Sunday, January 11, 2015

Live Boldly

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. 

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