At first glance, these two words together might sound redundant. As a friend of mine pointed out during a worship study she conducted with the same title (This post is based on my notes from her study… it was soo good!).
The thing is, I have been toying with the idea of those words since I heard another person that I admire greatly, put them together. As an adjective, bold means ‘(of a person, action, or idea) showing a willingness to take risks; confident and courageous’ while the word confidence means ‘the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.’ So really, when we break it down to the definitions, maybe these words are actually more powerful put together than apart. I really believe in the power of the word. Whether it is written, spoken or thought, words either hold the power to build us up or to tear us down! But before I begin a grand soliloquy on the power of words, I will continue the thought I had about bold confidence. If confidence is the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something, then that will fuel our boldness, which is the willingness to take risks; confidently and courageously. I believe more and more that this is how we are to live out our faith and the things that we are most passionate about. The thing is, that Jesus Christ is the one to study and learn from and when I see Him, I see a strong, courageous and risk taking, loving leader. One of the reasons for why I see that is by reading verses like the one in John 15:13 which says ‘Greater love has no one than this, that a person lay down his life for his friends’. Now that is what I call a great friend! A person that loves you so much, he/she would put themselves in harms way rather than allowing you to suffer! And the key to being able to deal with so much suffering is found in that four letter word that everybody loooooves to talk about or sing about. Yes, you guessed it, it’s food! No, just kidding, I was going to say love.
Love is the force strong enough to put others first and even to throw yourself in front of a moving bus in order to shield the person or people that we love. What sort of power does boldness and confidence give us? (Hebrews 4:16) ‘Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need’.
This confidence, fueled by love, burning within us from Jesus himself is what gives us that bold confidence.
The confidence to come to Jesus no matter what we have done, or what we haven’t done, is what we each need to develop. Rather than doing something wrong and hiding it, our God actually asks us to come to him so that he can heal us and free us. We have to believe that the freedom that we are given and asked to take, is an act of faith in itself. John 8:36 proves this by saying that “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Another verse confirms where our true confidence should lie no matter what happens around us, or in our own homes…
Philippians 1:6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
This is where our confidence lies. Not in what skills and talents I can bring to the table but in what Jesus brings and from what we know of the stories in the bible, we know that he never comes empty. When we daily lean on the Word of God and absorb and believe what we read then our faith and confidence will grow and it will grow until we will find ourselves being a bright light wherever you are.
Hebrews 10:35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.
