Courage

cour·age

/ˈkərij/

noun

  • strength in the midst of pain, grief, and/or fear.


Defining Courage

Most of us understand that courage is necessary to live a life for Christ. Some understand that it's necessary to live a life that's fulfilling to any degree. At the same time, courage is one of the most unnatural virtues to practice and develop. From combining more secular definitions, we can consider courage to be strength in the midst of pain, grief, and/or fear. In other words, having courage is considered the same as having strength, where our circumstances define whether or not we have the opportunity to be courageous. The strength aspect is something I wanna touch more on later, because the way we view true strength really matters. But the reason courage is so unnatural to us, is because the only time we get to put it into practice is when we're brought to face pain without relief, grief without comfort, and fear without security. By that definition, courage requires us to endure our worst without the armor we've set up for ourselves.


Courage Scales

There are so many verses in Old Testament books that call for courage. Many of the Psalms are prayers made in fear (3, 10, 12-13, 54-57, and like, a lot more). The book of Joshua is practically built on finding courage in the midst of great pressure – He tells him to have courage 4 times in just the first chapter, and even before that. Men of God feared not just to be ostracized or looked down on, but they feared for their lives, and the lives of their people.

I don't have to fear death. Objectively, I live a comfortable life, and it's the only life that I'm really responsible for right now. How can I learn from the courage of those that feared losing everything, when the challenges that I face only feel major?

I think for starters, it's important to understand that courage scales with our circumstances. The courage that's required of us is only as powerful as the fear that we're shouldering. Despite what you might think, I'm not being given the responsibility of leading the people of Israel, only myself. This is a different age, though. I've been raised in a completely different culture, and the problems that I face, while not a matter of life and death, bring their own fears and challenges. Everyone, at one point or another, is faced with the cruelty that comes with sin. Death and loss, deceit and betrayal, selfishness and ignorance. Those things – to us – are our reality. And while they might not threaten our lives or our livelihood, they still present us with fear. Our own fear is what presents the opportunity for courage. So the only thing that's really relevant, is how major they are to us.


True Strength

Obviously I can't ever help but include a reference to C.S. Lewis, since I've been looking at a lot of his work lately. Recently I've been reading about The Screwtape Letters, a fictional novel that gives the narrative of a demon named Screwtape, essentially writing a collection of letters to his nephew with advice on how to corrupt a specific Christian during the time leading up to and during World War II. One of the final letters that Screwtape writes to his nephew comes right as the Christian's town is about to be bombed by Germans – another life-threatening situation. As he's trying to teach his nephew on what attitude they should encourage the Christian to adopt, he notes that "courage isn't just one of the virtues, but the form of every other virtue at its testing point." 

I'd push that even further, though. Take the definition I gave earlier as an example: our problem is that we think courage comes from being strong – but listen ! Not a single one of us is strong! We're all weak – we just choose to operate under our pride. Courage is not being strong, it’s staying faithful to God who is strong, when every circumstance implores us not to. Courage is walking through the periods of life that we can't see the end of. There are times when every message from my flesh relays to me that trusting in God just isn't working – and that's exactly why I'm going to keep doing it. Every quality of our character is put to its testing point, and the state of our faith is exposed! Screwtape encouraged his nephew to keep constant options of safety running in the back of his mind, so that he wouldn't be able to focus on trusting "the Enemy" (referring to God) to protect him. Then, when the moment comes, he'll act in cowardice when his own strength fails or runs out. He implores with his nephew that acts of cowardice are all that matters - trusting that we've built ourselves up enough to act independently is what leads to cowardice and fearful panic. Trusting the Lord to bring us where we need to be when it makes no sense is the complete definition of courage.

This is the first step to improving ourselves to produce any fruit that we seek to; to fight against any desire that we want to run from. So it's the most simple – with faith, comes courage.


Living in Fear vs. Being Scared

Hold on though! Because no one's reading this and walking away from it with perfect courage. I need to say this – courage is the opposite of giving in to fear, HOWEVER – I really don't think that means that when we have courage, we don't have fear. I think you can follow God's command of being courageous while you have fear. I'm not contradicting God's commands – "be not afraid" is like the main thing that the Lord and His angels gave anytime they communicated with someone in Scripture. There's a difference between living in fear and having fear. Though I can see why it might sound confusing, I consider the former to be living in fear, and the latter as "being scared." I think we can pursue God's will while being scared. Everything comes down to what we're giving the most power to. I might be scared, but I'm choosing to put God over that and trust Him to deliver me, despite the feelings of fear that tell me He can't.


Redefining Courage

We like the idea of being courageous people. But practicing courage, like all virtues, usually looks ugly. It feels, horrible, and awkward. It doesn't feel like nobly charging into battle with the admiration of everyone behind us and facing us. It doesn't always look like people respecting you for doing or saying something that everyone else was too afraid to. Point being, it doesn't usually come with recognition or acknowledgement. It comes with discomfort. It comes with feelings of isolation, and even with what feels like absolute silence from God. It comes with so much hurt.

Courage doesn't just develop despite fear at times – courage exists because of fear, with fear as a prerequisite. Not strength in the midst of pain, grief, and/or fear. Drop the and/or. Courage is simply a virtue given to us by God that represents faithfulness in the midst of fear. Whether it be fear of pain. Or of loss. Or of death. Or of missed opportunities. Or whatever the enemy has placed so deliberately to creep around you and loom above you. It's always going to scare us, because those curses were created specifically to infiltrate our hearts and minds to keep us from seeing and hearing our Father. Don't be surprised that it scares you, but instead know that however intense the fear, the greater the courage we have the opportunity to put on.

Everyone is scared !!! We waste so much time trying to appear strong, like we're too grown to be scared. Can we be honest with ourselves, just for a moment? Because if we act like we "don't care" for long enough, we might be unfortunate enough to actually stop caring. We're all scared. I'm scared. Life scares me. There's so much that's unexpected, and I want control over it. I'm not getting control – that much has been made clear to me. Stop trying to get rid of the fear before you let God mold you into someone that He can conquer it through. That's not trust, it's pride, and it's going to drive you deeper into confusion and frustration than you were to begin with. We have one option to move forward, which is doing it scared from the start. You've got the instructions! "Do not deviate from them . . . [and] you will be successful in everything you do. (Jos. 1:7, NLT)"

Trusting God is scary, so do it scared. 

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