A Word Fitly Spoken

"What did you  tell me about speaking tonight?" our pastor teasingly asked a nervous young man who was to give his testimony that evening.

"I'm getting sick," the self-conscious, big burly fellow admitted with a flushed face, only half-joking.

His friend, another young man who had been attending the church for nearly a year now, had also been very nervous when asked to give his testimony the previous week.  I laughed when he had said, "Well, I was hoping I would have to work today, but that didn't happen."  Oh, I could so relate.   It is terrible to have stage-fright, or to dread speaking in public, no matter how much you would like to.

After church, I was needling the reluctant speaker about his qualms, when I saw that he was serious in his feelings.  He was to tell a little about his experience as a survivor on the huge oil-well explosion in the Gulf a couple of years ago, as well as giving his personal testimony.

"If you run out of things to say," I suggested, "just open it up to questions.  That will take a lot of pressure off you." 

And that is what he did!  After five or ten minutes of earnest effort, punctuated by deep breaths and pauses, a few scriptures read and halting words of testimony, he said, "That is all I have, unless any of you would have any questions."  As people raised their hands, he immediately relaxed, became conversational, and lost his self-consciousness.  Thank you, Lord!  I was glad my tip seemed effective!  (He told me later that his wife had told him the same thing, so I couldn't take all the credit.)

In response to people's genuine interest, the shy speaker painted descriptive word pictures of his experience that we would never have known otherwise.  He had been asked if he heard people praying or calling out to God in the wake of the accident.  He said he wasn't aware of that, but he knew he himself was praying.  When I asked what the reaction of the workers had been, he described running, shouting and shock.  "In one of the rafts, I had to threaten to knock a guy out if he didn't get hold of himself," this gentle giant said somberly.  "There could have been a chain-reaction to panic."

Both men, who were from Mississippi,  had given effective testimonies to the Lord and blessed the hearers.  Their humble, sincere personalities  had endeared them to the congregation over the past several months, some families taking the two friends into their homes for meals or fellowship on many occasions.  Working away from home as they were, they presented a sympathetic focus for the big-hearted hospitality and mothering  tendencies among our older ladies.

"God setteth the solitary in families," Psalm 68:6 says.  We could all bear witness to the blessings of that promise.