How to Write a Testimony for Hope of Heaven for Teens

A testimony has many different definitions and can take many different forms. Writing a testimony for Hope of Heaven for Teens simply means composing a short personal reflection on what God has been doing specifically relating to your grief journey.

The purpose of a testimony is to not only reflect personally, but to remind other people that God will work in their lives through difficulty just like He has through yours.

In this article, we’d like to share some tips and guidelines on how to do this, but first we want to say thank you for considering writing your testimony. God has given you a story to share and He will give you the words to write if He has called you to write and submit your testimony.

There are two specific structure methods you can use:

Method One: Snapshot

This would involve describing one moment on your grief journey where you felt God profoundly moving in your life. You could describe an important day, minute, or hour, but typically you’d be describing a short period of time.

Some Examples:

• A song that God used to speak to you at a specific moment

• A birthday, Christmas, or other special day day where you and/or your family did something special to remember your loved one

• Something you did to support a person or people with financial, practical, spiritual, or emotional needs arising from the death of a close loved one

• An experience, conversation, or connection you had because of the death of a close loved one that encouraged you or grew your faith

• A fabulous prayer or scripture reading time that helped you come closer to God

Method Two: Journey

This method involves describing a long span of time (a few months or a few years), not necessarily focusing on details, but on a specific topic or theme.

Some Examples:

• Describing your relationship with God in the years or months following the death of your loved one

• Describing how you’ve honored and remembered your loved one over the past few months or years

Step 1: Pick a Method and Your Focus

Typically it is not the best idea to write about all aspects of a long period of time, so we suggest selecting a few. The most important thing to remember as you brainstorm is to tell the story of what God has done in your life personally.

Here are a few questions to consider as you think about how to best write your testimony:

• How did the loss affect your relationship with your family, friends, and/or God?

• What was one inspiring time period or one difficult time period that God revealed something about himself to you through?

• What valuable lessons have you learned?

• Have you seen God use your journey to do something good in any way?

Unlike an article, a testimony is very personal, so do not be afraid to share your personal journey without grand or insightful conclusions. God will work in the reader’s heart to show them what He wants to through your story, so do not worry about trying to write it perfectly.

Step 2: Write

You can either organize your thoughts and then write OR you can just spontaneously write. We do suggest reading over your article a few times before submission to make sure it’s clear and to fix any typos you may have missed.

As you write, we have a few quick guidelines for you to keep in mind:

Writing Guidelines

1. Your testimony can be as long or short as you want. There are no length minimums or maximums.

2. You can write as many times as you want. We welcome all submissions with great joy. However, it is helpful if each testimony focuses on one theme or topic.

3. We do require that whatever you write contains no bad language and is consistent with our statement of faith. (www.hopeofHeavenforteens.com/statement-of-faith/) If the content is not God-honoring, we do reserve the right not to publish it.

Notes on Quote Use

If you plan to use quotes that are not Bible verses, we do need you to formally cite your source to avoid breaking copyright laws.

You can list your sources below by using footnotes. All of the form citations below are the forms you would use for footnotes, but you can look up the bibliography format if you do not understand how footnotes work. For a more bibliographic format, you would just need to list the source information right after the quote. For readability we tend to prefer footnote format, but as long as the quote is cited, you can use whichever format makes most sense to you.

Most mobile devices do not let you do footnotes, so you may need to do this on a computer.

Citing a book: Author first name Author last name, Title of Book (place of publication, year of publication), page number

Citing a Web Article: Author first name Author last name, “Title of webpage”, name of website, publication or revision data, access data if you can’t find publication or revision data, URL 

(Footnote: “Web Sources”, Purdue Owl, accessed on July 30, 2024, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/web_sources.html)

(Many web articles do not list authors, so if it does not say who wrote it, you can just move to the title.)

Citing a TV show or movie: Author first name Author last name, Title of Work, directed/performed by First name Last Name (Original release year; City: Studio/Distributor, video release year), medium.

If you need to cite a source with no example above, you can always type the search ‘Chicago Style citation for _________ [the type of source you want to cite]’. Unfortunately, if you use a quote and do not cite the source, we cannot publish your article.

Notes on Bible verse use

You do not need to cite Bible verses, but it is helpful to put the verse reference next to the verse with the translation in parentheses. For example:

“Work willingly as if for the Lord and not for man.” Colossians 3:23 (NLT)

Other Legal Guidelines

• Make sure the article is your own work.

• Please do not use specific names. General descriptions such as ‘my sister’, ‘my friend’, ‘my teacher’, or ‘a woman who goes to my church’ tend to be best for the reader to understand and protect everyone’s privacy. However, if you absolutely must use a specific first name for any reason, please alter it slightly and put ‘name has been changed’ in parentheses. For example, if the person’s real name is Eloise, you could say in the testimony:  … Emma (name has been changed)  … (We highly encourage general descriptions, but will still accept your   submission as long as names are changed somehow.)

Step 3: Title It!

Titling is optional, but highly encouraged. An effective titling strategy is to make sure your title answers the question ‘How would you summarize this testimony in five words or less?’. Making the title both fun and clear can be difficult, but it is necessary.

Step 4: Check the Guidelines

Please read over the guidelines one more time and make sure your article follows them.

Writing Guidelines:

• Must be God-honoring and consistent with our statement of faith

Legal Guidelines:

• Make sure you cited all quotations 

• Make sure the writing is your own work

• Make sure you haven’t used any specific first names

Other notes:

Hope of Heaven for Teens reserves the right to edit your article by fixing grammatical errors and/or typos, deleting or adding words, and editing the length or structure of the article itself.

We also reserve the right to not publish your article if it breaks one of the four  guidelines listed above.

Step 5: Pray

Before submission, we highly encourage you to pray that God will use your testimony to bring hope to someone in need of advice or encouragement. We also encourage you to pray for the readers, that they will continue to grow closer to God in their situations and that He would bring them peace, hope, and healing.

Step 6: Submit!

You can submit your testimony here (link to testimony submission form) in this Google Form or you can go to our ‘Contribute’ page to access our form that way.

Step 7: Wait and Celebrate!

It may take a week or two for your testimony to be published. The management team does read each submission and occasionally edits them if we feel edits are necessary.

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for considering writing your testimony! We pray that you do, that your writing process goes well, and that these tips and questions help you feel more confident about writing. 

Writing about your personal journey can be hard, but we hope that in the process God will help you reflect on every gift He has given you as you’ve stepped out in faith, leaned on him, and learned more about him during the most challenging parts of life.