What do you mean by boldness?

Yesterday I wrote a blog about serving, revival, and survival.  I made the statement, “I will pray for boldness because I am revival because I have the Holy Spirit inside of me.”  My friend Daniel showed me an article about praying for boldness. To be honest, I read the article and was just like, whatever, the believers in the early church asked the Lord for boldness in Acts 4:29, and so will I. As I was emailing Daniel back about that scripture, I decided to find the Greek word for boldness in that scripture to make sure I was defining boldness correctly.  Boldness is: 

παρρησία 

The word is parrēsia.  Parrēsia means freedom in speaking. 

When I had been praying for boldness, I was meaning audacious and confidently.  This is not exactly what the early church were praying.  If you read the entire prayer in Acts 4, they talk to the Lord about the opposition that they are receiving.  Then they ask God for boldness.  They are already confident, they just need the people to get off their backs long enough for them to preach.  

2 Corinthians 5:5-7 says, "Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are ALWAYS CONFIDENT, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. FOR WE WALK BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT."

I don’t need to pray for boldness right now, today, at Liberty University in the United States of America.  I’m completely free to share anything I want about the gospel.  I thank Jesus for the parresia that He has given me.  I will however pray that God will renew my mind to the confidence/boldness that I already have through being in Christ. 

This summer in India, I will say, ”I will pray for boldness (parresia) because I am revival because I have the Holy Spirit inside of me.” In India I will not have freedom in speaking.  However, I hope and pray that situations will arise like in Acts 4. “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.” (verse 31)

For the article Daniel showed me, click here.

For information on the word parresia, click here.