Note: Transcriptions are done by software. Errors may occur.
Power To Be His Witness | David Fisher
Good morning, good morning. Well, it’s good to be back in Texas. I can tell you that.
Sherilyn and I were out in Branson and enjoyed a good week of fellowship and really had a good time, but it’s always good to be in your own bed. It’s just nothing like sleeping in your own bed. I’m really excited about this morning.
And y’all ready to study the scripture together? If you got your notes pad there, if you need one, we’ve got some notebooks up here at the front, feel free to come up right now if you’d like to, we got some pens if you’d like to take notes. I hope it’s been helpful to you as you go back and try to remember what was said because we want to listen so that we can reproduce, right? We don’t wanna just listen so that we will consume it. We wanna listen so that we can reproduce as we talk and as we serve and as we are witnesses for Jesus Christ.
Today’s gonna be, we’re gonna go right back to Acts 1, chapter 1, verse 8, talking as the scripture we used last week, but we’re gonna use this verse for several weeks. It is a powerful, powerful verse. It’s about being a power to be his witnesses.
Let’s go to Acts 1, verse 8. But ye shall receive what? Power. You shall receive what? You shall receive what? Power. You shall receive power when? When the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me.
You’re gonna be what? You shall be witnesses to me. Witnesses, witnesses. You shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, even all the way to Lumberton, Salisbury and Coontz, even to the far ends of the earth.
That’s what he’s called us to be. That’s what Jesus promised. These words are in red, so the Bible translations mean that’s what Jesus said.
If Jesus said it, it must be important. We agree? Sermon’s done. Y’all have a good week.
No, no, we got some more to do. Now, I want to encourage you, if you didn’t bring a covered dish, please come to the fellowship dinner anyway. We’re gonna have a lot of food.
It’s gonna be a wonderful time together. And you don’t have to go to restaurants and worry about slow service or anything. We got the best food in Southeast Texas in our gymnasium today.
We got some of the best men and women who cook and do a great job. So, so we, all of it, all of it. So thank y’all for being here.
You shall be what? My witnesses. You shall be what? My witnesses. Now, one thing I am qualified to do is talk to you about witnesses.
I’m a lawyer, been a lawyer for 30 something years, almost 40 years now. And I have dealt with lots of witnesses. So you can’t prove your case unless you got a what? Witness.
You gotta have a witness to prove your case. And there are good witnesses and there are bad witnesses. I mean horrible witnesses.
It seems like sometimes you come upon a scene of accident and say, ooh, I need to get out of here before I can have to take a statement. Because if I take a statement with a police officer, they’re gonna come after me. Somebody gonna ask me for a deposition.
Somebody ask for a deposition and they call me to trial. And I don’t want to be a witness. I don’t have time to be a witness.
Oh, I hate those kind of witnesses. Because you’re trying to prove your case. You gotta have somebody who’s willing not only to have gone through the experience but they’re willing to tell.
So you’re not a witness just because you saw it. You just now qualified to be a witness. You’re not a witness until you tell and you speak about what you saw or what you heard.
And if you don’t have a witness, you don’t have a case. Jesus is saying here, you shall be my what? Witnesses. You shall be my witnesses to me.
To me. If we’re gonna be about being disciples, we’ve got to be witnesses. And part of being a disciple is learning to make disciples as part of it.
And you can’t make disciples if you won’t tell people what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. Just doesn’t happen. You can give them a book and say, oh, here’s the witness of the scriptures.
You just give it to them. But I’m gonna tell you, they need a witness. They need somebody who’s gonna speak to them and tell them what you’ve seen and what you heard.
To be a good witness, first of all, you have to have experienced the event. You saw it. You heard it.
You participated in it. And now you qualified to talk about it. If all you said is, well, you know, I heard.
I heard my grandma say, the judge would say, if there was an objection, hearsay. And the judge would say, sustained. Why is that? Because all it is is hearsay.
If you just heard people talk about it, say, oh, I know Brother Buddy. He knows God, and I know all this that he’s told me about it. I said, well, have you experienced it? He says, no.
I said, well, then you’re not qualified to be a witness. Yeah, but they said, yeah, that’s called hearsay. You’re not qualified until you’ve experienced it.
God allows us and gives us the power to have experiences in our life that he wants us to tell others about. And he gives us that power and that strength. Not only that, he gives us the opportunity because he puts us in the right place at the right time to have the right experience with the right people, with the scriptures, and most of all with the Holy Spirit who’s equipping us with that opportunity and providing that opportunity, whether it is a hard circumstance or what we would consider our blessings, the great experiences, all those experiences, the Holy Spirit is orchestrating somehow in our life so that we will experience it.
