A number of the posts of this blog have referenced boldness and I wanted to share some thoughts on this topic as well. This is an area where God has been challenging me these last few months. I attended a Men's Retreat in April in North Carolina for the third straight year in 2017. The church that a good friend from college attends (not in our group of bloggers) has held an annual Men's Retreat for the last 22 years and I have been blessed to be a part of the three most recent. The focus this year was boldness. The memory verse for the half week was 2 Corinthians 3:12, which says "Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold" (NIV). (Note: Credit to speaker Brian Charette - the quotations are from him).
What is the "hope" that the verse is referencing? Paul is talking about the New Covenant that we have in Jesus and how he is alive within us! "We can be boldbecause of the Hope we have in Christ. In fact we can consider boldness to be the proof - or the observable evidence - that others see because we have hope found through Christ." We tend to 'hope' for many different things: good job, close friendships, strong marriage, etc. Those are all good, but it starts with the hope we have in Christ and what He did for us. We can go boldly to God in our prayer time by asking him to change us to be more like Jesus.
It's very easy for us to yearn for comfort and not be bold. After a long day at work, it isn't too difficult for us to put on comfy clothes and take a seat on our couch or favorite chair, turn on the TV and next thing we know 2 hours have passed. From a spiritual standpoint, it's easy for us to keep to ourselves about our faith in Jesus, only talking about Him to those who believe in Him also or not doing something God is speaking to us about because it would be uncharted territory for us. I know I too often get sucked in to a comfort zone and don't take any risks in my spiritual journey. There have been too many times that I passed up an opportunity to share the Gospel with someone or had a chance to show God's love and let my comfort be the reason. "Our comfort zone is made up of: fear, shame, (our desire to) control, and confusion (of who God is)." We can fear the unknown, be shameful because of past failures, and "our pursuit of control lies to us about what makes us safe, strong, and gives us life."
Peter's story in the New Testament is intriguing - I won't dive in to his life leading up to Christ's execution in this post because I want to drill down to how Peter goes from a coward to being very bold. Peter goes from denying knowing Jesus three times to becoming a main cog in building up the church in the book of Acts and speaking to many about his witness of Jesus' life. His transformation is a great example of confusion of who God is. What changed in Peter? "(Jesus) is not only the reason for our boldness, but the very source of it. Perhaps that's what happened to Peter. After Peter betrayed Jesus, something began to change in him. On the other side of the resurrection Peter realized two things. He realized who Jesus really was and Peter realized who he really was - desperate and needy for the presence of God, a great debtor, whom God would faithfully carry for the rest of his life."
I want to continue to challenge myself to be bold by remembering the hope that we have in Jesus as he took our rightful place upon the cross. More specifically, I want to be more intentional about sharing my faith and what Jesus has done to change me (as a few of the others have posted in this blog). May we go boldly as men by showing and sharing Christ's love with the world and asking Him to continue changing us to be more Christ-like! I will leave you with one last quote from Brian followed by a song by Rend Collective (one of my favorite bands the last few years): "You will be bold when you are close to Jesus - when you invest in your relationship with Him, when you dig deeply and regularly in to His Word. The Mighty One is the source of all boldness. Get close!"
Boldly I Approach
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