In Eph.3:17 the Apostle is praying for the Ephesians "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; being rooted and grounded in love." And then in 6:19 of Ephesians he requests prayer for himself and says: "And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel." As those who are commanded to preach the gospel, by our Lord, I believe that we ought to be constantly evaluating our gospel proclamation by these 2 standards: 1- are we motivated by love and 2- are we preaching with boldness. In our minds these two seem to be at variance, but in the man who is filled with the Spirit they are in perfect harmony and one cannot exist without the other. Love will always lead us to proclaim the truth and to proclaim it with boldness. When we hear that someone is quickly dying of a terminal disease that we only know from a distance we may be concerned but it does not effect us like it does when it is someone that is close to us and the difference is love. When we love someone dearly we will be moved to action to do anything we can to help them in their plight. And if that one we love is in harms way and refuses to take the steps necessary to minimalize the danger we will speak to them with much forcefulness. We see this beautifully played out in the life of our Savior, His love for His fellow man ,while on earth, drove Him to boldly confront those who were headed toward God's judgment. He even spoke to Peter (not that Peter was headed toward God's judgment) and said, "Get thee behind me satan." That doesn't sound very loving: does it? It was the most loving thing that could have been said because it came from the personification of love: The Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Oh, I pray that my heart would be filled with love for The Lord Jesus and that, that love would overflow to my fellow man and that I would plead with them, in tears, that they would repent of their rebellion against God and believe on The Lord Jesus Christ.
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