
God has been teaching me about boldness over the last few months. I just want to share with you today a few things I believe He has been teaching me about this character trait; some of the things I’m wrestling with right now.
As I see it, there are a number of areas of our lives where boldness is needed. Let’s look at three of them today. I’ll cover three more tomorrow.
I’ll go with a first-person perspective here:
- BOLD obedience. Obeying God is easy when God’s will lines up with my own plans. But when the voice of God points me in another direction, the decision to obey is bold. Take my decision to leave my former church in early 2011. My plan was to stay put. My plan was to do what made sense logically, financially, and responsibly in my life and the lives of my family. God called me out of that, however. Following that call took boldness. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here. In fact, I was literally terrified at the thought of what it would take to make all of this happen at that time. However, in retrospect, the decision to be obedient to the Lord was one that He blessed.
- BOLD communication. I used to be a very “beat around the bush” kind of person. I was pretty passive-agressive. I never really told people what was on my mind. There are still times when this creeps back in, but like I said, these are things I’m working through. I’ve had some conversations with some people recently that have required me to be very straightforwardly honest, regardless of the cost, and God has proven to honor those discussions. I’m learning that being as upfront as possible with people is a spiritual character trait. It carries over well to evangelism. Talking to someone about Jesus isn’t easy, and isn’t something we can dance around.
- BOLD love and compassion. The Lord has been completely changing how I view people. I’m not sure when exactly this started, but I know that at this point in my life I can honestly say that I am viewing every person alive and a child that is loved by a Heavenly Father unconditionally, and I am to love people in the same way. THIS IS HARD. But when I put my own life into perspective, I am incredibly thankful that my God loves me regardless of anything I’ve ever done because of who He is and what He has done.
I believe these three principles of boldness, if applied directly, can drastically improve our marriages, our parenting, our friendships, our churches, and our culture in major ways.
Be bold today. Have bold conversations. Be boldly obedient. Love people boldly.
Tomorrow I’ll share three other areas of boldness that can completely change our lives – if we’re willing.
How can you be bold right now?




Sorry this is so late – it’s been a busy few days! Sunday was another day of Spirit-filled worship at Vertical Church! We were finishing up our series entitled “I Want a New Life,” a series that has challenged us all to come to the realization that we don’t need a better life – we need a NEW life. For worship, we did a 1-2 set, meaning that we did one song at the front of the service, and two after the message. We like to do this from time to time for a couple of reasons. First off, it keeps things fresh and unpredictable. Predictability breeds complacency, complacency breeds boredom, and that’s the last thing we want or our God deserves. Second, some messages are so powerful that they leave you wanting to just stand and worship. The message, entitled “Mirrors,” did just that. 