And once we’ve experienced it, now we can start talking about it. If there are things that you read about in this Bible and you’ve not experienced it, that you ask the Holy Spirit, say, Father, I want to experience that. I want to have more love.
I want to have more kindness. I want to have more patience. I want to have more goodness.
I want to have more long-suffering. I want to have these things. You ask the Holy Spirit for it.
He’ll give you the opportunity to start revealing that and telling about it in your life because the Holy Spirit gives us power to be witnesses, not just to accumulate information, but to tell it. To be a good witness, you’ve got to be more than just a spectator who saw it. You’ve got to now be willing to tell somebody what it is that you saw because if you’re not willing, if you’re just not willing, then you are worthless.
As a witness. You may have had an experience, but if you’re not willing to share it, you’re not making anybody’s case. You might as well not have ever seen it because being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not about just accumulating religious information, getting all the information, getting all the information, reading all the books, getting the information.
If it has no application in our life, well, we also begin to use it and we begin to share it and we start telling exactly what we have experienced and what the Holy Spirit has allowed us to experience. My question for you is whose witness are you? See, there’s two beings in scripture who are in charge of witnessing and one of them’s called the devil. Scriptures call him Satan.
The book of Revelations in chapter 12 calls him the accuser of the brethren. It’s like a prosecutor. Y’all have read in the book of Job? So the sons of God all came together and Satan also came to the presence of God.
He says, where have you been? He says, I’ve been roaming the earth. And God says, have you considered my servant, Job? He says, oh yeah. Job, God says he’s righteous.
He’s a good man and the devil, the accuser of the brethren says, well, no wonder he’s singing your praises. All you’ve done is be a hedge of protection around him. All you’ve done is given blessings in his life.
See, the devil wants to now use your circumstances so that the testimony of your lips will no longer be consistent with what God has already said about you. God allowed him to bring hardship on him. He still praised God.
His wife said, why don’t you just curse God and die? He said, no, that’s not the God I serve. I’m gonna keep serving him. God continued to reveal himself to him.
There’s another one who puts on witnesses. Scripture and all the writings of John call him the paraclete. Jesus calls him the Holy Spirit.
God, the paraclete’s a Greek word for one who comes alongside. Some translations say he’s the comforter, he’s the helper. Some translations translate that as our advocate, our defense lawyer.
He’s the one who comes along beside you to speak for you, to stand for you, to stand and consult with you, to tell you what it is you need to say. Because to be a really good witness, sometimes you need some time to prepare. You don’t ever put on a witness without preparing them before trial.
You sit down and you talk to them, help them understand and help them remember what’s important. You sit down and talk to them. We call it woodshedding.
You woodshed the witness. You talk to them, you visit with them, you get them comfortable with what they’re doing. And I’m gonna tell you what the Holy Spirit does before we start testifying.
The Holy Spirit wants to spend some time with you. So who’s witness are we? We’re gonna join the prosecutor, the accuser of the brethren, the one who’s in charge of the complaining, the ones who’s in charge of the lying, the one who’s in charge of the fuss, and the one who’s in charge of the chaos, the one who’s in charge of all of the disruptions that go on in relationships. Is that the witness for whom you want to testify? I don’t either.
I’ll tell you what, I want to testify to what the Holy Spirit’s done in my life. How about you? We’re gonna make disciples when we learn to come up and let the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, be the one who’s teaching us and coaching us and guiding us and putting us in the opportunities and then giving us a divine perspective on what just happened. You know, it doesn’t have to be something pleasant for you to get a divine perspective.
I saw a Facebook post, a reminder of something I’d posted a good many years ago now about my mother who was sick and dying of cancer. And my post said, it is incredible to see a woman who is sick, who is spending her time praying for every nurse who walks into her room. You’d think it’s a horror, we think of our horrible circumstances.
But I’m gonna tell you, God’s putting you in the position to give you the opportunity to be a witness of the goodness of God. I don’t care what kind of circumstance we’re going through, the Holy Spirit can equip us with a divine perspective of what it is he’s called us to do to be his witnesses in the midst of a rough, hard circumstance. God’s given us that opportunity.
I hope you’ll allow me to use an experience that I had just less than 48 hours ago. I’m gonna tell you how my God is a shield. I know that.
I’m gonna tell you the witness of scripture over in Genesis three, you don’t have to turn there, but if you want to, you can. Genesis three, where God’s revealed himself to Abraham, it’s really was Abram, it was before he was even Abraham, before God had made his covenant, God came and appeared to Abram. It’s in chapter, I’m sorry, chapter 15, verse one, chapter 15, verse one of Genesis.
