Courage

This morning in my devotions I found myself reading a familiar passage of scripture once again. My focus became riveted to a verse that I've preached upon many times in my 29 years of full time ministry. Joshua 1:9 (NIV) states, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." I have often reminded those sitting in our church services that God has promised above all else to be with us and that we can depend on him. What is courage? David Ben-Gurion once said this "Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared." A friend recently gave me a book as a gift. In it I came across these sentences. "Courage is the inner drive to make progress regardless of the difficulty... regardless of whether your moment is now or sometime in the future, you must be ready. Courage changes things for the better... With courage, you can stay at something long enough to succeed at it - realizing that it usually takes two, three, or four times as long to succeed as you thought or hoped." We all face things in life that stress us out. And on many occasions we allow those situations to create unnecessary fears to arise within us. Someone once said this, "Fear is the darkroom where negatives develop." When moments of instability and resistance occur, you and I need to embrace the challenge and not buckle under and run.  There will always be a headwind facing those who step forward with boldness. The motivation to deal with the challenges and uncertainties of life must come from deep inside. You must believe that God has a specific design and purpose especially designed just for you. As we engage ourselves more and more with Him we become changed. Once our weaknesses are exposed God uses them for his glory. None of us can avoid crises from occurring in our lives completely. Every crisis we encounter demands our best. And we must face them with courage. The more we live the chances of us experiencing failure increases. As we fail, determine to fall forward, into God's arms of grace. All of us must develop a God-grounded level of confidence. He always goes before us and promises to carry us in our darkest moments. As we put our trust in Him there are tremendous gains on the horizon for us to experience!