Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

Our members brought a touch of raw reality to Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church this past Saturday. Testimonies often do this. If you didn’t know the people and their stories, you may have missed it. I didn’t know all the stories, but I knew enough to know dramatic changes had taken place.

This was real.

If you weren’t there, I’m sorry you missed it. Individuals wrote on a large piece of cardboard the issues they’d faced. On the other side: the solution they’d found in God. One by one they walked to the stage, gave us time to read the problem before revealing the change. Nothing was said.

This was powerful.

Here are the kinds of problems/ solutions they shared:

• “A puppet of Satan/ but behold I am now free in Jesus”
• “No hope in life/ Jesus is my hope”
• “Lost brother 2 cancer/ but death is defeated in Jesus”
• “Lost everything through selfishness/ found peace and confidence in God”
• “Doing my own thing/ life in Christ”
• “Angry, broken pretender/ forgiven work in progress, Jesus defender”
• “Committed to partying/ committed to serving”
• “In turmoil/ @ peace”
• “Lost and searching/ found direction in Jesus Christ!!”
• “Lukewarm and lost in depression/ transformed by Christ’s love”

This was moving.

I wish I could tell you the stories behind each one. Like I mentioned, I don’t know them all, but that isn’t important. Each one of these testimonies indicates one thing: victory.

There’s nothing more to say except to point out the obvious: Jesus makes a difference.