Genesis 15, verse one, God reveals himself to Abram in a vision, says, do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield. You’re exceedingly great reward. And then he proved it, that he was a shield.
Turned over to Psalms 28. Psalms 28, verse seven. I’ll tell you, there’s another Bible person, the witness of the scripture is strong, the witness of the scripture is important.
And here in Psalms 28, verse seven, David is saying, blessed, verse seven of Psalms 28. We’ll give you time to get there, so somebody doesn’t complain at me after service. We’re going too fast.
I cheated, I already got it tabbed with a red tab, so I can get there quicker. Psalms 28, seven. Psalms 28, seven.
This is David speaking, he says, the Lord is my strength and my what? And my shield. The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in him, and I am helped.
Therefore, my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song, I will praise him. The witness of the scriptures. It’s the witness of the scriptures that give us strength, but if you’re not experiencing it, you’re not a witness.
Has God ever been your shield? I’m gonna tell you, he’s been mine. And I want to tell you a little story. I hope you won’t get lost in my role play here.
It’s the same experience, but I want to have two different presenters. First, we’re gonna have the devil. He’s gonna call David Fisher to the stand.
And after he’s through, he’s gonna pass the witness, and he’s gonna turn it over to the parishioners. And I’m gonna ask Cleet to let him ask some questions. What’s your name? My name’s David Fisher.
Where you been? Well, I was up in Branson, Missouri. How was your drive back? It was horrible. I mean, it was awful.
Or was it now? Those roads were all winding. I had to pay a lot of attention. But man, by the time we got down to a little bit south of Little Rock, you know what we saw all over the place? What is that you saw, David? I saw these billboard signs that had these lawyers on it.
It was worse than Louisiana. I hate them. I hate them.
I don’t know why they’ve gotta clutter up the countryside with those kind of signs. What else happened? Well, we came up to this rainstorm. It was awful.
I’m gonna tell you, the roads in Arkansas are horrible. What’s so bad about the roads, David? Oh, they were awful. None of the reflectors.
You know, in Texas, we got reflectors on every stripe. They’re not one on the interstates in Arkansas. What’s wrong with that? Oh, it’s horrible.
It’s just a horrible drive, especially when it rains. Well, did you have some rain? Yes, sir, I did have some rain. It was horrible rain.
It was an awful rain. Awful rain. Driving rain.
Well, what’s so bad? Oh, sorry. What’s so bad about that? It’s those truckers. What’s wrong with the truckers? I hate them.
I just hate them. Driving by, going 70, 80 miles an hour when the rain, when I’m going 40 miles an hour, splashing water up on my windshield. It’s horrible.
It’s got tension. It was just bad. Is that all? Oh, no.
They’re not even getting close to it. Because as we were driving down the road, a tree looked up and had fallen into the right-hand lane of the interstate. And I almost had a wreck.
Ooh, that sounds bad. How did you ever get out of it? Well, I’m just a good driver. See, I’m just a good driver.
And I used all my driving skills, and I’m just a good driver. It’s a good thing I was paying attention to the good driver, and I just swerved around that tree and kept on going. But you know what? Somebody needs to hear about this.
What is it that you intend to do? Well, I’ll tell you what. When I get home, I’m going to get on Facebook. Oh, I love Facebook.
What is it you’re going to post on Facebook? I’m going to let everybody know how sorry those lawyers who are putting up all those signs. And I’m going to let them all know about how cheap and chinchy the Arkansas Department of Transportation is not having those reflectors. And I’m going to put on my post about how truckers are just the most inconsiderate drivers in the world.
Well, that just sounds really fine and good. I think I’m glad you had a good time. Pass the witness.
Now we’ve got the Holy Spirit. Says, I’m going to call David Fisher to the stand. Same experience.
Just a little south of Little Rock. And the Holy Spirit, I’m going to go into narrative form because the Holy Spirit’s already speaking to me and speaking through me. And he says, well, how was your trip? It was wonderful.
It was awesome. Tell me what it was that was so awesome about it. You know, before we left, my wife and I held hands and we prayed that God would give us safe travel.
Why would you do that? Because I saw my daddy do that when I was a child. And he would pray and we would all hold hands and we’d say, God, Father, please send poster angels before us and behind us to shield us as we traveled the road. And you know what? We did that before we left Sillsbee.
God is good. And on the drive back on that lunch, many times we prayed that prayer as we were having our meals. And at night that God would give us safety and travel mercies, traveling mercies.
