BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Boldness + Faith! I get up every morning not knowing what kinds of situations I’m going to encounter. But that doesn’t matter. I know that as long as I have boldness hooked up with my faith, no devil in hell can destroy anything God has put inside me. You may say, “Jesse, that’s just your style.” Well, it needs to be your style too! You need boldness as much as I do. So I’m going to give you three keys that will help you make it part of your life. You’ll find the first one in Acts, chapter 4. There we see the infant Church under pressure. The apostles had been warned not to preach the gospel any more. The government was threatening to kill them if they continued. What was their response? They prayed for boldness. “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word” (verse 29). There’s your first key. When the pressure is on...when the devil is trying to intimidate you...when you need boldness...pray for it. I remember one particular time I prayed for boldness. My pastor had called and asked me to go with him to pray for a young lady who had tried to commit suicide three times. “She’s in Charity Hospital on the third floor,” he said. “The third floor? That’s the crazy ward!” “I know,” he answered. That’s why I called you.” Before we went in there that day, I asked God to give me boldness. I knew we were walking into a hornet’s nest of demonic activity. As I was praying, He said, 'Today I will give you boldness of such a degree it will shock people.' When we walked into the psychiatric ward of that hospital, it was clear there were demons everywhere. People were tied down. There was groaning and wailing and screaming. It was a terrible place. When we told the social worker the name of the girl we wanted to see, she said, “I’ll let you see her, but I’ll have to go in the room with you.” That was fine with me. To be honest, I was looking forward to seeing the look on her face when those demons started to scatter. Boldness was rising up inside me. We found the girl hunched down, sitting on the windowsill. I walked over to her and said, “Little lady...” But before I could get another word in, her head jerked up. She glared at me and growled in a low demonic voice, “I will kill you, Jesse.” Believe it or not, that thrilled me. That devil knew me by my first name! That was the best news I’d had all week! Hallelujah, they know my name in hell! Do you cause the devil so much trouble that he knows you by your first name? I do. I love to aggravate the devil. Without further warning, that little girl leaped off the windowsill and pounced on me. I started rebuking the devil at the top of my lungs. My pastor was shouting, “In the Name of Jesus...!” The social worker was wringing her hands and muttering, “Oh my! Oh my!” Then, all at once, the little girl groaned and out that devil came. “What happened?” cried the social worker. “The devil came out of her,” I hollered. “And I don’t know where he went either so you’d better get out of here!” That social worker took off like a shot out of a cannon. A lack of boldness will rob you of that kind of power! The second key to boldness is faith. Ephesians 3:12 says, “...we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him [Jesus]” ("New American Standard Bible"). Boldness comes by faith. When you have faith that the Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself lives inside you...when you have faith that His blood has cleansed you from all sin and made you the very righteousness of God...you begin to get bold. You just can’t help it. **** article concludes on next page **** *************************************** Watch Jesse on bvovn.com See info on back cover. ***************************************** 24 : BVOV

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