Philippians 1:19-20 -- On Going Forth With All Boldness

"For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death."
Philippians 1:19-20

I’m into collaging.  If you don’t know what that is, it is basically when you take a bunch of different things and glom them all together to make art. My particular love is kind of like ransom note art--cutting out words from magazines and newspapers and making word collages.  I also just take individual words and put them on the walls of my house sometimes if they seem to fit.

All through college, I had a little word cut-out that said “Be Careful Out There” that I would put up by the door to outside, and I think that was part of my philosophy of life at the time... that we had to be careful in dealing with the world, and that outside was scary, and inside was safe. ... And maybe that was partly true, at least in terms of avoiding sin, sickness, and many things that threaten our worldviews. :) It's certainly, at least physically, the message that we are feeling a lot during the current struggles in the world.

On one hand God wants us to be safe and not take unnecessary risks. I'm definitely not advocating ignoring quarantine. :) However, in terms of overall living, I think that much more than encouraging safety, God's charge to all of us is "be careful for nothing" (Philippians 4:6), and to instead be bold. We need to be out there making moves, taking chances, and getting things done. God is clear that we should "use boldness, but not overbearance" (Alma 38:12), so we need to check ourselves and make sure we're not mixing up boldness with pride or arrogance, but overall, God wants us to be "engaged in a good cause, and do many things of [our] own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness" (D&C 58:27).

Just like we don't want our children to grow up scared of the world, God doesn't want us to handicap ourselves with fear either. Today, let's remember that God is willing to lend us his power to accomplish good... and let's be bold, and do something amazing. Maybe the amazing thing can't be done in a day... that's okay. We can be bold again tomorrow. :) The point is, let's magnify Christ's gifts to us by using them and being amazing, rather than hiding because we're scared of trying. It's basically the parable of the talents, with just the reason for the fear switched around.

Things are hard sometimes... but that's okay. That's the way they are supposed to be, so we can get stronger. Let's go forth "with all boldness" anyway, and make something amazing out of whatever comes.