And when we left that day at lunch, I prayed, God, give us safe travel. Just protect us. We went to another show and we got in the car and it was time to leave.
And I just got busy and I didn’t stop and pray again. And we started driving down the road and had gone about 15 miles. And my wife said, you know, we forgot to pray for safe traveling mercies.
She goes, I want you to pray out loud right now as you’re driving down the road, even with your eyes open, that God’s gonna give us safe traveling mercies. And so when my wife says pray, I pray. And I’m so thankful that I’ve got a wife who was mindful to remind me to pray again for safe traveling mercies.
What happened? Well, we were just a little bit south around Little Rock. Right before we got to Little Rock, we stopped at Conway, Arkansas and had a nice meal and prayed again that God would give us safe traveling mercies. And we got on the road a little south of Little Rock, saw that lightning, there was just lightning everywhere.
Lightning was just filling the skies. I said, we’re gonna go through some bad weather. And it started raining.
And you know what my wife did? She got on her text cell phone, she started texting some intercessors in this truck here that God would protect us in this rainstorm. We started driving and what was probably the hardest rain that I’ve ever seen in my life. Just sheets coming down.
I was going down to 40 miles an hour. Diesels going by at 80 miles an hour. But I’m telling you, God was shielding us every time they’d go by.
I couldn’t see any reflectors. I could barely even see the stripes. So I was paying attention to that one straight line on the right hand side, staying as far over, giving diesels plenty of room to go by, but they always seemed to be coming and driving right on that stripe, right on that line.
And every time we’re sitting here praying and I hear my wife over there talking, she’s not talking to me, she’s talking to the Lord. She’s saying, God protect us and shield us. And I’m down at 40 miles an hour and we come up and there is a tree laying in the middle of the interstate, filling up the right lane almost completely.
And it was almost as if God calls time to slow down or it was like almost a warp, time warp. Look to my left and thank the Lord there wasn’t a diesel to my left, like there had been going past and past and past and right now as we got right in front of that tree, we probably weren’t from here to that sign. To that wall there before, you just couldn’t see it.
There was nobody there, Sherrilyn screamed out, there’s a tree and I said, I see it. And we turned to the left and went past that tree and you could see where people had hit that tree because it was broken, but it would have just wiped us out. And we drove past it at the next stop, opportunity to stop, we got off the highway and we went and stopped at that truck stop and waited for another hour for the rainstorm to pass because we would have gone through it for another hour.
And we sat there and we held hands and we began to pray. Thank you God for your deliverance because you have been a shield about me. And we had the same experience, two separate witnesses.
Now, who do you want calling you to the stand? The devil will take every opportunity to take you and put you on the stand, to get you to gripe and to complain and talk about how bad things are. He will take every opportunity to take the same exact circumstances when the Holy Spirit is working in your life so that you will say something negative, so that you will say something that brings no honor and no glory to God. And through that same exact circumstance, when God gives us, when the Holy Spirit gives us power to be his witnesses, he gives us the strength to have divine perspective on everything he has done for us.
My question for you is, which witness do you want to be? I don’t want to be a witness for the complainer. I don’t want to be a witness for the accuser. I want to be a witness for our Lord Jesus Christ.
And I’m going to tell you through the power of the Holy Spirit, you can be that witness. You can be that witness. And I’m going to tell you, the Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, our God, the shield, he showed up just south of Little Rock.
He showed up for me and my family. And if he had not showed up, I might not have showed up here today. My God, he is a shield about me.
I don’t just read it in the book of Genesis. I don’t just read it in the book of Psalms. I live it, I lived it, and I’m here to testify that my God is a shield about me and my family.
And I’m going to tell you, that shield provision started when I was a child, and it has continued to this day. And I will continue that as a tradition, as a habit, as a devotion to my God and to my family, to pray for my family, for his provision, and for him to be our shield. That’s the kind of God I want to serve.
That is the God that we deserve. That is the God we serve. A God who, I’m sorry, a God who is our shield.
And he gave me the opportunity to experience one of the most hair-raising events of my life so that I can let you know our God is a shield. And you won’t ever know he’s a shield until you’ve been in a place where you’ve needed a shield. You won’t ever know that he is a high rock until you’ve found yourself in the miry clay.
You will never know him to be your strong fortress and your tower until you’ve been in those moments where the enemies are at your throat and you need a place to go. You will never know your God is your redeemer until you’ve realized that you are at the point where you need to be redeemed. And you will never know the God of grace.
Until you say, Father, thank you for allowing your son to die for me so that my sins can be forgiven. I wanna read one more verse. It’s in Psalms, Psalms 8, the eighth chapter of Psalms.
