A Prayer For Boldness Series

Paul’s Passion for Proclamation

I’m challenged by Paul’s prayer request. Here he is, chained to a prison guard, locked up in a Roman prison and he doesn’t ask believers to pray for his release. He doesn’t cry out for comfort. He’s not asking for prayers for his health. Amazingly, even though he has been incredibly bold throughout his ministry, some thirty years after his conversion, he still pleads for courage to communicate the gospel message. Look at verses 19-20: “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.” Paul is in prison as a direct result of preaching the gospel and all he can think about is preaching the gospel some more!

Paul’s passion is for the proclamation of the message. When a different guard is chained to him during the day as they rotate their shifts, Paul wants to have the right words to say. When he receives visitors, he doesn’t want fear to paralyze him. Even though he is in chains, he knows that he is God’s ambassador and he needs the prayers of God’s people so that he can fulfill his calling. This word is used only one other time in the New Testament when Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:20: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Communicating to Our Culture Today

In our remaining moments, I want to illustrate how we can follow Paul’s example as we communicate Christ in light of the events taking place in our society. Today has been declared “Marriage Protection Sunday,” as churches all over the country stand up for the biblical definition of marriage as a covenant commitment made between one man and one woman before a holy God for life. This is His plan for the good and the glory of the human race and manmade substitutes will not work.

In his new book called, “Marriage Under Fire,” James Dobson quotes Genesis 2:24: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” He then states: “God announced the ordination of the family, long before He established the two other great human institutions, the church and the government…a revolution of striking proportions now looms before us…the movement has become a tsunami—a tidal wave that threatens to overwhelm anyone who stands in its way” (Pages 1, 21).

Friends, we must pray for boldness as we declare God’s truth in a spirit of love and grace. As many of you know, we lived in Oak Park for many years. Oak Park is famous for Frank Lloyd Wright architecture but is also infamous for homosexual activism. I was deeply saddened a couple weeks ago when I learned that a well-known mainline church in Oak Park hosted a service of “confession and absolution” asking forgiveness of the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered) people for the “perception of homosexuality as something sinful or evil.” The leaders also confessed the sin of “doctrinal rigidity.” My pastor friend Ray Pritchard, who ministers in Oak Park, responded this way: “If you think about it, this is what…these leaders were saying: ‘We confess the sin of believing homosexuality is sinful. And we repent of not having rejected the biblical teaching sooner’…the words of Isaiah 5:20 come to mind: ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…’” (www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/pritchard).