37. A Prayer for Boldness
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Enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch
out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders
through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
Acts 4:29–30I
Fwe ever thought that we had to speak for God out of our fleshly
wisdom, how intimidated we would feel. If we ever thought that it
was totally up to us to do God’s work from our human resources,
how inadequate we would feel. But we know that God has promised
to supply us with the boldness we require through his power. Acts
4:29–30 is a prayer in which the disciples asked God for courage,
and Acts 4:31 tells us, “After they prayed, the place where they were
meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and spoke the word of God boldly.”
Years ago I heard author Henri Nouwen share a personal parable
that paints a picture of the trust we can place in God’s willingness
and power to answer our prayer for boldness. Nouwen had taken his
eighty-eight-year-old father to the circus in Germany. Though the