They Asked for Boldness

Read

Acts 4:29-31 "'Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.'"

Think

Every student has prayed the prayer where you ask God to move the mountain instead of asking him to help you climb it.

God, let the test get canceled. God, let the teacher forget she assigned it. God, let him text me first. God, get me out of this.

Sometimes God does move the thing. But look at what the church prays after Peter and John walk out of that courtroom with threats hanging over them.

They do not pray for the threats to stop.

Read verse 29 again. “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” They are not asking God to change their circumstances. They are asking God to change them inside their circumstances.

That is one of the most grown-up prayers in the Bible and it is prayed by a room full of ordinary people who had just watched their friends get arrested.

They could have asked for safety. It would have been reasonable. Instead, they asked for boldness, which is to say they asked God for more of the exact thing that got them in trouble in the first place.

And then Luke says the place was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God boldly.

Notice they had to ask.

It is easy to read Acts and assume boldness was something that landed on the church once at Pentecost and never wore off. It did not work that way. Two chapters after the Spirit fills them, they are back in a room asking for boldness again, because pressure has a way of shrinking people, and they knew it.

So if you have been reading this week thinking, “That is great for them,” notice that they were praying for the very thing you have been wishing you had.

Have you actually asked?

Not asked God to make school easier. Not asked him to give you nicer friends or a better table or a group where nobody is hostile to faith. Asked him for boldness, on purpose, out loud, knowing what you are asking for.

Because that is a dangerous prayer. God tends to answer it by putting you in situations that require it.

Now put the whole story next to itself.

A few weeks before this prayer meeting, Peter was in a courtyard warming his hands at a fire, too scared to admit he knew Jesus when a servant girl recognized him. Now he is in a room asking God for more courage, not less, with a real threat hanging over him. Same Peter. Same city. Same religious leaders.

What happened to him?

He had been with Jesus, and the Spirit of God filled him, and what was true on the inside eventually showed up on the outside where everybody could see it.

That is the whole idea, and it is the thing to carry into the rest of the school year. When Jesus changes you internally, eventually people will see it externally. You will not have to advertise it. You will not have to perform it. It will leak, the way it did with Peter, until somebody takes note that you have been with Jesus.

And what God does on the inside is never only about courage. It is about who you actually are when nobody is watching.

Today, ask.

Apply

Ask for boldness – Pray specifically for boldness in one named situation this week, with the actual class, team, or person in mind. Then watch for the opportunity, because that prayer usually gets answered with a chance rather than a feeling.

Pray

Lord, consider the situations I am walking into this week and make me bold. I am not asking you to make it easier, I am asking you to make me different. Fill me with your Spirit like you filled that room. Change me on the inside until people can see it on the outside. In Jesus’ name. Amen.