How to Be Bold in Your Faith If You Feel Ordinary

If you have ever wondered how to be bold in your faith when you feel completely ordinary, the answer in Acts 4 is not the one most people expect. Boldness is not a credential, a personality type, or a job description reserved for people with microphones. It is the overflow of time spent with Jesus.

Here is how Acts 4:13 describes the moment: "The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures, and they also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus."

If boldness is the ingredient that lets you step forward and risk what is comfortable for what is possible, then how do you and I get it?

Boldness Is for Everyone Who Believes

Look at the first thing that verse says. They were ordinary men. They were not men who had all of the credentials. They were not the men everyone expected Jesus to use. They were ordinary people. Look around. They looked like you.

A lot of us think it is the pastor's responsibility to be bold. That is his job, to stand up on a stage with a microphone and proclaim boldly the name of Jesus. I would argue that yes, it is. But I am just an ordinary human being, and so is every person I serve alongside. Ordinary human beings, no different from you.

Do You Need Training to Be Bold in Your Faith?

No. Whatever was special about Peter and John, it was not their training, because the text says plainly that they had none. You do not need education. You do not need some sort of enlightenment. You need formation.

Jesus did not take these men to seminary to train them. He spent His life, those three and a half years, discipling them, walking with them, and pouring His life into them. He formed them into the men He was calling them to be.

What Does It Mean to Have "Been With Jesus" Today?

At that particular point in history, this was literal. These were men who had physically walked with Jesus. So what does it look like now?

We do not live in the day of God the Creator leading His people by a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud. We are not walking beside Jesus the Son, the One who came and lived a perfect, sinless life, who died on behalf of all humanity to forgive us and cleanse us from unrighteousness, who rose from the grave and conquered the sting of death, and who is now ascended to the right hand of the Father. So which person of the Trinity do we have in this day and age?

The Holy Spirit. Scripture says that when you surrender your life to Christ, when you give your life over and say, "He is my Master," the Holy Spirit actually takes up residence in you. But there are a lot of other things that want to take up residence in us too.

The council recognized Peter and John as people who had been with Jesus. So the question worth sitting with is this one. Does the world around me know that the Holy Spirit is guiding my life? Do they know it? Can they sense it when they are with me?

Boldness Is Born Privately

Here is the first thing about boldness you need to know. Boldness is born privately. Before boldness is something that you do, boldness is the result of Someone you have been with.

There is a responsibility here for all of us, ordinary people with no special training in the Scriptures. We still have the privilege of living a life in the presence of God Almighty, if we will have it. I am not talking about the legalistic, check the box, make sure you read the verse of the day on your Bible app approach. There is nothing wrong with that. It is simply different from sitting and basking in the presence of the Almighty, letting Him talk and letting me listen.

How Did the Early Church Pray for Boldness?

The second mention of boldness comes later in the chapter. After Peter and John have been held and finally released, they return to all the other believers and give them the report. When the believers heard it, they lifted their voices in prayer together (Acts 4:24). Then comes the request in verse 29: "And now, O Lord, hear their threats. Give us, Your servants, great boldness in preaching Your word."

Something in that passage caught my eye. The text says they lifted their voices together in prayer to God, and then it quotes them: "O Sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and earth." We have all prayed at the same time in a room before, and what you usually hear is a murmur. This does not describe a murmur. It says they actually all said the same thing.

So how in the world did they all pray the same thing at the same time? I started doing some research, because those words appear in quotation marks. They began to pray together, out loud and in unison, and what they prayed was Psalm 2.

Why Psalm 2 Was the Prayer They Reached For

Imagine what a moment that would have been.

Psalm 2 was originally written for the coronation of David's kingship. It was a psalm that gave the children of Israel their assurance that despite all of the opposition, God had chosen His king, and His will would prevail. But when you really dig into it, you find that it is also a messianic psalm. David was writing it, but he was not only writing about himself. Through divine inspiration, he was writing about the person of Jesus Christ the King.

Nobody stood up and said, "Open your hymn book to Psalm 2 and let us pray this together." They had been quoting these psalms since they were kids. They knew this one by heart, and they sensed something in their situation where the theology of that psalm needed to be spoken into the reality of that moment. Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and they could sense it. They were living out the story. Up to that point, Psalm 2 had been about King David. But it turned out to be just as true of Jesus, the Anointed One, the Messiah. They made the connection.

When you go and study the Psalms, Psalm 2, 8, 16, 22, 40, 45, 69, 72, 89, 110, and 118 are all messianic. As you read them, it is David in his own life, speaking to his own circumstance, and yet each one is an absolute point for point parallel to the person of Christ. It is fascinating.

And as they prayed this psalm, look at verse 27. The way it reads, they are starting to come to grips with the reality that the Holy Spirit is doing something in that very moment. He is revealing Himself to them.

Where to Go From Here

If you want to know how to be bold in your faith, the path runs through the same ground Peter and John walked. Boldness is not reserved for the credentialed or the naturally courageous. It belongs to ordinary people with no special training, formed by time spent in the presence of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, and gathered with other believers who ask God for it out loud.

Start privately. Sit in the presence of the Almighty, let Him talk, and listen. The boldness people notice in public is born in the quiet long before anyone sees it.