The Bible refers at one point to the power of the testimony of Christians. And, there is something spiritually significant about the number of twelve. Because there were twelve tribes of Israel, Joshua made a command that the Israelites place twelve stones, representing each tribe at the river of Jordan. This was a memorial to the miracle that God made the Jordan river stand still as the people crossed over to the other side on the dry river bed. This same number of twelve was used by Jesus to appoint twelve disciples. This became a tradition in American law, that we have twelve members of a jury. The unanimous vote of twelve jurors has the legal power to decide the fate of an accused person. What if we combine the power of our Christian testimony with the power of 12?
How? In a small group meeting with a minimum of twelve seriously born again Christians, each in turn gives a testmony on exactly how they came to give themselves to Jesus Christ in salvation. Salvation testimonies are powerful because they carry the witness to an actual miracle of the Spirit. Each testimony then becomes an affirmation of the testimony of each of the others. Each testimony is evidence of the spiritual, emotional, and even physical changes of believers.
When each has given their salvation testimony of how they came to Christ, a second step follows. Each one is challenged to think of as many instances as possible in which Christ has made a difference in their lives that they cannot account for in any other way. This might include a forgiveness of a wrong suffered that would not have been forgiven except for the motivation of Christ and the Holy Spirit speaking into the spirit of the believer. Or, it might be a miracle of healing. It could be any number of things where the Holy Spirit was involved as He revealed the nature of Jesus Christ in a believer's life. Each of these is a genuine miracle of God.
New believers may not have anything come to mind except their own conversion. Others will have a whole string of events where God has revealed His divine character. But, each one is a sort of testimonial stone that can be added up to a monument of personal faith.
This validation of the faith each believer expresses is a wonderful building block of the confidence we can and need to have when the enemy of our souls, Satan, attacks us with reasons to doubt our salvation.
One specific weapon we can use with our testimonial stones is the principle of "too late". We all know that there is such a thing as "too late." "Too late" is neither good nor bad, it just is a principle that we know works because we have at times been too late or we have seen others be too late.
You see, we know that reasons to doubt the truth of our relationship with Christ will come. However, if we have built a monument of testimonial miracles in our life, Satan will be too late.
We will know in the deepest part of our being that the voice of the Holy Spirit is not our imagination. We will know in the nearest and farthest part of our mind that our God is not just a spiritual teddy bear but that He is the worker of miracles that we have witnessed. We will simply know Him, our spirit to His Holy Spirit. Then, we will walk in confidence in the face of anything. We will walk in the power of our own testimony of Christ in us, Who is the hope of our glory. We will walk in the certainty that twelve witnesses bring a conclusive decision to place our trust in the Lover of our souls. We will walk in the fact that there is such a thing as too late and that Satan is too late to have us.
Just think. We will have ruined Satan's plan for our eternity. He is too late but we are right on time.