At this morning's prayer meeting I was feeling dull. I don't know if discouraged would be the right term, but I was feeling a bit whatever about the mission. I thought about why I was there at 6:00AM in a very cold building, and asked God to help me do my job as a believer and missionary--to pray for His name to be honored (hallowed), His kingdom to be established, and His will to be accomplished.

I turned to Acts chapter 4 for some encouragement and it stirred something in me that I began to think about yesterday afternoon. I was thinking about what really hinders me from talking about Christ with friends and strangers. I came up with two shameful reasons, so here is my confession:

People pleasing keeps me silent.

Not wanting to offend someone with my outrageous beliefs is a decidedly bad reason not to talk about what Christ has accomplished on my behalf and in my soul. It raises a few questions. Who do I respect most? Myself? The person I might offend? Both are idols if I put their respect above honoring Christ.

Pride keeps me silent.

Perhaps worse than the desire to keep the conversation polite is the desire to make someone think that I'm not one of those people. Not that I fear being known as a Christian, but that someone would think I was ignorant or simple (which is how many see us). Perhaps the best word for what I fear is that someone think I'm foolish:

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly (often translated "foolishness") to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:22-24 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly (or foolishness) to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Many people hesitate to talk about the Gospel because they are afraid they will be stumped by a hard question, or that the person they talk to might be smarter than they on various Biblical difficulties or philosophical questions. Its great to be informed, but in bearing witness to Christ is my own reputation for having answers really what I should be concerned about? Isn't that just valuing the same thing as "those who are perishing?"

So in a sense I'm more like the Corinthians than I am like Paul. For Paul, their love of a good argument moved him to focus entirely upon the cross and rest entirely upon the power of God's Spirit so that their faith, "might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:5)."

So back to Acts 4. I found the cure for this worldly, sinful set of motivations in a powerful passage:

Acts 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

God filled them with His Spirit and that gave them boldness. So I think I know what boldness is, but here is a solid lexical definition of what the Greek word behind it means:

Boldness: "an attitude of openness that stems from freedom and lack of fear (Friberg's Analytical Lexicon)."

Boldness is freedom. Boldness lacks fear. The Spirit of God sets you free to not care what someone thinks about you when you love them enough to tell them that Jesus is the only one who can save them from the wrath of God.  

Father, shake this place and fill me with your Holy Spirit.

Afterthought: So I finished this post the day after I started it, and had the blessing of seeing the kind of boldness I was thinking about in action in a news show. Franklin Graham told a few news folks that the country needed Jesus, plain and simple. (Hoped to get the clip, but I couldn't find it. Maybe soon.)

I was moved a few weeks ago to write the following status update on my Facebook page:

I was just talking with some students the other night about how shallow our American Evangelical concepts of suffering can be. The Bible has so many rich things to say about suffering that we should be absolutely shocked at ourselves the next time we casually shout, "why me!" when something goes wrong.   God help us to finally start to think Biblically, and sound like James or Paul when we encounter trouble.

Its hard to get my intended tone clear here, so let me just describe my attitude. I say this as someone who has been seeking God for help to see what it means to live an authentically Christian, and genuinely New Testament life.

1 Peter 1:6-9

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

James 1:2-4   

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

This post started as nothing more than a link to this clip from the desiring God blog. Check it out.

I'm getting ready for Sunday's message. If I set up the time stamps right for this site (which I doubt) you'll see that its Saturday evening! In other words, I don't have a ton of time left for reflection. Not and ideal situation for my prayer week message, but it happens. Now, this time I have an excuse I was on vacation until Friday (worst vacation ever, but that's another story--all 4 DeLalla's got sick).  

I translated my text earlier this afternoon, but I just felt like I wasn't grasping the core message of the text, so I started to fiddle around with the diagraming tool in my Accordance Bible software. (This is Mac only, but I believe Logos has a tool for this too). Here is a picture of what my diagram looks like:

Now don't think I'm smart. The color coding was already there. I simply laid the text out logically, not in some secret scholarly way. I was literally absent the day they taught that in seminary-really! I could never figure out all the stuff about where to put the prepositions and whatnot. I just move stuff around in a way that helps me think more clearly about what is being said.

For example, in the text I'm working with Paul says he, "did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom." In the next verse He tells them why. He decided to focus on Christ and his cross. In my diagram I lined those things up to show the contrast between what he didn't do, what he did do, and why he did it. Simple, intuitive, and easy to remember when I'm yelling about it tomorrow morning.

Don't think you need Greek to do this. Working through a text this way with a solid, literal translation is extremely helpful.

Don't think you need the software I used! I used to do this in Word all the time. Some people just write it out, but that doesn't work for me. Accordance makes it extremely easy, and fast, but Word, pen and paper will yield the same results.

There are some big benefits to diagraming a text. I couldn't help but stop for a minute to commend this to you because within a half hour or so I had the core of my message laid out! And I didn't really write anything save a couple of key phrases to track what I discovered. Why so few notes? Because the message of the passage is so clear to me, it doesn't seem necessary at this point. I'm not done yet, but when I go to make my oultine I have a much clearer idea of where the message needs to go, what words and ideas I need more study on etc.

Dr. Duane Garrett once remarked that if you don't have much time to prepare for a message, the best thing you can do is spend your time in the text itself and let if flow from there. This is a great way to spend some quality time with a text. Preaching is not about cute illustrations and alliterated points! It is about God building a fire in you so you can burn in the pulpit on Sunday morning. Being full of the text itself makes for a more glorious fire than some warmed over antidotes, cute outlines, or clever quotes. Nothing against them, but you know what I mean. ;-