courage and the cross

The road we travel is often fraught with danger, trials and general scary stuff.  These things often place us in a position where we are afraid of moving, acting or making a decision.  Most of us, me included, operate daily worried more about screwing something up, or offending someone  than doing something amazing.

As I have been studying for this week's message, I have been struck again and again by the courage of Paul.  In the later parts of the book of Acts, Paul is being constantly accused, bound, beaten, imprisoned and attacked for the gospel.  Amazingly, he does not allow the pressure and challenge to limit or slow down his passion for the gospel.   Instead, we seem him push further and longer.  Experiencing great "success" in Asia, specifically in Ephesus, Paul still sets his sights on Jerusalem and Rome.  Even the danger of "success" cannot keep Paul from pressing forward.

Once in Jerusalem, Paul is again bound, imprisoned, and falsely accused.  Forced to again defend himself from these accusations, Paul continues to tell one story over and over again.  The story of his conversion.  Paul's courage in the face of strong opposition, opposition that desires not just his silence but his life, derives it's power and passion from the reality of his own conversion.  Paul is so certain, confident, and passionate because he understands the power of the cross.  He has experienced firsthand what grace can do to a life.

Paul is unwilling to settle for a gospel that simply bought him a one time get of hell free card.  Instead, the gospel Paul declares is the one of ongoing, day after day redemption and restoration.  Paul believes that when Jesus promised that we would overcome the world because He overcame the world, Jesus meant it.  Paul believes that when Jesus declared, "greater love has no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friends", Jesus was not just telling us about the cross but was calling us to the cross.

Paul faced multiple trials, attacks, accusations, beatings and ridicule so that he might tell the gospel to anyone who would listen.  Most of us won't walk across the street to our neighbor of ten years and invite them to church or even offer to pray for them in crisis because we are afraid of the look they may give us, let alone actually tell them about their own sin and need for a savior.  We tell them about where they might save five cents on a gallon of gas but not where they might find redemption from eternal hell.   I think we have missed the courage of the cross.  None of us are called to be Paul.  Instead, we are called to be Jerry, John, Frank, Tom, Bill, Susan, and Jane.  Men and women redeemed, literally purchased from the bondage of sin and hell, for the glory of God.  Men and women in specific neighborhoods, with specific jobs, and families.  Neighborhoods, jobs and families in need of someone captured but the truth of the cross, the power of grace, and full of the courage to risk telling them about it.  Paul's joy was sharing gospel with all of Asia, Jerusalem and Rome.  My joy is sharing the gospel to the city of Sunbury.  And you have the joy of wherever it is that the Lord has called you.

My prayer for you and I this morning is that we would operate in a courageous way not because it is our personality.  And not because we feel guilty, but because the truth of the gospel in our own life has so captured us, so changed us, that we want the rest of the world to have what we have even if they don't know they need it.

Go today and live courageously, foolishly for the gospel!