A Saved Dad is a Powerful Witness

Moses shared with his father-in-law Jethro the story of God’s deliverance of His people from slavery. He told him about the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea that led to their salvation. He told him about the trials and troubles they had faced since the Red Sea, and he told him “how the LORD had delivered them.” Moses witnessed to dear old dad-in-law, telling him ALL that the Lord had done!

Saints, this is how we tell anyone about Jesus. Some believe that though Jethro was a monotheist as the Midianite priest, he did not know the one he worshiped. And that this was the point of his salvation, as he said to Moses after hearing his story, “Now I know that the LORD (Yahweh) is greater than all gods.” Why? Because Moses had been careful to tell his father-in-law all that he had seen God do with his own eyes. He loved Jethro with the truth. He loved Jethro with a testimony of God’s great faithfulness to His people. Moses shared the good news of Israel’s salvation by the signs and wonders and the miracles that God had performed for His people who had been enslaved for more than four centuries. Moses pointed his father-in-law to God and His goodness and mercy to save. 

We have the same testimony! We have all been slaves to sin and we have all, if we are disciples of Christ now, been delivered from sin by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross. “We preach Christ crucified,” Paul wrote. And we preach Christ risen from the dead. “He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures.” And when we do that, sometimes God brings life where there is no life. 

I love the story of CT Studd, the famous missionary to Africa and China who left his wealth and his fame as a cricketer to serve the Lord on two continents. But do you know how he came to Christ? His father, Edward Studd, was a wealthy Englishman who was profoundly converted by the preaching of DL Moody. His sons were in school at the time and they knew nothing about what had happened with Dad. Until he shocked them by coming to Eton to see them in the middle of the semester. Instead of taking them to the theater as he normally did when he visited, he took them to hear DL Moody preach. CT Studd wrote later, “Before that time, I used to think that religion was a Sunday thing, like one’s Sunday clothes, to be put away on Monday morning.  We boys were brought up to go to church regularly, but, although we had a kind of religion, it didn’t amount to much…Then all at once I had the good fortune to meet a real live…Christian.  It was my own father.  But it did make one’s hair stand on end.  Everyone in the house had a dog’s life of it until they were converted.  I was not altogether pleased with him.  He used to come into my room at night and ask if I was converted.” 

I love it! There was a father who would do all he could to see that his sons came to know Jesus, knowing full well that it would be Jesus only who saved them. You know what? There are perhaps millions in China and central Africa that are glad CT Studd’s father loved his sons enough to keep sowing and watering seeds until God gave the increase.

A humble, unashamed, and saved dad is a great witness to his family.