Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6 (NKJV)
The world can be a scary place, no matter what stage of life you’re in. We’re all afraid of different things, and we all have our own ways of dealing with that fear.
One thing we all have in common, though, is a need for courage. Courage is the character trait that allows us to take on things that are bigger than we are. It comes from knowing that we have access to a power that is stronger than whatever it is we are facing. For this reason, the key to being of good courage is making sure that we know and rely upon that power.
Trust
It is one thing to believe that God can fight the battles that are beyond our strength. But do you trust that He will? Do you trust Him enough to keep moving forward even when it seems like a risky thing to do?
The answer to that question depends on the answer to this one. Do you believe that God wants you to succeed? I’m not talking about the Joel Osteen “I’m-believing-God-for-a-new-Mercedes” kind of success. I mean do you really believe that God DOESN’T want you to fail at life? Do you believe that He knows what’s best for you and has a plan to help you stay on track for that?
If you do, then you have either learned or are in the process of learning that obedience is the quickest path to success. This means that you pray about major decisions, and even the minor ones. Now I don’t know that it’s necessary to ask God if I should order Sprite or root beer at the local diner, but I wouldn’t, for example, buy a car without praying for a green light from above.
If you have established and cultivated this kind of a relationship with God, then you have also learned that fear and faith can not occupy the same mind at the same time. So when we say we “lack courage” or that “our courage has failed us,” what we really mean is that we have not been putting our faith to good use. Here is one way to make sure that doesn’t happen (or at least happens less often).
Practice trusting God with the little things.
Ask Him questions about things you could typically handle by yourself and see if He leads you in a different direction. Maybe start with “Which route should I take to work today?” or “Should I get gas now or wait to fill up later?” Simple routine stuff that you do all the time that doesn’t really require “divine intervention.”
The point of this exercise is not for the Holy Spirit to save you 3 cents a gallon. It is to form the habit of trusting by essentially turning your life into a big game of follow the leader. If you trust that God won’t lead you where His grace and power won’t keep you, then you’ll keep following until it becomes second nature.
Making courage a habit
This is particularly important for parents. Not only do our kids look to us as an example when they’re young, but someday they’ll be grown and won’t look to us for leadership anymore. We need to do our part to make sure they have courage of their own to lean upon when they run into their own problems. So what can we do now, those of us that still have kids at home?
- Remind your kids of God’s Keep track of His answers to your prayers and tell those stories often.
- Train your kids to seek out other godly mentors besides you. They will probably always want to come to you first, but you won’t always be around. Your kids need to know that they have some control over feelings of isolation, a control that they can carry into adulthood.
- Teach them obedience. The Bible is full of examples of God giving specific instructions, such as in the verse at the top of this post. The Bible is just as full of examples of what can happen when you don’t follow those instructions. Although obedience requires surrender, there is power in this surrender, because you are setting yourself up to succeed by keeping in step with God’s plan for you.
- Practice integrity by saying what you mean, meaning what you say and finishing what you start. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Trust me on this—if you fail on this one, your kids will pounce on it and use it against you at every opportunity. The result of that will not win you many spouse points either.
Fear happens.
Fear of failure happens a lot. Please don’t beat yourself up when it happens to you, as though the fear of failure were a failure in itself. Don’t worry about what other people are going to think of you if you screw up. Anyone who would think badly of you for making a mistake isn’t somebody you ought to be concerned about impressing anyway.
Be strong and courageous. Follow God even if nobody is following you. Acknowledge that your hands are sweaty and that you feel sick to your stomach and move forward anyway. Not everything in life is easy or fun, but with God on your team, ALL things are possible.
A Pure Heart
God, create a pure heart in me, and renew a right attitude within me. Do not cast me from your presence; do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and let a willing attitude control me. Psalm 51:10-12 (ISV)
The goal of the Christian life is not to be better than anyone else, but to be better people today than we were yesterday. When people interact with us, all they see of our lives is a snapshot. So if they have repeated interactions with us, they expect to see actions that are consistent with what we profess to believe.
Of course, being human, we have our bad days, just like anybody else. So what’s the trick to maintaining consistency? What can we do to help our spiritual progression stay on track?
Luke 6:45 reminds us:
Good people do good things because of the good in their hearts. Bad people do bad things because of the evil in their hearts. Your words show what is in your heart. (CEV)
By our words and our actions, we show the world what is really in our hearts. Therefore, it follows that if our words and actions are causing problems in our relationships, then we need to focus on the internal.
Psalm 51
Look at the excerpt from Psalm 51 above. King David wrote this after having been busted for committing adultery with Bathsheba. If you know the rest of that story, there was a lot more than illicit sex going on there. David actually had her husband KILLED so he could get with her.
Chances are good that no one reading this is guilty of a crime that heinous (at least I HOPE not!). The point, however, is that God allows us to approach Him for forgiveness no matter how dark our sins are.
Even more importantly, notice that David is asking God to create a pure heart in him. This is not something we can do ourselves. The word “pure” is frequently translated “clean” in this passage. This is a reference to ceremonial cleanliness according to Jewish law. They had numerous rituals for making their bodies ceremonially clean, but there is nothing they, or we, could do to clean up a filthy heart.
How great is the news, then, that God actually WANTS to clean us up from the inside out, rather than just throw us out with the trash. He knows that we need pure hearts to make our words and actions pure so that we can be useful to the world in which He has placed us.
We Finish What We Start
Do you remember what it felt like when you first reported for duty in God’s work? Did it feel like you were totally on fire to live out your mission? Do you still feel that way today? Maybe, but probably not.
Life has a way of dragging us down. We get distracted and weighed down by the cares of this world, and we lose our single-mindedness of purpose. If we aren’t careful, we can spiral downward into depression because of our ineffectiveness in bringing change to the world.
But we know that there is work that God has planned for us specifically to do. We also know that we need to finish what we start. What we forget is that God never intended for us to do all these things on our own.
IF we remember to ask Him, God will straighten us out, give us the right attitude and give us the strength we need each day for the work ahead of us. As we train ourselves to rely on God to guide us internally, the world will notice the difference in our words and actions. As Jesus taught, when asked what the greatest commandment was:
Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your mind.’ This is the first and most important commandment. And the second is like it. ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ Everything that is written in the Law and the Prophets is based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NIRV)
When we love God with a pure heart, He gives us the courage to love our neighbors as ourselves . If we focus on those two things, everything else takes care of itself.
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