Tactic Of The Day: Attacking Our Boldness
There was a very powerful series that we went through in church this past month and it was talking about how we all have a story. The way the whole series started was when our pastor stood at the pulpit and asked us the audience a question. He asked us to raise our hands if we had a story that was worth telling. When he asked the question about 10 percent of the audience raised their hands. Not even 2 minutes into the sermon you could see the tactics of torment working across the audience.
The very first thing that was apparent was people genuinely did not believe that their story with God was worth telling or valuable. Fundamentally this is untrue, we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” By definition when you are saved by God you are now literally equipped with a testimony of God’s grace and mercy that can be impactful. So as the pastor started diving deeper into the value of our testimony people started to have a little bit of light in their eyes.
As I was sitting looking around the room in the moment of our pastor asking this question I asked why we would not all raise our hands. It’s because people were fooled by these tactics of torment. They were feeling condemning emotions and let that override their boldness for God. Think about the magnitude of being saved by Christ. Now you are in a position where you will spend eternity with the very God that created the universe, the very God who died on the cross to save you and the very God who loves you more than you have ever loved in your life. Now compare that value proposition to being afraid to raise your hand in church because being afraid of judgement. It shows how powerful sin really is.
There was a really interesting thing I heard and it was that the number one fear of humans is public speaking. Why would this be the case though? We all know someone or even ourselves who is afraid to even talk to someone but why internally is that something most people share? Let’s apply this to our relationship with God. When you are not talking with others you are not sharing the gospel, you are not telling your story. The fear of public speaking is fundamentally around the whole concept of not sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and your testimony of His glory. Here is a scripture to show it.
The verse is in the book of Revelation and it says “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.” Revelation 12:11
As we read this to me there is such a high level of inspiration because the thought that our testimonies could be put in the same sentence as the most powerful thing in the universe, the blood of Christ shows how impactful our stories can be.
Many of us were even saved because of a story someone told us so logically it makes so much sense that the enemy and his army will do anything in their power to get us to not tell our stories.
Another perspective on this topic I want to give is the faith conversation. Now picture you’re in the situation where God is telling you to tell your testimony to someone or be bold in faith. Take a second to think about the nature of God. God can only be good and perfect, that is His nature. Now as we are evaluating the moment of being bold in faith always either sin or the enemy and his army will tell us to cower in fear but as you’re being instructed by God, you will not be put in a position that is not an overall outcome of God. It would not be possible for God to put you in a situation that would lead you to anything besides traits of His nature.
Every single time we are in the moment you will always be led to why you can not, you being scared, anxious or thinking you’re not good enough. None of these are fruit of the spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that the fruit that the Holy Spirit produces is
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23
Also in 2 Timothy 1:7 we are told that we are not given a spirit of fear. That means this fear we are facing is specifically planted so that we would not have the boldness to give our testimony that could help someone to the blood of Christ.
Something really impactful I heard was that when we are not giving the truth we are only benefiting ourselves. We can be tricked into placing our comfort over the truth and that only hurts the person not receiving the truth.
Think about it like this, for us not giving the truth we are manipulating the situation into a new paradigm that benefits ourselves. Now God does not even manipulate us into eternal salvation and relationship with God Himself. If God does not tip the scale to get you to enter heaven with Him, why in any circumstance should we manipulate a situation away from the truth for our convenience or comfort.
The most important concept in this process is to just understand that the tactics of torment will happen. So many times we predicate situations on what if xyz happens. While we are discerning what could or would happen instead of evaluating what we are discerning, aligning it to God’s nature and then just saying that we know there will always be manipulation from the enemy and his army. The sooner we can understand evil will always be evil its less mental calories into discerning and more action comes.
It’s time that we believe in our testimonies and believe God’s word of bravery and stop falling for tactics of torment or convince and actively move ourselves to speaking up for what God did in our lives. You are proof that God does transformational work and when you can tell your story you are showing God’s glory even more