I’m sorry, it’s the ninth chapter of Psalms. That’s one after eight. Psalms nine.
Psalms nine, verse one. I will praise you, oh Lord. That’s a man who had experience, who had trials and tribulations and who needed deliverance.
This is King David, he’s saying, I will praise you, oh Lord, with my whole heart, my whole heart. I will tell of all your marvelous works. I’ll be glad and rejoice in you.
I will sing praise to your name, oh most high. I will tell of your marvelous works. What is it that you say when you start talking to people about Jesus? Just start telling them about the marvelous things that God has done in your life.
You don’t have to remember a script. Just tell them what the marvelous things that God has done in your life. And the Holy Spirit has given you opportunity to do it.
The question is, will we be a willing witness who will speak up and say, our God, my God has done marvelous works and has done marvelous things for me. I’ll tell you why those words really ring true to me. Just because over in Pentecost, a lot of credit is given to where they came to speak in tongues in other languages and people understood what they were saying.
But what is it that they were saying in these other languages? Well, in the second chapter of Acts, it tells us. They said, we hear him speaking in our own tongues, the wonderful works of God. Before you start speaking other tongues that say the wonderful works of God, it’s kind of start time for you to start speaking in Lumberton English about the wonderful works of God.
Let’s start spending our time speaking with our voices that God’s given us about the wonderful works of God. The wonderful works of God. And every time we post on Facebook, don’t let it be the devil’s tool.
Talk about the wonderful works of God. And when you hear somebody complaining and griping and wanting to stir you up, because you know, people love to get you into the complaints and discussions. They start complaining and griping and what do they want you to do? Complain and gripe too.
Don’t let them ruin your witness. You change the script. You just flip it.
You say, man, I sure saw you having a bad day. Yeah, it is hot, but I tell you what, my God has done some great things for me. I’m glad to have this dry weather because not too long ago, we were flooding.
I don’t know what it is, but I’m gonna tell you the Holy Spirit will prompt you about the wonderful works if we’re just to be a willing witness. Question is, are we gonna be willing? Because I think the Pentecost experience is just as much this, that the Holy Spirit changes our hearts and gives us the power, the strength, the ability, the opportunity, and the willingness to speak the wonderful, to tell the wonderful works of God. Do we have any witnesses here? Do we have a witness? Do we have a witness? I’m gonna tell you, and I’m gonna warn you.
The accuser of the brethren wants you to have a different witness on your lips. Watch out for it. He’ll call you to the stand.
He’ll subpoena you to the stand. He’ll say, no, you gotta come up here and talk about all the bad things. And the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, comes up behind you and says, I object.
I want you to start talking about the wonderful works of God. Wonderful works of God. God will say, come on.
Thank y’all, I’ve read before, preachers aren’t supposed to talk about their personal experiences. I think that was bad advice. Because if it’s not personal, it’s not real to you, then it’s not real to you.
I’m gonna tell you, this was real to me. I can just see it all in my mind. I’m gonna tell you what.
My God is a shield. My God is a shield. Some of you need a shield.
Some of you want a shield. Some of you need a high place. Some of you need a strong tower.
Some of you need a redeemer. Some of you need a savior. Some of you need to be able to speak about the wonderful works of God.
And I just pray that God will use you this week through what we would consider good circumstances and bad circumstances. And I’m praying that God will give you a divine perspective on each and every circumstance. Those were two different stories, weren’t they? The first one was awful.
The second one was glorious. And I’m gonna tell you, it was about the same event, just through a different set of eyes. It was through the different leading of a different witness presenter.
And when the Holy Spirit, you let the Holy Spirit take you and to bring you to the stand and you start testifying, I’m gonna tell you the wonderful works of God are gonna be spoken. Y’all stand with me. I want us to take a time, I’d like for the elders to stay up here because there’s some of you who need some physical healings.
I want you to take this opportunity to come to the elders. I’d like the prayer partners to go over there because sometimes you just need, sometimes God was skin on it. You just need a hand to hold, you need somebody.
And I’m gonna ask the lights to go down a little bit lower. And I’m gonna ask you, if God has been your shield, if you have things that God has done that are marvelous works, I want you to say thank you to God for it, just a thank you. If you wanna spend this time praying for this altar, just to say, I will praise you, I will praise you and I thank you.
For me today, I’m thankful that he’s a shield and he’s a whole lot more than a shield and he’ll be so much more to you. If you’ll just allow the Holy Spirit to dwell within you. Jesus promised that he would give us the power to be his witnesses.
And he’s counting and he’s waiting on you.