears and not to be swayed by the “second voice” of the enemy.

That afternoon during the Healing Workshop Clinic, prayer was offered for those people with one leg shorter than the other, connected with a lower back deformity. I responded immediately – and left having received very significant healing! Both legs were now the same length. It was very weird walking, and I kept tripping, not being used to the new sensation. Even then I knew the Lord had more for me.

And he did! During the Friday evening celebration I felt myself being “taken over’’ by the Lord. My whole body responded as I felt the Holy Spirit shake through my entire being for over two hours. Prayer team members stayed with me, blessing what the Lord was doing – and it certainly wasn’t anything man could contrive! It was the most joyous and exciting experience of my life! I did not want it to end. I knew I was meeting Jesus face to face and that I wasn’t afraid! I felt vertebrae snapping into place several times and each time I would laugh out loud and ask for more of whatever the Lord wanted to give me. At the end of the evening as I left to go home I became quite concerned because my gait felt so odd. It was then that my friends told me that I was no longer limping! Hallelujah! A few days later I again received extensive prayer and this time I left with a straight right foot!

Through the months that have followed this miracle of healing I’ve seen time and again how important it is for me (us) to focus on the Healer, not the healing, on the Creator and not the creation, on the Miracle Worker and not on the miracle. Luke 1:45-55 has become very precious to me.

The healing is still in process. I am in awe of what God is doing. I know he won’t stop until he’s through. I’m enjoying the Lord as I never have before. He has become real to me in ways I could never have imagined. I know he loves me.

(It is now early 1989 and I rejoice in the ongoing touch of Jesus in my life. In the year since I presented my story to our congregation, the Lord has continued to move powerfully in my heart. As he has drawn me ever more deeply into worship of him, I have been released from spiritual darkness I could never have believed a Christian could be afflicted with … and I praise the Lord for his steadfast love that never ceases, his mercies that never come to an end.

(“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord [Jeremiah 29: 11-14a] NIV. AMEN.) ■