Bold in Witness

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We're going to be in the book of Acts, chapter 4, to start with. Now, if you want to just use the old-fashioned Bible, that's great too. Man, that's kind of cool. It's kind of like going back to the abacus or the slide rule these days. Any of you ever use a slide rule? Okay, I just missed that, you know. I did! Like two years before, they were still using slide rules in chemistry, and then they came out with that Texas Instrument calculator about the size of, you know, a laptop. I don't remember. And it cost like an outrageous amount for that time. It'd be like $1,000 today in our, you know, for back then. Anybody remember those first calculators? Yeah. Woo! You have no idea. Yeah, okay. So, Acts, chapter 4, verse 23 to 31. When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, now the they, first of all, this is the early church, and Peter and John, who had just been whipped, beaten, imprisoned, threatened with their lives over preaching about sharing Jesus. They lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who threw the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the Gentiles rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you appointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Wow. Okay. Have you ever set goals for your life? Right. Yeah. Like, I want to lose weight. I want to get in shape. I want to learn French. I want to save money so I can go on a trip to China. I want to get a master's degree. And you start setting your... Now, those are pretty big goals, don't you think? Yeah. Now, some of the simpler ones are like, I just want to get a job that pays a little better. Maybe a job that I actually like. Or, I want to pass my classes this semester. Is that a good goal? Yeah. Yeah. Now, what I've noticed, though, about most of my goals are about me. Have you ever noticed that? Now, you say, well, you can't make goals for anybody else. Well, I could try. Justin, my son, here's your goals, right? That doesn't work. But those would be about me, too, by the way. Things I want him to do, right? So, yeah, most of my goals are about me. But more than they're about me, because I've got to make goals for myself, is that they're about me being more. You know, me having more, me doing more, me experiencing more. More for me. I have a feeling I really need to have a few more goals that are about less. Selfless. A little less of me. We'll go a long way. Okay? So, even when people start doing spiritual goals, we kind of put spiritual words on them, so often we are trying, if you want to look at it, really, we're trying to get God to do what we want. You know how many prayers are really that? God, will you give me? Help me? Now, I ask God for a lot of things, and that's not really, you know, but it's almost like, God, give me a soulmate. You know? God, give me, bless me, help me, give me, me, me, help me have more money, more stability, more this, more less, less, comfort me, keep me, all these things are, and when God doesn't do that, right? When God doesn't, somehow, it's like, well, you know how people, I tried church. Didn't work. You know? I tried, I tried praying. I tried reading the Bible. I tried, and it just didn't really go anywhere. It didn't take away my stress. It didn't give me more. It didn't, as if God is here to meet my agenda. Do you realize you were created to reflect God's love and mercy and grace and truth to this world? Right? We didn't make God, God made us. That's kind of a basic thing. And so, I think we struggle with this. And we don't realize what we're actually doing. Trying to be more, we actually have less. You know, when Jesus called people to follow him, he didn't make a deal with them. He didn't say, okay, I'm going to bless your little sandals off your feet if you follow me. I'm going to make you rich. I'm going to increase your life and give you all of these things, everything you've ever wanted, if you follow me. He didn't ma...