TOPIC: “SPEAK BOLDLY”!!!

TEXT:  EPHESIANS 6:19-20:

“And for me that, utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the Gospel.  For which I am an ambassador in bonds:  that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak”!!!

Utterance (log’os) something said (including the thought); (impl) a topic (subject of discourse); Word (Christ); tidings.

Boldly (parrhesi’a) all out-spoken-ness, ie frankness, bluntness, publicity; assurance: confidence; openly; plainly; freely; plainness / (parrhesia’zomai) to be frank in utterance, or confident in spirit and demeanor; preach boldly.

How many know there are people lost and dying all over the world and they are desperately in need of a Savior.  And now is the time for us the “sons of God” to step out by faith and begin to speak and teach the Word of God without fear and trembling!                                                                                         God needs our voice to speak His Word!  He needs your feet to carry Him to the dry places!  He needs our hands to touch those weak, sick and feeble to heal them and pull them out of the clutches of the enemy!!  He needs every part of you and me – our eyes to see, our ears to hear!  But as we go, as we carry Him we can’t be afraid to do and say all that He instruct us to do.  

We’re no longer babes drinking milk but He has brought us to maturity, not to keep this Gospel and power all to and among ourselves but we are to go into all the world and preach the gospel!!  For this is “good news”!!  

Gospel is from the root word euaggel’ion (yoo-ang-ghel’-ee-on), meaning, “a good message, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of God, the gospel of the Kingdom”. It goes to another root word euaggelizo (yoo-ang-ghel-id’-zo), meaning to announce good news; bring good tidings; show or declare glad tidings.

• Romans 10:13-15: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.  How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?  And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?  And how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach, except they be sent?  As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!!!

God has not sent His “sons” with bad news, saying “one of these old days, when you get to heaven you can overcome and have a new body”; “when you get there (to heaven) you will walk on streets of gold”; “when He cracks the sky, coming on the cloud, you better be ready”!  These kinds of messages are from the “kings of the earth”, the Ahab class that’s married to the “woman Jezebel” or the “false church system”, bound by religious order: 

• Revelation 17:5: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

The “kings of the east”, “the sons of God” bring “glad tidings”, “good news” saying:  “You don’t have to wait until one of these days to overcome, you can overcome right here and right now”;  “you don’t have to die to get to heaven, you’re already there, in Christ Jesus”:

• Ephesians 2:6: And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.                                                                                                                                                            “You can have a new body now, because by Jesus’ stripes, you’re already healed”!

• Isaiah 53:5: He was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities:  the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
• Colossians 3:9-10: Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. 

“You can walk the street (not streets) now which is the narrow way to obtain eternal life: 

• Matthew 7:13-14: Enter ye in at the strait gate:  for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in there-at:  because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it.
• John 14:6: Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”!
• Revelation 22:2: In the midst of the street (not streets) of it, and of either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manners of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month:  and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 

As we follow Christ, we continue in victory!!  Why?  Because He is “the way”!!  

Proverbs 14:12: There is “a way” that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

[Way] (de’rek) a road (as trodden); a course of life or mode of action; journey; manner; conversation;  conduct; condition.

This “road” or “way” is the one Jesus describes in Matthew 7:13 when He said:  “Enter ye in at the strait gate:  for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in there-at”. 

 [These are those sitting waiting for Jesus to come back and get them and take them to where God is. This is what the Preachers of “religious order” preaches or “the kings of the earth”]! 

Matthew 7:14: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it.

This is not the word “straight” but “strait”, from the root word stenos’, meaning narrow (from obstacles standing close about).  Narrow because this is the “entrance” to eternal life and it runs counter (in opposition) to that which is natural or the way religious teaching has taught us for years which is after you die you go to where God is. This “strait way” doesn’t get us to God via the grave.  As a matter of truth, going this “strait way” which is through Christ Himself who is “the way”, we don’t even have to die!!!  This is the message of the “kings of the east” or the “sons of God” that God has brought into the revelation truth’s!  Remember, Jesus said in Matthew 7:14: “And few there be that find (will obtain) it”! When the truth of the matter is “God is in us”, He is already with us]!  

• 1 John 4:4: “Because greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world”.
  John 3:15: Whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal (quality – grade A) life. 
  Vs 16: For God so loved the word, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting (unending) life. 

We have to make the mystery of the Gospel known.  And it won’t be done by being closed mouth and afraid to speak.  It is written, Psalm 81:10: I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.

What is a mystery?  It’s from the root word muste’rion, meaning, to shut the mouth; a secret or mystery (through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites).

Well, we have not been initiated into the Kingdom, we were born into the Kingdom and we cannot be silent concerning it!!  God reveals Himself as the Word, and reveals Himself through the Word and we have to proclaim it with boldness.

Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 4:3: But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.  

He didn’t say “hid from them”, or it would’ve been a deliberate hiding.  But he said it is “hid to them”.  Meaning their spiritual eyes weren’t yet opened to the revelation truths that God was revealing.  And even unto this day there are many of God’s people whose eyes and ears are not yet open to the revelation truths of God.  But Paul’s prayer for God’s people was this:  

• Ephesians 1:17-18: That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:  the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.  This scripture is for us all!

This spirit of wisdom being God’s higher spiritual understanding of very diverse matters goes beyond human estimates.  And the revelation being, the apokal’upsis or the manifestation, coming, appearing, or taking off of the cover of who Jesus the Christ is in the earth!  This “wisdom and revelation” will bring us into the knowledge or the “epig’nosis” (recognition in relation to the discernment, acknowledgement or complete apprehension and comprehension) of who Christ is.  We the “Church” are His Body in the earth, of which He is the Head!

• 1 Corinthians 12:12: As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many is one body:  so also is CHRIST.
• Ephesians 5:30: We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
• Colossians 1:18: And he is the head of the body, the church.

You may say, “I really can’t speak or preach like sister so and so or brother so and so”.  Well that’s just it, God is saying “I’m not sending you to be like sister or brother so and so, I’m sending you to be Me, my mouthpiece with the anointing and power of the Holy Ghost, and it is this anointing that will cause you to speak my Word boldly and with boldness”!

• Acts 4:31: When they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost (Spirit) and began to speak the Word of God with boldness”!
• Ephesians 3:12: Paul wrote, “In whom we have boldness and access with confident by the faith of him”!

We as “sons of God”, as ministers operating in the five-fold ministry should exhibit holy boldness.  This holy boldness is nothing new.  Abraham exhibited it in Genesis 18:22-32, when the men turned and went toward Sodom, Abraham was standing in the gap for Sodom and Gomorrah!

• David exemplified boldness in 1 Samuel 17:45, when he confronted Goliath.
• Shadrach, Mechach, and Abednego exemplified boldness in Daniel 3:16-18, being threatened to be thrown in the fiery furnace.
• Apollos exemplified boldness in Acts 18:26, as he spoke out boldly in the synagogue.
• Stephen exemplified boldness in Acts 7:51.  He was one of the seven men chosen in the assembly of Christians at Jerusalem to look after the distribution of food among the believers.  But here in Acts he called a “spade a spade”!  He said, “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did”!
  Now it took “boldness” to say that!
• Christ set an example of boldness John 7:14-26, in the midst of the feast of tabernacles.  He went up into the temple and taught and this was their response:  Vs 26: But lo he speaks boldly and they said nothing unto him.  (There are many times Jesus exemplified boldness, but I’m using just this one).

Realize and know this boldness is not an outside job, but rather on the inside!                                          When God make and mold us He does it from the inside out!  It’s not what goes into the man that defiles him, it’s what comes out.

• Matthew 15:19: For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.  [Also Mark 7:18-23].

God is saying, “When I’m through cleaning you up you shouldn’t want to be like anyone but ME”!That's the first step in developing boldness and confidence, having God’s mind, being just like Him!

• Philippians 2:5: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus:
• Vs 6: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

Secondly, we have twenty four seven, all day access to God which is made possible by the blood of Jesus the Christ:

• 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.

Thirdly, we have confidence in the Word of God that gives us boldness to be about our Fathers business:

• Luke 10:19: Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy:  and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
• Philippians 1:6: Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. 
  [The “day” of Jesus Christ is now and will be throughout eternity]!!!

Fourthly, in spite of ourselves, God tells us in St. John 15:16: “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit”.  

Even this alone should make us more eager to go and proclaim the gospel with boldness (all out spoken-ness, frankness, bluntness, and assurance).                                                                          Being He chose us and is sending us, doesn’t that let us know He has already prepared the way!     Do know this, God don’t want coward soldiers!  He needs us to be “bold” on His behalf!

We can do it!  We will do it!  We will go in the authority and anointing of the Holy Ghost!  We shall exercise emotional control over negative emotions.  God has given us the tools to pull them down and we will be bold!!

• 2 Corinthians 10:4-5: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds:  casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
• Philippians 4:6: Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

We will take authority over fear!  It is a tactic of the devil to paralyze God’s people!

• 2 Timothy 1:7: God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

God is saying, “As I am sending you, go with confidence knowing who you are and whose you are”!  “Do not let doubt enter into your thoughts or mind, I am with you”!  “Be bold and speak boldly”!

• Isaiah 58:1: Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
• Jeremiah 1:8: Be not afraid of their faces:  for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.

Remember, words are seeds, and when dropped in the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind!!

Let us be about our Father’s business, going forth, “speaking boldly”!!!

Evangelist Mary Perry