Daily Affirmations - Day 5 - What Basis? - They Had Been With Jesus

Day 5: They had been with Jesus

I will speak of Your statutes before kings, and will not be put to shame

When [the religious authorities] saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).

Almighty God, our Father in heaven, You are the God who equips and enables— apart from You we can do nothing (John 15:5). We remember Your message to Zerubbabel the priest, "This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty."

With this reminder, You call us into Your will and Your purpose, and You silence our fears, our insecurities, our protests, and our excuses. But too often, we focus on our own puny strength, our failings, and our deficiencies.

Too often we see only the "mighty mountain" (Zechariah 4:7), and we forget Your promise, Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

"I am with you always," was the reassurance You gave as You commissioned Your disciples for service in Your kingdom. And Peter and John soon found this to be all they needed as they faced danger and hostility with newfound courage and boldness (Acts 4:1-31).

Lord, we, too, are ordinary and unschooled in the endless machinations of this world. We have no might to contend against the vast power structures— the injustices, the inequities and imbalances, the cheat sheets, the towers of dominance and control. We have no human defense against hatred, cruelty, apathy.

We lament our inadequacies before You, as numerous others have done throughout Scripture. Gideon pleaded weakness; Moses, lack of eloquence; Elijah, total isolation; Jeremiah, youth and inexperience. But You have shown us from their lives how You turn ordinary into extraordinary— by Your grace, by Your power, and for Your glory. And You remind us of the only qualification we need:

This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness, on earth, for in these I delight” (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

O Lord, give us the courage and the boldness to make a difference in this cruel, hostile world. Turn our ordinary lives into a reflection of the God who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth— on no other basis except that we have been with Jesus.

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