Boldness

I believe that one of my new favorite passages of the New Testament is found in Acts 4.  Now for those of you who don't do much with the book of Acts, this book is all about the starting/launching of a movement of people who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

Acts 4 tells the story of two high powered figures in this new movement named Peter and John.  These men were on fire for Christ (no pun intended!).  They couldn't stop telling everyone they knew about Jesus.  Everywhere they went they found someone to share their faith with.  Now if you're unimpressed with the church please don't misread this.  They weren't pushy preachers, selling the savior, tricky teachers, or anything like that.  They were straight up believers who were impacted by the message of Jesus and wanted to share it with everyone they knew. 

So in this section we find Peter and John put in prison for their faith sharing escapades.  The rulers in the Jewish church didn't like the following that these two men were gathering for Christ and in an attempt to shut them up put them in prison.  Long story short - they were released because they couldn't make a case stick.  So here they are fresh out of prison, haven't even showered yet and they meet up with the rest of the Jesus followers (we'll call them the Jesus posse).  Now the sane thing to do would have been to lay low for a while.  They should have hid in the back room of the house and not come out until things cooled off a bit, but that's not what they did.  Instead they gathered together and prayed.  And prayer is logical enough for this group, but it's the words they use that are startling and inspiring. 

Their prayer included these words from verse 29 - Lord consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.  Are you kidding me!  I thought that what they had shown thus far was fairly bold, but they wanted even greater boldness.  And in a time when silence would have been more logical nonetheless. 

The point of this devotion is that we are around today as a movement of believers because this group of first century Christians prayed for boldness in their witness of Christ.   Perhaps this too should be our prayer.  We've been impacted by the truth of Jesus' death and resurrection so we do have a story to share.  Jesus' death paid for our sins.  His resurrection guaranteed us heaven.  Now we get to talk about it - and boldly! 

Lord, make us bold in our sharing of your word with the people where we live, work, and play today.  Amen.