Are You Bold for Jesus?

“And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” ACTS 4:31

 

PONDER THIS

One of the first times I was ever called on to witness, I had not been saved very long. My church gave my mother an assignment taking a survey in our community. My mother did not want to go from door to door taking a Christian survey. She said, “Adrian, will you take this survey for me?” And I said, “Yes, Mama, I will.”

I went to my first door, and I said, “Oh, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to knock on that door. I’m afraid. I don’t know what’s behind that door. I don’t know what they’re going to say.” But at that moment, the Scripture came to me. Jesus said, “You go and make disciples, and I’m with you.” I cannot tell you the change that made in my heart as a new Christian. I said, “Well, listen, Jesus, we’re going together to this door.” And I went down that street with Jesus. That’s where the boldness comes from: knowing the Lord Jesus Christ is with you.

The crowd “marveled” at Peter and John (Acts 4:13). They thought these men were ignorant; they hadn’t been to college or seminary. But they had been with Jesus. His presence is the basis of boldness.

When have you been afraid to be bold in your faith?

Why does Christ’s presence change our boldness?

PRACTICE THIS

Ask God to guide you with His boldness throughout the day.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Are You Bold to Speak Out for Christ?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13

 

PONDER THIS

These men were bold because they had been with Jesus. They had seen Christ alive and resurrected, and He lived in them. All the forces of Hell could not intimidate them, shut them up, or hold them back. What would happen if a group of people, filled with holy boldness, were turned loose on your city tomorrow? It is the strategy of the devil to keep God’s people silent in an evil time.

Let me tell you what holy boldness is not. Holy boldness is not human courage. There are some people who naturally have an extraordinary amount of courage. That’s not holy boldness; it may be self-confidence. Holy boldness is also not arrogance. Some people say, “Well, I just speak my mind. I’m bold for Jesus.” But they are just arrogant people determined to tell people off. Jesus never did that.

Boldness is saying, “Lord Jesus, if You be for me, who can be against me? Lord Jesus, if You want to use me, I trust You to take care of me. And, Lord, if You choose to let me be put in jail, then I’ll rejoice that I’m counted worthy to suffer shame for Your name. If you choose, Lord Jesus, that I suffer bodily harm, then, Lord, nothing will come to me than what it comes through You first. Lord, I submit myself to you, and I will speak at Your command.” This is holy boldness.

How have you defined boldness in the past? How might that be different from Scripture’s definition?

What is the danger of living according to our definition of boldness instead of God’s?

PRACTICE THIS

Pray the prayer above for boldness, making it your own.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

How to Be Bold

PRAY OVER THIS

“But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge.’” Acts 4:19

 

PONDER THIS

What is the biggest problem you are facing today? Think about it. Hold it in your mind. Now double it. Make it twice as bad. Now double what you’ve doubled. Now, I want to ask you a question: is that big to God? Of course not.

What is the basis of boldness? You must keep company with God the Son. You must have confidence in God the Father. When these people were terrified, they took their eyes off man and put their eyes on God. Take your eyes off your problems. Focus your eyes upon Almighty God, who is the Creator of all things, who is the Controller of all things, and the Conqueror of all things. That’s the basis of our boldness.

Where are you typically focused when you feel most fearful and anxious?

How might your perspective change if you focused on God over the things of the world?

PRACTICE THIS

Take time today to purposefully take your mind off the problems you face in the world and put them onto our God who is the Creator, Controller, and Conqueror of all things.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Are You a Bold Believer?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13

 

PONDER THIS

Are you a bold believer? Or are you a cowardly Christian? Do you want to be a bold believer? What is boldness in the first place? Boldness is not arrogance. It’s not the ability to put your finger in somebody’s face and to tell them off. Boldness is not being rude or crude. Some people think they are bold but they’re just arrogant, and they have bad manners. That’s not boldness. Those people turn more people away from Jesus than they bring to the Lord Jesus. We’re to be gentle, apt to teach, and not seeking to give offense. Don’t think that if you go around getting in people’s faces that you’re necessarily bold.

Rudeness is not boldness. Boldness is having the courage to stand for the Lord Jesus Christ in the face of opposition.

How might you have had a wrong view of boldness in the past?

What would it look like for you to display godly boldness?

PRACTICE THIS

Make a list of people you know who are bold for Christ. Consider what makes them bold and how you might learn from and follow their example.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Go Directly to God

“In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” (John 16:26–27)

Don’t make God’s Son more of a Mediator than he is.

Jesus says, “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf.” In other words, I’m not going to insert myself between you and the Father, as though you can’t go to him directly. Why? “The Father himself loves you.”

This is astonishing. Jesus is warning us not to think of God Almighty as unwilling to receive us directly into his presence. By “directly” I mean what Jesus meant when he said, “I am not going to take your requests to God for you. You may take them directly. He loves you. He wants you to come. He is not angry at you.”

It is absolutely true that no sinful human being has any access to the Father except through Jesus’s blood (Hebrews 10:19–20). He intercedes for us now (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25). He is our advocate with the Father now (1 John 2:1). He is our High Priest before the throne of God now (Hebrews 4:15–16). He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Yes. But Jesus is protecting us from taking his intercession too far. “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you.” Jesus is there. He is providing an ever-present, ever-living witness to the removal of the Father’s wrath from us.

