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Boldness apart from brokenness makes a bully.
Brokenness apart from boldness makes a bystander.
Boldness with brokenness makes a bridge . . . that brings heaven to earth.

—David Benham

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These last couple of weeks have brought me to my knees. It’s so clear that I need more grace, more wisdom, more Spirit-breathed power. I don’t want to be someone who slinks into nuance, but I also don’t want to submit my words to the ungodly rhetoric of our day. My living prayer has been, “God, show me Your higher way.”

As I’ve prayed, the prophet’s words in Micah 6:8 keep coming to me,

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Notice the word require. This isn’t optional. We are to be people of justice and mercy. We are to embody paradox. And according to this verse, humility is how we hold justice and mercy together. Humility before our Father is the-fear-of-God, which according to Scripture is the beginning of wisdom.

But most of us tend to drift toward either justice or mercy. Some of us love justice but forget mercy. Others cling to mercy but avoid the hard work of justice. Humility is how we acknowledge the tension. It keeps us from hiding in nuance or being swept away by the noise of our day.

We must be humble before God and bold before man.

And then, of course, there is Jesus’s example. He is the one who proved that only bold humility overturns and disrupts the power struggles of this age (Philippians 2:5–11).

We should remember that Jesus’ methods made everyone scratch their heads: his mom, his brothers and sisters, his disciples, the crowds, the religious leaders, the political leaders, and even the man who baptized him.

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist sends messengers to ask if Jesus is truly the One. While John and Jesus both preached a bold message of repentance, the Baptizer was challenged by Jesus’ approach. Even though he had baptized him a few chapters earlier, John was compelled to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Jesus responded with grace and truth. He honored John as a great prophet (while challenging him), he insulted the pseudo-political leader, Herod (whose symbol was a reed), and he commissioned all of us to embrace the power of God’s kingdom, a Way that was becoming real in the person of Jesus and the presence of his Spirit.

 

Respond

This week, ask God’s Spirit to show you where He’s inviting you to embody this tension. Where is He asking you to be bold? And how is He asking you to bow low before Him?

Don’t just participate in discourse on social media . . . live your convictions.

In moments like these, we mustn’t forget that it takes a whole church to reveal a whole Christ (Ephesians 3–4;1 Corinthians 12–14). Let’s be true to our convictions and curious to learn from our biblically responsible brothers and sisters. Only then will the world see the glory of God’s church and know us as Jesus’s disciples (John 17, 13:31–35).

We must be humble before God and bold before man.

 

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for inviting me into Your way.
Teach me to do justice, to love mercy,
to walk humbly with You.
Forgive me for where I’ve been silent out of fear
or loud out of pride.
Make me a bridge that brings heaven to earth.
Give me courage to speak,
grace to stay humble,
and faith to follow You wherever You lead.
Amen.

 

Praying with you,

Addison

 

 

 

P.S. I mention this each time because we always have new people—hello, if that’s you!— but if you don’t have the Words with God book yet, be sure to grab it from Amazon or the Messenger Store.