Boldness

Peter and John could have done what everyone else had most days—overlooked or ignored the lame man at the gate. Instead, they made eye contact with him. Eye contact is a lost practice, but when we use it, it creates a powerful connection. What courage and confidence Peter and John had to engage with the lame man and believe that anything that happened was going to be of God. The man gave them his attention, and they gave him Jesus! Everyone knew him as a beggar at the gate. No one ever thought of him as someone who could come inside the temple.

There’s a young lady in our church who was radically saved this past December. She got to reading the Bible in college, and she began to believe Jesus was real. She and I were having dinner, and we figured out she and our oldest son had gone to middle school together. When I told our son that this young lady had become a Christian, he said, “Mom, I can’t believe it.” He knew her as someone else in middle school. He never could have imagined she would be someone inside our church one day!

We all probably have a person like that in our lives. Someone we don’t think could ever change or that God could change. Our stories create space for wonder for other people. We can either get caught up in it or choose to sit it out.

If you are leaning toward sitting this out because bringing the Good News to others just isn’t your thing, ask yourself this important question: If I plan to keep following Jesus, how must I live so that no one asks me about it?

We are part of the “company of enthusiastic witnesses,” a phrase coined by Professor Kenneth Scott Latourette of Yale University to describe what happened to the earliest followers who believed in the resurrection of Jesus—and nothing could make them deny their conviction.

We can trace our stories back to the first disciples who told others, who told others, and so on until someone told us. What would it look like for you to join the company of enthusiastic witnesses?

Prayer: Lord, enable me to speak with great boldness.