Boldness and Power

 DEVOTION

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

BOLDNESS AND POWER

Acts 14:1-7

14:1 At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed. 2 But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. 3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders. 4 The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. 5 There was a plot afoot among the Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them. 6 But they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country, 7 where they continued to preach the good news.

NIV

Once again, not everyone is going to accept the word of the Lord. It seems strange that people would turn down eternal life. It also appears that the Jews who rejected the good news were in league with Gentiles. As Paul and Barnabas spoke so well, many Jews and Gentiles did believe, but those who refused, those who were so convinced that abiding by the law was the way to righteousness, were as far from being righteous as the devil himself is. When men who think themselves righteous want to stone other men, there is no form of righteousness within them. It is interesting how the Jews and Gentiles formed an alliance, first with those who believed, and then with those who refused to believe. Because of this division and with so much opposition to the message of salvation, the Lord confirmed what Paul and Barnabas said by giving them the power to perform signs and wonders. What do we do with this information? Is there any lesson we can learn? It would seem this is simply historic in nature and there is nothing we can apply to our walk with the Lord. Yet, all scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training us in righteousness so that we might be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Therefore, we can learn something here. We would think the point here is that as we do that which we are called to do, the Lord will confirm what we do with some display of power. We do know that all of us believers have been called to share the message. However, we are not all evangelists, in the sense that Paul and Barnabas were. We do not travel from town to town trying to win souls for Jesus. In fact, we pretty much stick to our own, that is we only associate with some of the people that attend the same church we do. We have even become so exclusive that we have our little cliques that pal around together. Very seldom are we out and about finding someone who needs to hear the good news. Although we are not traveling missionaries, or evangelists we are out in the world of non-believers all the time. We pass right by them every day of our lives. We may even work with non-believers, even some God-fearing non-believers. That sounds strange using those two terms to describe a person, but people can say they believe in God but have not accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. That would be like the Jews in those cities. They worshipped God and were, in fact, waiting for the Messiah to come, yet they did not believe the message about Jesus being that Messiah. So, we are left with the idea that maybe we need to speak up with more boldness and maybe, just maybe as we do, God will display his power through us. So then we could say that boldness and power work together.