My Testimony in Brief
One Study Giving a Personal Account of Salvation
by David Gooding
David Gooding’s ministry has led many to the Lord and helped countless believers, but how did he himself get saved? David Gooding recounts the night when he was a ten-year-old boy. After hearing his father pray by his bedside, a certain Bible verse came to his mind and his response to the Lord changed his life forever. He explains what was the anchor of his faith—a faith that remained with him for the rest of his almost ninety-four years. This brief testimony will inspire us by demonstrating that simple childlike trust in the Lord Jesus is all that one needs to pass from death into life.
Available Formats
Read
John has invited me to come and give my testimony, but most people who give their testimony have a very dramatic story to tell. We seem to like people who used to beat their wives or get stone drunk, or something like that. Those who were in dire trouble and found the Saviour. They are good stories, aren’t they, because they remind us of the reality of Christ’s power to save.
I feel shy, therefore, giving my testimony because I got saved at the age of ten.1 When all is said and done, most ten-year-olds haven’t gone deeply into drinking and drugs and beating their wives and other such occupations. How do they get saved, then? And is it real? I’ve got some special friends here tonight. I’ve been talking to them outside the tent. They’re boys and girls, about ten of them, that Miss Gregg brings regularly every night. They come from Saintfield. They’ve been to the tent every night, and that’s marvellous. It’s lovely to see you, and we thank Miss Gregg, as you wanted us to, for bringing you. And I’m going to tell you, boys and girls, how you could be saved.
I was saved when I was your age, only it isn’t very dramatic because I was brought up by a father and mother who told me the gospel and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the gospel and how to be saved.
So you say, ‘Well, how were you saved then?’
One night—I can remember it clearly, I was in bed and my father came up and prayed by my bedside, as he did every night. I can’t say I was listening; he prayed so much I didn’t often listen. But, as he prayed, a verse of the Bible came into my boyish head:
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom 10:9)
I said to myself, ‘Yes. I do believe that Jesus is God’s Son and he rose from the dead, and I do believe in my heart.’ And in my childish way, I said, ‘Well, Lord, I believe, and your word says I’m saved.’ I didn’t even remember the first bit about confessing it; I didn’t tell anybody. I just turned over and went to sleep.
I want to tell you that what happened there to me, as a young boy of ten in my bed that night, has lasted sixty-four years plus. And in those years I have faced criticisms about God and the Bible from some of the most sophisticated brains in this world, having given myself to the study of the word of God and the manuscripts in which it comes. And my testimony would be that, the more I have studied the Bible, the more I have found that it is the authentic word of the living God. It is that which has kept my faith as an anchor throughout all my life—my professional academic life, and elsewhere.