Boldness. A word the Father has been speaking over me again and again, a characteristic I continue to grow in daily. If you look up the true definition of boldness, you get, “willingness to take risks and act innovatively; confidence or courage”. When you look up the biblical meaning, you get, “acting by the power of the Holy Spirit, on an urgent conviction in the face of some threat”.
YOO I consider the enemy stealing souls as a threat. Satan is manipulating souls to turn from Christ daily, and WHY do we allow that? FEAR. But the Holy Spirit is inside of us, FULL of BOLDNESS. So how can we then act on that threat? By allowing the Holy Spirit consume us in boldness and actually using our voice to tell people about Jesus.
Wednesday afternoon, we had an evangelist come in to speak to us on evangelism. I can preface this story with the fact that evangelism scares me so much because as a broken human, I fear rejection. It’s so uncomfortable but the thing is, I believe the Father calls us into discomfort. He never wanted us to remain stagnant. Also, how boring would our lives be if we never took risk, and jumped, and broke out of comfort? Again, I’m preaching to myself over here..
The number one thing I learned on Wednesday, was that evangelism is an interruption. Isn’t Jesus important enough to interrupt someone from things of this world? People’s souls are at risk here!!
Thursday morning, Rachel, Ansleigh, and I are walking around the square, looking to evangelize with someone. As we’re walking, I’m praying for boldness but I am terrified of being rejected or not knowing the right answers. We start to wander a little bit, and then decide to sit down and talk to the Lord and ask for guidance and realize that boldness is going to look a lot like jumping in. So we find ourselves in the dry cleaners, where we meet a sweet woman. I admire the way we walked in and Rachel literally jumps in and asks, “hi, would you mind if we sit and talk to you about Jesus?”. We had a little bit of a hard time communicating at first, because the woman’s first language is Spanish but God is good. We learned that she attends a catholic church, but not regularly and that she knows of God but isn’t all too familiar. She tells us of some of her life and we are able to share some of ours, in sweet conversation. When it comes time for her to return to work, she pulls out a piece of paper and writes her address and phone number on it. She tells us she wants us to come sit and tell her more of God one day when she gets off work. WOWW if that isn’t the Holy Spirit working!! Because of boldness, a woman who had potential to remain stagnant her entire life now desires to know more of God.
The girls and I are waiting for a day next week that our work schedules will allow us all to visit with her, and we can’t wait to share more.
Day by day, I desire to grow in boldness because by no means have I fully stepped into that freedom. I’ve learned that fear isn’t natural, only something we learned and as we step further towards holiness the less fear controls us which I see as so beautiful. Jesus didn’t die a painful, gruesome death on the cross for us to have fear of living our lives for our Father, but for FREEDOM!
I hope this story encourages you to live BOLD, and tell someone about our good good Father. I know it encouraged me to keep going.
There is no power in Heaven or on earth or under the earth that remotely approaches the power of God.- He is the only one we should fear. Luke 12:4-5
Thank you for reading
Lyric Housman
