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Pete Alwinson: Why in the world do I need to be bold? Let's talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew: This is Key Life. We're here to let you know that because of what Jesus has done, God will never be angry with you again. Pete Alwinson is a former pastor, founder of ForgedTruth.com, and the author of *Like Father Like Son*, and he's been teaching us all this week.

Pete Alwinson: Thank you, Matthew, and hello, Key Life. Pete Alwinson here. I've been sitting in for Steve Brown this week. He gets a break. We've been talking about Moses and talking about seeking to become bolder and bolder as servants and sons and daughters of God all because of Christ.

You know, a big question that really comes up—and you might be asking—is why in the world do I need to be bolder as a Christian? I mean, what's that all about? We are flawed, but we have been called to be faithful and to serve the God of the universe. In that call to faithfulness, we really are called to be bold.

What have we learned from Moses so far? We've learned from Moses' life that we, just like Moses, have been raised up and preserved for a divine purpose. You are not an afterthought to the God of the universe. He has known you and loved you before the foundation of the world. Then we learned that even though Moses is a big guy and we're not a well-known name, he decided to live up to his identity in God in Christ rather than his cultural identity as a murderer.

We can do the same thing. When we come to faith in Christ, we really are not the people that we used to be. That doesn't define us. Paul said, forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward to what lies ahead. I'm going to be a new person, and I'm not going to live up to my culture; I'm going to live up to my Christ identity. We also learned from Moses that he really had a good and full life after his hand grenade was thrown into his Egyptian upbringing, blowing up his privileged existence. He lived a good and full life so that he's the number three guy we remember from the Bible.

Let's land this plane today by talking a little bit more about boldness and that we can leave a multi-level impact legacy just like Moses did. If we allow the gospel of grace to make us a bolder people in Christ and by the grace of Christ, we can leave a multi-level legacy. There was a reason why we were on the planet, not just that we came here to exercise our name and have a lot of fun.

In Exodus 3, we see that Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. Moses said, "I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned." When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" and he said, "Here I am."

From then on, Moses' life begins to change. Moses begins the most epic part of his life. We see that really, you cannot explain Israel's history, the church, or the work of Christ without understanding the Exodus experience that Moses led the Israelites through. He was the earthly deliverer of the nation of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. He was the great savior.

How do we leave a multi-level impact legacy just like Moses did? Supposing that you would like to do that—and quite frankly, I do—you have to know who you are. That is the identity issue. You have to know, like Moses knew, that he was the deeply beloved and forgiven son of God. You also need to know not only who you are but why you're here.

Our culture tries to tell us that we're here to play, to earn a lot of money, to get a lot of position, and to make a name for ourselves. But really, we are here to flesh out the purpose of God. Even as men and women, both of us were called to lead, to provide for those nearest to us, and to advance the kingdom of God. We need to know what our spiritual gifts are and to allow God to use those gifts to advance his kingdom. That's how we make that multi-level impact in people's lives around us, just like Moses did.

But we do have to know how to live. By that, I mean we have to know the moral base for how we live. That's the character of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and faithfulness. Notice it doesn't mean you have to be nice to everybody; we have to be loving. We have to live out the character of Christ. When we know who we are, why we're here, and how to live with the character of Christ, that's when we become truly confident—shall we say bolder—as people.

Legacy takes care of itself. Moses, simply by knowing who he was and why he was here, and living according to God's law, became a confident and bold man who could do what God wanted him to do. Therein is his legacy. We live in a really difficult time culturally. Aaron Renn has written a book entitled *Negative Worldview*, and he tells us that the church has gone through different phases. It's a very fascinating book.

He tells us that from 1964 to 1994 here in America, there was kind of a church positive age. In other words, it was okay to be a Christian. It was positive if you were a Christian. But then our country has changed. From 1994 to 2014, we went into a phase where it was church neutral. If you were a Christian, well, okay, that was all right, but it wasn't positive and it wasn't really negative.

Now we're in a phase he calls church negative, or world negative. 2014 to the present is how he dates it. I think we can see that culture really is not for us and that following Jesus Christ is not seen as positive. For many people who view your Christianity, they say, "Really, you are part of the problem. You believe too strongly. You're not open to other things. You Christians are too narrow-minded."

We live in a time in which Christians are canceled out quite often because many people, and maybe even the dominant culture, view us as part of all of the problems of the world. But we've been given a great big mission. Jesus said in Matthew 28, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." That's good news, but it's a big vision.

So many of us only think that we're flawed and we can't be faithful. But we can. We can be faithful as we understand that God can help us to live out an epic multi-level impact by really allowing the gospel to go to work in our life and make us bolder and therefore more loving people. In other words, dads, that means that sometimes you have to lead your wife in certain ways. Wives, you need to say things to your husband about where he needs to confront himself.

Fathers and mothers, we need to lead our kids and develop our kids. They're not your buddies. You need to develop them into godly, wonderful adults that you'll launch out into the world. It might mean that your pastor has to say some difficult things in church, and you may not like it. That's okay, as long as it's in line with God's holy word. You may have to look yourself in the mirror and say, "I'm going to stop doing this and I'm going to start doing this because I want to live the life that God has for me to make an impact for the glory of God and a life that I will be excited myself to live."

I love that phrase that Bill Bright used to use in the Four Spiritual Laws: "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." Well, I have learned that everybody else has a wonderful plan for my life. But God is the only one that loves me perfectly. God is the only one that loves you perfectly and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Moses—remember his phases of life: birth, and then 40 to 80 were the deepening years, and then 80 to 120 were Moses' epic years. What I want you to ask yourself is the question: what would my epic years look like? What would it be like if I was living boldly, fully energized by grace to the glory of God? Charlie Kirk's epic years were 18 to 31. What are yours going to be? You take it to heart. Amen.

Matthew: Thank you, Pete Alwinson. That wraps up our special "Flawed But Faithful" teaching series for this week. How great was that? Remember that you can stream that series and all of our Key Life content anytime for free at KeyLife.org. Pete will be back tomorrow joining Steve for Friday Q&A. Always a good time; do not miss that.

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