BOLD Moments

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.  This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.  So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.  There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.  

Hebrews 4:14-16

I’ve never really been into daredevil stuff.  When I was young, I had little problem walking away from one of those “step across this line” challenges.  To this day, I’m not certain whether it was fear or wisdom.  In retrospect I’m thinking it was probably fear and the grace of God; wisdom was not my strong suit!  The sole tussle I got involved with was not by choice; one of my classmates jumped on my back during outside recess.  We were only third graders, so it wasn’t exactly an epic struggle to the death.  I can laugh about it now, but I still can recall thinking when that boy wrestled me to the ground:  Armageddon is here; I’m gonna die!

I can recall other fear-filled moments.  There was that time I was lost in the woods as a young boy, fearing I’d get eaten by a lion.  It was in the early evening and the darkness approached.  Of course the only lion on Long Island was in a  zoo, but you never know…!  There was also that time when I had just turned sixteen, gotten my driver’s license, and begged my Dad to let me drive his brand-new station wagon, his pride and joy, over to my best friend, Gene’s house to show.  I stayed too long, enjoying the newfound freedom.  In the dusk I never saw that old Plymouth coming…he creamed the left side of Dad’s new car. 

The thought of facing Dad, brought musings on how one could emigrate to Mars or Jupiter.  It wasn’t about boldly going where no man had been; more like preserving life and limb.  In the end, my Dad was kind, and the story had a good ending.  (Stay tuned for tomorrow’s devotion, and I’ll share it there).

Close calls with death in the wood’s growing darkness, or a third-grade playground war, or facing Dad with a marred rear fender panel cause us, even the youngest among us, to think about consequences.  That’s not a bad thing.  All of us need to have that thought, at least on the back burner, if not closer at hand.  Offending the laws of nature, or a playground bully’s space, or facing a Father’s wrath really should enter our thoughts; it is such that develop the wisdom of living a more righteous life, being a blessing, rather than a boil on humanity’s skin. 

And that brings up the main point about such thoughts:

Our Heavenly Father loves you more than his new station wagon!

And when that is firmly placed in your mind’s computer, your spiritual hard-drive, there is every reason to believe what Paul wrote to the Hebrew Christians about coming boldly into God’s very throne room.  For those who enter the presence of God, fully-knowing their offenses, there is no condemnation from the Father, only the mercy of forgiveness and restoration. 

For You Today 

Facing the author and creator of the universe and life may seem like the last thing you’d want to be bold about.  But the trust you exhibit as you take the first step in that door to His love, is just the first evidence of how wise you’ve become!  It’s then you’ll hear those words, well-done, faithful one!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Chester's Prayer  and  When It Hurts So Much      

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Boldly

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Tuesday, October 9, 2018

The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures.  They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.  But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say.  So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves.  “What should we do with these men?” they asked each other.  “We can’t deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it.  But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus’ name again.”  So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.  But Peter and John replied, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him?  We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.”  The council then threatened them further, but they finally let them go because they didn’t know how to punish them without starting a riot.  For everyone was praising God  for this miraculous sign—the healing of a man who had been lame for more than forty years.  As soon as they were freed, Peter and John returned to the other believers and told them what the leading priests and elders had said.  When they heard the report, all the believers lifted their voices together in prayer to God:  “O Sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them—you spoke long ago by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant, saying, ‘Why were the nations so angry?  Why did they waste their time with futile plans?  The kings of the earth prepared for battle; the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah.’  “In fact, this has happened here in this very city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate the governor, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all united against Jesus, your holy servant, whom you anointed.  But everything they did was determined beforehand according to your will.  And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word.  Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”  After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness.  Acts 4:13-31(NLT)

In a Scripture passage one thought usually grabs me and says:  HEY; pay attention here!  That attention-grabber in the opening sentence is the boldness of Peter and John to heal a man in the name of Jesus.  And that boldness got them in trouble with the religious leaders.  But, at the end of the passage that boldness spreads to all the disciples, and they began proclaiming Jesus with that same boldness.  That which gets you in trouble with earthly leaders is often that which unleashes heaven’s power.  Boldly – that’s how the early church served God, and that’s how God grew the early church.

From a human perspective the odd thing about the church growing is that God seems to grow churches (and humans) in the most unusual and difficult circumstances.  It’s completely upside-down from what we’d do.  

