Great strength and great grace

And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all.  – Acts 4.33

So how did God answer their prayer for boldness?

God gave them great boldness
God gave them great power
God gave them great grace

If there are three things we need today in our work it is boldness and power and grace. We talked a lot about boldness, but in this passage what stuck out to me was the words great power and great grace.

We certainly need the power of God in our lives. Compared to the world we have no worldly power. They make to rules. The pull the strings. They have their way. We really have no strength in this world.

But God gives us all the strength we need. We we went for our our own strength we could and would do nothing. But we can go in the power of His might and He is the God of all strength.

And He also gives great grace. Grace is a trait that I certainly need in this world. With a world opposing us it certainly requires great grace for us to respond in a way which honours God. We can’t afford to be ugly or mean spirited in how we treat the world no matter how they treat us. It seems like a lot of Christians think the best way to respond to opposition is to last back and return cursing for cursing and attacking with attacking.

The word of God tells us that our response is to love. Loving requires great grace. Thank God He gives us great grace.