Ben Bowden said he felt inadequate the day his wife looked him in the eyes and yelled these words — “Catch the baby!”
Seconds before, she had told him that she was having contractions and needed to go to the hospital, but things had quickly escalated.
“So I went down on my knees and you know what — I caught the baby,” said Bowden, pastor of First Baptist Church Enterprise. “I wrapped the baby not in swaddling clothes but in a towel and placed him not in a manger but in a minivan, and we drove to the hospital.”
In his convention sermon Nov. 13, Bowden told messengers to the Alabama Baptist State Convention that he felt inadequate in that moment, but even so, he was the man for the job.
“Why? Because I was the only one there. I had to catch the baby,” he said.
Bowden said followers of Jesus might also feel inadequate to make a difference in the world, but they’re the right people for the job.
“You’re the only one living your life,” he said. “There are some hands only you can hold, some hearts that only you can mend. There are some situations and conversations that only you will have. There are some lives that only you can touch.”
God intends to use your life to make a difference in the world for the glory of Christ, Bowden said. “But if that’s going to happen, you’ve got to be bold.”
He said Acts 4:13 seems to answer three simple questions about boldness.
1. What is it?
This verse points out the boldness of Peter and John, but it doesn’t say that they were loud, and we know that they weren’t well-educated or of a high social standing.
Boldness doesn’t mean any of those things, Bowden said. Instead, it is standing firm in the mission of the gospel.
“It’s about tasting and seeing that the Lord is good in such a way that you count everything else as loss compared to knowing Him and making Him known,” he said.
Bowden asked messengers what they were living for, then he asked if that thing is something that would last.
“What God has invited us to is something that will last forever, and that is to stand firm for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ,” he said.
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This article was originally published at TheAlabamaBaptist.org.
