Bearing Witness: Fact, Faith, and a Life That Testifies
Let the engine pull the train — fact first, then faith, then feeling — and watch what God does with a life surrendered to His Word.
April 19, 2026
What Does It Mean to Bear Witness?
The word “testimony” gets thrown around a lot in church circles. We’re told to share our testimony, to let our lives be a testimony — but what does that actually mean?
It turns out the answer is embedded in the word itself. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, “testimony” and “bearing witness” are drawn from the same root. A testimony is not simply a personal story — it is a legal, relational act of attesting to something true. It is what a witness does when they stand and say: I saw this. I know this. I can tell you what happened.
Jesus makes this exact connection just before His ascension, in Acts 1:8. We are post-resurrection people — living on the other side of the empty tomb, filled with the Holy Spirit — and we are called to bear witness to what that means. A testimony, then, is not just a story about us. It is evidence of Him.
Acts 1:8 — “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
A Miracle Wrapped in a Mountain Holler
This past Sunday, the church had the privilege of hearing from Luther Blakeley — a man whose life is a living testimony in every sense of that word.
Luther was born in 1945 in Harlan County, Kentucky — deep coal mining country, up in a place called Chevrolet Holler. As a small child, he was afflicted with rickets and Bright’s disease, a serious kidney condition. Things got bad enough that a doctor told his mother to take him home, keep him comfortable, and make peace with it. The prognosis also carried a grim prediction: Luther would never father children.
Down the hill from the family’s home lived a woman named Arley Green — deeply, quietly godly. When Luther’s mother called on her to pray, Arley asked first: “If the Lord is not willing to heal him, are you willing to let him go?”
His mother said yes. And Arley prayed.
Within half an hour, Luther was on the floor playing with his brother as though nothing had ever been wrong. He went on to become a husband, a father of four, a grandfather — and a man who has been bearing witness to that moment ever since. The doctor was wrong. God was not.
Don’t Be a Sunday Morning Glory
When Luther’s family eventually moved to Ohio, he grew up watching the friends around him. Some of them showed up to church on Sunday mornings — guitars in hand, full of song, radiant with faith. But come Monday, and through the rest of the week, they weren’t so glorious.
Luther named them after the flower: Sunday morning glories. The morning glory blooms brilliantly in the early light and closes by afternoon. Beautiful — but brief. These friends were the same: church-bright on Sunday, gone by Monday.
He made a decision young: I will not be that. He didn’t want to be a hypocrite, didn’t want to bloom for an audience and wither in the ordinary. That conviction stayed with him for decades, shaping the kind of man and believer he became.
This is part of what it means to bear witness. A testimony is not just a story you tell — it’s a life you live. The most powerful evidence of God’s grace is consistency: faith that doesn’t fold when Sunday is over.
Let the Engine Pull the Train
Years later, a pastor named Charles Betts sat down with Luther to help him work through a sticking point in his faith. Luther wanted to believe — but he didn’t feel it the way he thought he should. He was waiting for a feeling that wasn’t coming.
The pastor drew a train on a piece of paper. Three cars: an engine, a coal tender, and a caboose.
“The engine,” he said, “is fact — the Word of God. The coal car is faith. And the caboose is your feelings.” Then he looked at Luther: “You have your cars in the wrong order. You’ve put feelings second, right behind the engine — and faith is trailing behind. Let’s move the feelings to where they belong. Let fact pull faith, and let feelings ride in the caboose, where the train can carry them along.”
That picture broke something open. On a Saturday afternoon not long after, Luther accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
It’s worth sitting with. So many of us wait to feel saved, feel certain, feel on fire — before we commit to acting on what we know to be true. But the Word of God doesn’t wait for our feelings to cooperate. Fact first. Faith in response. And feelings? They follow, pulled along by the momentum of a faith anchored in truth.
A Life That Bears Witness
Luther taught Sunday school for more than twenty years. He and his wife Joyce attended the same church for over four decades. And when COVID disrupted everything and a small group — including his granddaughter Aaliyah and her husband Nick — began gathering in a home, what would eventually become Kingdom Church, Luther and Joyce found their way there too.
One life. One moment of healing in a Kentucky coal camp. One train illustration that finally clicked. And decades of faithful witness to the God who showed up in a mountain holler and never stopped showing up.
That is what a testimony is. Not a polished performance. Not a perfect story with no rough edges. Just a life that bears witness — to what is true, to what God has done, to the Christ who is risen and reigning and still at work in the ordinary places of our lives.
You have a testimony too — whether you recognize it yet or not. The question is whether you’re willing to let fact be the engine: to anchor yourself in the truth of what God says about His Son, to respond with faith, and to let your feelings be carried along in the train. When you do, the witness your life becomes is more powerful than anything you could manufacture on your own.
He is risen. He is risen indeed.