Consider this little flower (or weed…hey, I’m not a gardener).  It is growing out of the side of a brick wall in the middle of a city.  I was at First United Methodist Church in Gastonia, NC, several years ago for a conference.  It was lunch break, and I was headed to the Fellowship Hall on the lower level, and this little green growth jumped on my eyes like Peter’s boldness before the religious leaders.  My immediate thought was:  The soil in my yard is like clay fired in the kiln…hard as nails, and twice as rusty…but how in the world does a flower grow in a brick wall in the middle of a city?

And it hit me just as hard that God already gave us the answer to that:

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:9(NLT)

Churches, like flowers growing out of the side of a brick wall, may be small or large, city, country, or suburban, formal or free-style, denominationally-connected, or independent, charismatic or the frozen chosen; mostly all of that is culture and choice.  Some may grow, while others die like a weed sprayed with Round-Up™.  Some may be trying valiantly to hold-on, barely keeping the doors open, while others seem to blossom with little effort visible on the surface. 

One thing is certain; the church God uses to accomplish His mission will be found in every one of the categories the experts use to try to explain the movement and ways of God.  But, apart from the Spirit of God, how can you explain anything God does?  And apart from boldness to proclaim the Gospel like Peter and John, and all the other early church disciples, how could you expect to find the Spirit of God in any of those places?

For You Today

Whatever you are trying to do for God, make sure you go about it…. boldly!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Photo by Russell Brownworth

Living Wisely and Boldly

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Friday, January 8, 2016

Devotion VIDEO here

Then Daniel went in to see Arioch, whom the king had ordered to execute the wise men of Babylon. Daniel said to him, “Don’t kill the wise men. Take me to the king, and I will tell him the meaning of his dream.”  

Daniel 2:24^(NLT)

So be careful how you live.  Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise.  Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days.  Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.  Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life.  Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts.   

Ephesians 5:15-19 ^(NLT)

Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man on earth, had a bad dream.  He summoned all his magicians and soothsayers to interpret the dream.  But, to make sure they weren’t faking an interpretation, he demanded they first tell him what the dream was.  Well, they couldn’t do that, so the King was going to have them executed.

Enter Daniel…Hebrew slave, born in captivity to the Babylonian empire.  To make a longish story short, Daniel was minding his own business, and the whole mess got dropped in his lap.  He went to prayer and boldly followed God’s leadership to disclose the king’s dream and what it meant.  Daniel was rewarded with the king’s favor, wealth and position in the kingdom’s hierarchy, along with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 

End of story…we all lived happily ever after; right?

Not so…Daniel and the three Hebrew boys didn’t have entirely smooth sailing.  It was still an adventure living in Babylon, avoiding the intrigue and sub-plots of palace life in a hostile land that was not their own; especially that fiery furnace event!

In the New Testament Paul understood that kind of messy, vague life, where you’ve got a clear vision to serve God, but there are plenty of temptations and trials to throw you off course.  His advice to us is to live, not as fools, but wisely, keeping sober and on our knees, so we will know what God wants us to do, as the Holy Spirit fills our hearts and lives with purpose, leading us to follow God’s will.

The key to living wisely with boldness is never to do a bold thing without God’s direction, and never hold back from boldness when God has said to do something.  When Jesus turned his disciples loose to go minister he warned them:

Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves.  So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.  Matthew 10:16^(NLT)

Daniel understood that; he didn’t go to the king until he’d spent time on his knees before God.  You need that for developing both shrewdness and harmlessness.

Before he was renamed Paul, he was a persecutor named Saul – more of a zealot to eradicate the church than anyone.  Saul found out just how painful it can be to go against God’s will.

So did I.  I once preached a very bold sermon to a congregation; actually, I only thought it was bold – it was really just a stupid reaction of anger that I hadn’t prayed over, and let God direct me.  I wound up alienating half the church and confusing the rest. 

And I believe that is where the difference is to be located between living wisely and boldly as opposed to living as a fool – anger and selfishness.  If you have a passion to do something for God, and locate any bit of anger or self-righteousness in your own heart over what you’re contemplating – don’t do it…you’re not following God, you’re just being foolish.

For You Today

When you find yourself tempted to do something foolish…take time to pray, sing a song of praise; make some music in your heart to praise the Lord.  Then ask your closest friend, God’s Holy Spirit, what it all means.  He just may give you the words your Nebuchadnezzar needs to hear.

You chew on that out on that Rocky Road today…and have a joy-filled and blessed day!

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[1] Title image:  By Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia Commons