Personal witness is remarkable. We must never stop witnessing. One of the difficult things about preaching the Gospel to people is that you have to come to the point where you say, in so many words, ‘You are a sinner; you are a fallen human being; you are unfit for heaven and for glory. You cannot have anything to do with God. He rejects you because of your deep sin and selfishness, human rottenness. And you desperately need his forgiveness.’ That is not welcome information for anyone. It is very offensive information. Now preaching can to some extent get away with it, because when we preach, we preach to a group of people. We speak to a crowd, and that blunts the edge of the charge which must be made, that we are sinners and we need salvation.
But consider personal witness. You do not have to offend anyone. You are talking about yourself. ‘I realised I was a sinner. I realised my life was worthless before God. I came to him and repented and trusted in Christ. I believed in his atoning work on Calvary, and he changed me and he saved me.’ You are not going to offend anyone by that, and what is more, everybody likes to listen to someone else’s story. That is human nature. You always want to hear someone else’s biography, as long as it is reasonably brief. And if you have talked about yourself and people have not listened, then you go to the office one day and you say, ‘I just heard about a young man in our church, and he was caught up in gang violence. And do you know what happened to him?’ You are not talking about them, you are talking about him, and they listen to you.