God uses missional disciples to disrupt a local community, to share the love of Christ with conviction. Then, through the testimony of changed lives, he will expand his kingdom and we can bring glory to him. This call should lead us to be believers who are bold and full of conviction walking in the power of the authority he has given us so we can use it to point others back to our source.
“When they 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. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.”
“It seems clear that the aim of Roman authorities was not particularly to execute Christians, but to turn them from what the authorities (and large numbers of the public at large) saw as their perverse and dangerous allegiance. That is, the object was not death but conformity to the demands of the imperial authority.”
Larry W. Hurtado - Why on earth did anyone become a Christian in the first three Centuries