The Road to Boldness

Photo credit: FAO

Welcome to Yale, among the most vigorously contested spiritual real estate anywhere! If you have already welcomed Jesus Christ into your heart, this message is for you. To judge by all recent experience, you will finish Yale in one of several ways:

With your faith and relationship to Jesus in seriously crumpled disarray; or
With huge sighs of relief upon emerging from a four-year siege against your faith and integrity; or
With satisfaction and thanksgiving to God for grace to stand, to pray, to reach out and help others; or
With great joy, eagerness, and bright hope for God’s work at Yale, and for His direction for your life beyond the diploma. To put it plainly: Holy boldness will make the difference for you.

Believers who have been around Yale for some time have commented to me that, with many serious and faithful believers on campus, the largest remaining deficit has been boldness in the faith. At the same time, boldness of the “unguided missile” variety isn’t going to help anyone.

Yale needs holy boldness in believers on campus. Holy means separated, set apart for God: it is a condition and decision of the heart. Boldness is safe only in a believer whose heart has set out to repent, to seek God, to know Him, and to know Him yet more. Genuine revival begins with believers that rediscover the meaning of holy, then rediscover the grace to be bold in Jesus’ love.

Yale needs holy boldness in believers on campus…. Genuine revival begins with believers that rediscover the meaning of holy, then rediscover the grace to be bold in Jesus’ love.

Boldness—willingness to speak plainly and act forthrightly—is always contested in the spiritual tug-of-war the believer faces daily. Paul the Apostle spoke of spiritual armor for the struggle in Ephesians, Chapter 6, then concluded by bidding his fellow believers to pray much, including prayer for him, that he would have the boldness needed to preach the Gospel as he should.

If Paul needed such prayer and asked for it, our road to holy boldness must be paved with much prayer on our part for each other. No one is too young in the faith of Jesus, nor too old, to benefit from such prayer and to help fellow believers by his or her prayer.

“Love” is not featured in this article’s headline only because we couldn’t fit everything into one headline. The most earnest separation from the world, the most breathtaking boldness, are worse than worthless if they are not personal expressions of grateful love for the Savior. He loved us first and gave Himself up to die on the Cross for our sakes.

Revival, real revival, begins with revived believers, then blossoms in effective evangelism to others. Revival starts as each believer steps out of the traces of this age’s assumptions and drives, and separates himself to belong wholly to Jesus. Out of such separation in heart comes devotion, humility and prayer; out of such prayer comes genuine boldness for Jesus’ sake. Out of all these comes revival.

Philip Chamberlain