A Good Testimony

If we go to the Word of God in the First Book of Timothy, Chapter 3 and verse 7, the Word of The Lord says:
“Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside”...
The Lord is talking about the qualifications to be a leader in the Kingdom of God and a good testimony is so very important.
I got a lovely email just a short while ago from a man that I am mentoring who lives in Canada and he is aspiring to be a great preacher and yet he sent me a little photograph of a greenhouse that he built in the garden for his wife on his wedding anniversary.
You know, that means more to me than any fancy sermon. We really need to put our love into practice. I remember many years ago, a secular radio station phoned me up. They weren’t very impressed by the Mighty Men Conferences. And this interviewer, a man, said to me, “By the way, mighty man, do you help your wife in the home? Do you vacuum, clean the house for her?”
And I said, “No, I don’t.”
And I could see him smiling on the other side of the radio, and he said, “Why not?”
And I said, “We don’t own a vacuum cleaner. I use a broom.” And that was the end of the conversation. We really need to have a good testimony for those outside.
Just a couple of months ago, I took Jill, my wife, down to Pietermaritzburg and she was doing some shopping. I really don’t like shopping at all but I was sitting in the car reading, and she came out with a basket full of groceries and I jumped out the car and went around and opened up the passenger side for her as I always do. We put the groceries away. She jumped in the car and all of a sudden, there was a young man standing at the door. He said, “I am a teacher from a private school. I just saw what you did.”
I said, “What did I do?”
He said, “You opened the door for your wife.”
I said, “Ja, I always do that.”
He said, “Can you please come and speak to our students at our school?”
It is not what you say, it is what you do, that impacts people.
You know, many years ago, we had a big yellow seed-sower truck. It was a 20 ton Mercedes Benz 4X4 truck and we went into the heart of Africa, into places where the Bible and the Word of God had not been preached. And we had been traveling for 3 weeks into this bush and we were parked there and all of a sudden a pickup arrived with a whole lot of journalists in the pickup, and they parked next to our truck and we had a good chat.
The next morning early, The Lord impressed upon me, “Make these boys a nice hot cup of strong coffee.” So I got up and I made the coffee and I knocked on the window of their pickup. They were sleeping in the back and I said, “Boys, here is a nice hot cup of coffee.
Do you know that man has never forgotten that. He never remembered any of the sermons that I preached because he traveled with us for a long time but he remembered the hot cup of coffee.
Don’t forget to be a good testimony.
And the last story is, as a young man I was on a trip doing some beef cattle work and I was staying with an old Afrikaans couple.
And you know every night, I was only twenty years old – every night I would come home and we would have been working hard all day and his dear wife would be standing at the front door and she was beautifully dressed. She had stockings on. The ladies used to wear stockings in those days. Her hair was nicely done. She had a nice fancy dress on. I thought she was going out somewhere but she used to get dressed up for her husband every night on the farm.
I want to say to you, let’s be a good testimony to those on the outside.
We see in John 13:4 that Jesus washed His disciples’ feet.