Boldness and Prayer...and what it has to do with becoming rooted.

I had the opportunity to preach this past week. The message could be summed up fairly simply: Boldness today paves the way for God to work. We are called to be bold, to stand up for what's right, but to do it with humility and respect. 

Whenever I teach or preach I try to point to an area in which we should be rooted. When we began the "rooted in God's love" initiative, we laid out 6 expressions of love and gave people bookmarks with spiritual goals using those six expressions (the goals can be found here): Study, Prayer, Stewardship, Discipleship, Community, and Service.

This got me to thinking about boldness and where it fits. I failed to make that connection on Sunday, but I am convinced that it falls into the Prayer expression. Our goal in prayer is to have a constant awareness of God's presence in our lives. We often try to sensationalize God's presence, but in reality is it simply to recognize that God is at work in the world around us and to adjust our eyes to be able to see where He is and to join Him in His work.

I believe that to have boldness that God honors is to recognize that my actions today will alter, even if it's just slightly, the course of my life; but not just my life, potentially the lives of all those around me. 

We have a huge weight of responsibility for what we do and say today. 

Anyway, that's what I've been wrestling with today. Thoughts?