DEVOTION
THE
BOOK OF ACTS
LIVE BOLDLY
Acts
28:30
30
For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all
who came to see him. 31 Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of
God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.
NIV
We
have arrived at the conclusion of this Book of Acts and find Paul in Rome as
was the plan of God. He had the opportunity to meet with the leaders of the
Jews in Rome and some of them accepted and some rejected Jesus Christ. We are
not told the ultimate fate of Paul in this book, but what we are told is that
he lived under house arrest for two whole years and welcomed all who came to see
him. We are also told that whoever came to see him heard about the kingdom of
God and was taught about the Lord Jesus Christ and they heard it boldly spoken
without any hindrance from either the Jews who opposed his views or his Roman
guards. What life lesson can we learn from this last statement about Paul’s
acts? We do not know if this is the end of his life, or of his acts. We know
that he did write many letters from this place and as far as we know some of
them are part of the New Testament. We could never write any letters that would
be added to the Bible, but what we can do is speak boldly about the kingdom of
God and teach about the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of our society and certain
laws we might not be able to preach in some places, but where we live we have
all the freedom we need to boldly speak of these things, we merely need to
invite people to our homes first. We also have the right of free speech, at
least for the most part and can speak of the kingdom freely in the public
square. We may have some hindrance in our work place as set forth by the
agreement of our employment, which could be seen as a form of workplace harassment,
but we certainly have the freedom to speak our mind, or express our views most
anyplace else and we have the ability to do it boldly if only we wanted to.
Sometimes we might feel less able then we are, thinking we do not know enough scripture,
but the fact is we really only need to express our views, or our personal experience
with Christ. This we can do boldly day in and day out, each and every day of
our life. In all reality there should not be a day that passes that we do not
have something to say about the kingdom of God and about Jesus Christ our Lord.
Perhaps that is a little too intense as there may be days we do not encounter anyone,
and therefore it would not be possible, but whenever we are among society in
some form or another we should be looking for and open to every opportunity we
have to speak of these matters and to do it boldly. In Fact if we consider all that
we know about Paul, he lived boldly, and so if we learn anything at all from
this Book of Acts, it is to live boldly. We do need to make sure our living
boldly is not for our own cause but for the cause of the gospel. It is the
story of the kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ that we should live boldly.
No comments:
Post a Comment