Boldness
Jacob Furr // UGA Student & Watty Intern
Recently I have felt so encouraged and uplifted, yet also so convicted by the freedom of religion in the United States. I think of how we can meet corporately on Sundays to engage in life-giving fellowship, and then I imagine four believers coming together in a musty basement to read a lamp-lit Bible for five hours at a time - that was their monthly church gathering. I think of how I can go out to the Tate plaza with a handful of Great Exchange surveys and talk about my hope in Jesus to whoever says “yes” to me, and then my heart breaks to imagine the number of persecuted brothers and sisters that have felt the great division of wanting to shout on the rooftops of their hope in Jesus, only to be quieted by the imminent reality of death through evangelism.
It puts a lot of thoughts into perspective for me. On a given day of talking to people about Jesus, we could encounter someone who has no desire to learn more about Him, we could talk to someone who is searching and needs direction, or we could even meet another Christian. In any persecuted country, we could be intensely persecuted, we could be imprisoned, and we could even be martyred for sharing the name of Jesus.
Yet even then, the Church does not remain silent.
And that is what convicts me - that with the reality of actual persecution, imprisonment, and martyrdom on the horizon, our persecuted brothers and sisters do not remain silent, but instead have “boldness in our God to declare the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict” (1 Thess. 2:2). Upon first look, our relation to God Almighty is no different than our persecuted brothers and sisters: we all have the same Holy Spirit and feed off the same eternal Word. Yet such a drastic difference in sharing and our day-to-day walk seems to come from obedience and boldness. How often am I so cowardly towards sharing the Gospel with people who do not know my Savior.
Jesus speaks to His disciples in John 14:25-27 saying:
“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
Jesus says these words to His disciples, who were yet to receive the Holy Spirit. Further promises regarding the Holy Spirit come only a few chapters later, in John 16:4-15, where Jesus says:
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment… He will guide you into all the truth…He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
But sandwiched in between these promises is Jesus’s command in John 15:5-8:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers… By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”
In all of these promises and commands, Jesus highlights that abiding in Him and relying on the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and to grow fruits in our conduct is how we prove to be His disciples. Obedience is evident in boldness. The convicting truth that’s been on my heart recently is that if I do not share, I am being disobedient. And yes, sharing can look different in different situations, but in both word and deed I must display the love of Jesus Christ. That is why boldness has become such a heavy word recently. Not because I do it well, but because I am so shy to share about a King whose Holy Spirit seals people for eternity.
I have been reading Acts 4 over and over again, because it has provided me with encouragement towards being bold. Peter and John, after healing a lame beggar, are confronted by the “priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees” and are imprisoned for “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” The next day, the priests and Sadducees ask Peter and John “‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’” And Peter responds with this in Acts 4:8-13:
“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead - by Him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’ Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”
That last verse gets me. It is by their boldness that they showed that they had been with Jesus, or to take the words of Jesus in the gospel of John, “and so prove to be my disciples.” This was the same Peter that denied Jesus three times and the same Peter who doubted Jesus on the water - the only difference between then and Acts 4 was that Peter had received the promised Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit, Peter proclaims the truth of Jesus Christ for all to hear, thus exemplifying exactly what Jesus promised would happen when his disciples receive the Holy Spirit. The following section, Acts 4:23-31, continues to show the weight of boldness:
“When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, ‘Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them… look upon their threats and grant to Your servants to continue to speak Your Word with all boldness, while You stretch out Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.’ And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness.”
The believers gathered together not to pray that the persecution would stop - they knew because of their overflowing love towards Jesus, they would preach His Name regardless of the consequences. They did not ask God to grant them a gentler approach to sharing the Gospel - they knew because of their commitment to the truth, they would proclaim Christ Crucified in its fullest. Instead they prayed for boldness, that regardless of how they would be treated, they would value the souls of their neighbors and sacrifice their lives to spread the name of a Savior and King and Creator who offers eternal life to all who believe in Him.
My prayer now is for overflowing love for our Father as we come to know His grace and mercy by reading His Word. My prayer now is for boldness in our lives to share the Good News with people we encounter day in and day out, regardless of how crazy we look. And my prayer now is for the persecuted Church to continue to be bold, and that we would be challenged to be quicker to share about Jesus.
We will never be perfect in this, but praise Him who does not expect perfection, simply obedience.
Jacob is an economics and communications studies major at UGA. He is a missions intern and works with Carlos! He also leads the Jones tribe on Thursdays! He is passionate about reaching the nations and pouring into the people around him!
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