But he is not there to talk for us, or to keep us at a distance from the Father, or to suggest that the Father’s heart is guarded toward us or disinclined to us — hence the words, “For the Father himself loves you.”

So, come. Come boldly (Hebrews 4:16). Come expectantly. Come expecting a smile. Come trembling with joy, not dread.

Jesus is saying, “I have made a way to God. Now I am not going to get in the way.” Come.

John Piper 

The Conquest: Standing in Holy Boldness

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard’”... Acts 4:19-20

 DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The religious leaders told Peter and John “you can’t preach a risen Lord.” They didn’t want this message out because of the power of the message. A story is told that one demon said to another: “If those liberal theologians ever really let Jesus out of the grave, Hell help us because all Heaven will break loose!” That’s true! You might as well have told the sun not to shine as to tell Peter and John they could not preach a risen Christ. They had seen Him! They knew He was alive. You could not shut them up. They had no church building and yet they turned their world upside down and inside out for Jesus. You know what we need today? We need an epidemic of Holy Boldness. It’s not arrogance, self-confidence, human courage or presumption. It’s a boldness that comes from spending time in the presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ. His presence compels us. We cannot but speak.

ACTION POINT:

Have you met the risen Christ? If not, He is ready to make all Heaven break loose in your life! If you know Him, are you infected with Holy Boldness; do you need to spend more time in His presence to catch the fever?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Are you in the Secret Service?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” Romans 1:16

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Are you ashamed to put a Bible on your desk at work? Are you ashamed to bow your head in the cafeteria? Are you ashamed to invite people to Jesus Christ? Are you ashamed of the One who died for you?

A little boy had a dog, and someone asked him what kind of dog he was. He was just a mongrel, but the little fellow said, “Well, he’s a police dog.” The friend said, “He doesn’t look like a police dog.” The little guy replied, “He’s in the secret service.”

I’m afraid there are many of us who are in the secret service. We ought to be open and bold for the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

ACTION POINT:

Ask God to lead you out in strength and boldness today to live for Him and proclaim His love to others.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Main Purpose of Ministry

We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. (Hebrews 10:39)

Don’t look at the temporary cost of love, and shrink back from confidence in God’s infinitely superior promises. If you shrink back, not only will you lose out on the promises; you will be destroyed.

Hell is at stake in whether we shrink back or persevere. It’s not just the loss of a few extra rewards that hangs in the balance. Hebrews 10:39 says, “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed.” That is eternal judgment.

So, we warn each other: Don’t drift away. Don’t love the world. Don’t start thinking nothing huge is at stake. Fear the terrible prospect of not cherishing the promises of God above the promises of sin. As Hebrews 3:13–14 says, “Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

But mainly we must focus on the preciousness of the promises and help each other value above all things how great the reward is that Christ has purchased for us. We must say to each other what Hebrews 10:35 says: “Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.” And then we must help each other see the greatness of the reward.

That is the main task of preaching, and the main purpose of small groups and all the ministries of the church: helping people see the greatness of what Christ has purchased for everyone who will value it above the world. Helping people see it and savor it, so that God’s superior worth shines in their satisfaction and in the sacrifices that come from such a heart.

John Piper

Are You Sitting on the Lukewarm Fence?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

 “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.” Philippians 1:20

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

May God help us today in the midst of our lukewarm apathy toward the things that matter most to Him! If it’s worth anything, it’s worth everything. May God forgive those who will not go the second mile.

Now, in some things moderation is good, like eating, rest, recreation, exercise, and finances. But when it comes to spiritual warfare, moderation is a sin. When it comes to believing the Bible, moderation is a sin. When it comes to loving the Lord, moderation is a sin!

Suppose a wife asked her husband, “Honey, do you love me?” And he said, “Well, moderately.” She’d fix his wagon, don’t you think?

ACTION POINT:

Friend, if the world considers you a “moderate” when it comes to your Christianity, you are riding the fence of lukewarmness.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

You Are the Salt

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Matthew 5:13

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Edmund Burke wrote, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” When it comes to the political scene and government, there are some who have dropped out all together. They have the idea that if you get involved in government, somehow that is the “social gospel.”  So they’ve just hunkered down, trying to “hold on till Jesus gets here.” They see the political scene as being dirty and worldly. And some have been intimidated by the great debate between church and state.

We can’t drop out.  It’s impossible to think that God would have ordained government and told His people to stay out.  Who else does that leave to run things?

Others with misguided zeal have tried to bring in the kingdom of God by political machinations. That cannot be done either. So where do we get the answers?  We’re not going to get the answers today from the politician who may have his personal ax to grind or from the ungodly and the humanists who don’t believe the Word of God, or from finger-bumping philosophers who don’t know the Word of God. The only place we’re going to get the answers, I believe, is from the Word of God.

ACTION POINT:

We need to confess and turn from our wicked ways.  We need to speak up and stand up for what is right. Let your speech be seasoned with salt.  But stand up, speak up and come out from under the rock. Stand on the rock and speak up for the Lord Jesus Christ.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers