Boldness to Act Part 1
1 Cor. 16:9 For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many
adversaries.
The third
word that hit my mind was rewarding. We
had several folks give their lives to Jesus at the outreach and that’s what
it’s all about. Souls coming to Jesus! Folk’s receiving Jesus was so rewarding! Suddenly all the
things I had to push through to get to this point was in a distant memory and I was overcome with tears of joy! Jesus is faithful! Toys were then given
to the children and the families were given the food bags. It was an amazing
day of answered prayer!
While
talking to my friend Dr. Jim 1 Corinthians 16:9 came to my mind which says “For
a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” I
immediately started thinking about this scripture and what had happened to me.
The Lord had a great and effective door for me. On the other side of the door
was blessing and souls to be won into the kingdom. The enemy didn’t want me to
go through that door because ultimately the Kingdom of Heaven would be
populated, so he brought against me many adversaries to try to stop me. Praise
the Lord! I was able to push through on
the prayers of the saints and by the grace of the Lord and the Kingdom of
Heaven was populated!
You see the
enemy uses fear, sickness etc. to slow us down or stop us from going through
the door that God has called us to. I believe the main one is fear and
intimidation and this is something I have always struggled with. I remember in
school when I had a project to speak in front of a crowd of students I would be
overwhelmed with fear and intimidation. Later in my life, I gave my life to
Jesus and the Lord would speak to me to do something, but immediately that fear
would come and thoughts would enter my mind telling me that it
wouldn’t work. All those what if
questions would come to my mind to try to stop me. It used to work most of the time until something amazing happened in my life!
The Lord
continues to remind me of this mission’s trip that I went on about 15 years ago
in Cameroon, Africa. The mission was to have 10 teams to surround the city of Kumba to
preach the gospel. I was going just serve and be part of a team. I had no idea
what was about to happen. I will never
forget it and when my mentor Bro. Bert Farias put me in as a leader of one of
the teams immediately the fear of the enemy had gripped my heart to try and stop me. Bro.
Bert said something to me that I will never forget. He said I know you can
preach because I heard you pray. I was completely changed and had the courage
and boldness to preach, but I still had to push through. Later, on the trip I was
about to share at a Bible School and the enemy was having a hay day with my
mind. What was I going to say? I asked the Lord? The enemy was whispering in my
ears that I was going to make a fool of myself. Suddenly an African brother
came up to me named Joseph and said brother Rudy I see in the spirit that the enemy has you in a snare. I immediately knew what he was talking about. I
asked him to pray and break it off of me and he did. Immediately Prov. 29:25 came
into my mind (The fear of man brings a snare, But whoever trusts in the Lord
shall be safe) and I knew I was to share this scripture with the class. The
Lord wanted the students to be free of the fear of man, as well. He wanted
to use me to share and pray for these precious students to be free. I will
never forget it! The students were all in fear of the unknown. Most of them
would be sent out on mission assignments and many of them were dealing with a
lot of the same things I had been dealing with. I shared the scripture with them, preached a
little bit and prayed to break off the fear of man in the kids’ lives. The Holy
Spirit came and ministered to them in a powerful way! We were all changed by
the wonderful presence of the Lord! 
