Open your Bible and read Acts 4:1-22
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”
Acts 4:13 · ESVFollow Peter for a minute. On the night Jesus was arrested, a servant girl asked if he knew the man and he swore he did not. Three times. Then he ran and hid with the others behind a locked door.
A few weeks later that same man is standing in front of the council that killed Jesus, refusing to shut up, and the word the text uses for him is boldness. He kept it up for the rest of his life and it cost him that life.
Here is the honest version of this argument. People die for false beliefs all the time, so sincerity proves nothing by itself. But these men were not believing a report from far away. They were in a position to know whether they had seen a body or not.
Something happened in the gap between the locked door and the courtroom. What was it?
Do this today
Name one thing you would not die for, then ask what it would take to change that.
An honest thing to say to God
“God, something changed those men. I want to know what it was, whatever the answer turns out to be.”