Ben Bowden said he felt inadequate the day his wife looked him in the eyes and yelled these words — “Catch the baby!”
Seconds before, she had told him that she was having contractions and needed to go to the hospital, but things had quickly escalated.
“So I went down on my knees and you know what — I caught the baby,” said Bowden, pastor of First Baptist Church Enterprise. “I wrapped the baby not in swaddling clothes but in a towel and placed him not in a manger but in a minivan, and we drove to the hospital.”
In his convention sermon Nov. 13, Bowden told messengers to the Alabama Baptist State Convention that he felt inadequate in that moment, but even so, he was the man for the job.
“Why? Because I was the only one there. I had to catch the baby,” he said.
Bowden said followers of Jesus might also feel inadequate to make a difference in the world, but they’re the right people for the job.
“You’re the only one living your life,” he said. “There are some hands only you can hold, some hearts that only you can mend. There are some situations and conversations that only you will have. There are some lives that only you can touch.”
God intends to use your life to make a difference in the world for the glory of Christ, Bowden said. “But if that’s going to happen, you’ve got to be bold.”
He said Acts 4:13 seems to answer three simple questions about boldness.
- What is it?
This verse points out the boldness of Peter and John, but it doesn’t say that they were loud, and we know that they weren’t well-educated or of a high social standing.
Boldness doesn’t mean any of those things, Bowden said. Instead, it is standing firm in the mission of the gospel.
“It’s about tasting and seeing that the Lord is good in such a way that you count everything else as loss compared to knowing Him and making Him known,” he said.
Bowden asked messengers what they were living for, then he asked if that thing is something that would last.
“What God has invited us to is something that will last forever, and that is to stand firm for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ,” he said.
- How do we get it?
How do believers get boldness? The answer is through Jesus, Bowden said.
In Acts 4:13, when leaders were astonished at the boldness of Peter and John, they recognized that the two men had been with Jesus.
“He gives us boldness horizontally because He has first reconciled us vertically,” Bowden said, pointing back at verse 12 — “Salvation, redemption, justification, experiencing the smile of God in our lives.”
Pointing to Romans 8, he said if “we really experience the favor of God, what can man do to us? To the extent that we know the favor of God, to that extent, we will be bold.”
- How do we maintain it?
Bowden said maintaining boldness comes from being with Jesus, and “to be with Jesus means that we are consistently engaged in three simple rhythms: the Word, prayer and church.”
The Book of Acts shows that the Word does the work, he said. It also shows God’s people praying before and after Peter and John’s powerful moment of boldness.
“They prayed for boldness, and God answered that prayer,” Bowden said. “They continued to speak the Word with boldness throughout the Book of Acts and for the rest of their lives.”
It’s also important to be in community with the body of believers, he said. “Christianity is not a solo mission. … To be all that God has meant for us to be, we need friends.”
Bowden noted that having boldness doesn’t mean that you can’t have weaknesses — it might just be that God intends to use your weakness.
“Will you be bold? Will you stand firm for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ? Will you continually give yourself to the Word, to prayer and to the church? If so, you and I, if we’re faithful in those things, can make a difference in the world for the glory of Jesus.”
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