Be Bold.

My youngest daughter, Lydia… we call her Lou Lou… is what you'd call the "shy, quiet type". Even so, The Lord has blessed her with a wonderful group of Christian friends from church.

After noticing a young girl around their age, that's been coming to the church for a few years, but still sits with her parents, never venturing into the Sunday school class or Wednesday night youth group, I encouraged Lou to have her friends introduce themselves and to invite her into their circle. Since she doesn't concider herself a leader, she’s wasn't about to initiate it!

This is my BOLD Lydia.

It was at a Wednesday night service, that I encouraged her once again, to go and talk to that girl. She hem hawed around about it, so I Ieft it alone.

About 15 minutes later Lydia came up to me and excitedly said,” I did it, Mom! I talked to her!” I was so proud of her for leaving her comfort zone to bring comfort to another.

After telling me about her conversation, she said, “You know how I found the confidence to do it? (To go talk to the girl.) I prayed. I said, God if you’ll tell me what to say, I’ll go talk to her. And when I did, I wasn’t nervous or shy or anything.”

What a blessing that girl is to her momma!! And what a valuable lesson to learn about finding confidence in God. Talk about faith fluffing!

That got me thinking about confidence. What does God think about His children being a confident people? When I picture in my mind what a confident person looks like, I see a bold woman, walk into a room with her head held high, taking on any challenge and bring a few challenges with her as well. :/ Speaking her mind, regardless of who's feeling may get hurt. I guess I have a negtive view of that kind of confidence. But does God?

So I looked to see if I could find it listed among the fruit of the spirit...

Love, Joy, Peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance

Galatians 5:22-23

Nope, not there. Then I looked through the attributes of the new man…

Holy, kind, humble, meek, longsuffering, forbearing, forgiving, charity

Colossians 3:10-15

Not there either! So is it wrong to have confidence? To be a confident person? Well, it all depends on who you’re putting your confidence in. The Bible clearly states that…

“It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” Psalms 118:8

…because we know that…

“…in me dwells no good thing.” Romans 7:18

But God does call us to have BOLDNESS!!

“…boldness to enter into the holiest.” Hebrews 10:19

“BOLDNESS in faith…” 1 Timothy 3:13

“…with all BOLDNESS… Christ will be magnified…” Phillipians 1:20

Lydia lived out what Ephesians 3:12 was saying about boldness AND confidence.

“In whom we have BOLDNESS and access with confidence by the faith of him.” Ephesians 3:12

Did you catch that? Confidence by what? By FAITH!!! The thing is, there can be a thin line between a person being prideful and being confident, being arrogant and being bold, but finding boldness and confidence through Christ is the key to affectively preaching, teaching, leading, encouraging and ministering to a lost and dyeing world!!

Let our confidence be found in Him and may our BOLDness be used to bring the good news to a dieing and sin sick world. Through Christ alone.

#Encouragement #Ministering #FaithFluffing