“Be strong and of good courage. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6
“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
2 Timothy 1:7
Courage is deficient in the religious world today. Men are too scared to share the gospel, too scared to teach it to their kids and then they wonder why the church is shrinking in the United States. The church shrinks because no man possesses the testicles necessary to evangelize.
Courage comes from taking the actions most men are terrified of taking. Men do not have to stop being afraid, they just have to take action regardless of their fear. The problems arise when men use fear as an excuse to not do what they know they should.
You do not get a reward for being scared. No one pats the back of the fearful man, or looks at him with admiration and inspiration. No man is excused from acting righteously just because he is scared to do so. It is wrong to let fear keep men from being virtuous, but it is not wrong to be filled with fear. Fear is a tool.
All negative emotions should be transmuted into positive actions.
Men do not face many situations today that are as fear inspiring as what the Israelites encountered when they prepared to conquer Canaan. They were told to have no fear as they were heading to battle (Joshua 10:25). They had to fight hand-to-hand and eye-to-eye with their adversaries. Death by hand-held weapon would be most painful.
Men are commanded to stand face to face with what they fear, and attack it. They must charge at the source of their terror and cast it down at their feet, destroy it and replace it with strength and bravery. This is the goal. Even if the fear cannot be eliminated, men can become braver and stronger.
Courage is an action.
Men have no courage while they are sitting on the couch. Men have no bravery from thinking about what they should do. The courage only comes when you take action. Like anything else in your faith, you must take action for it to be effective. Faith is not possible without action, neither is salvation. If a man wants courage, he has to assault his fears and face them by his own free will. While courage is an action, fear is just an emotion.
Mantra
Courage is growing in my mind. Fear has no place here in my thoughts.
Application
Put yourself in the middle of what you fear. You must face your fear voluntarily, it cannot be forced upon you. You must choose of your own free will to have courage and experience what you fear, this is how courage is built. Do not expect overnight results in anything you try to do. Sure, some people can radically change themselves overnight whilst embodying pure motivation, but that is usually not the common man. Get to work today. Slowly build your courage over successive days of efficient action. This is the only way to build anything: one brick before the next until you have a house. Grow your courage. Expand your possibilities. Improve and sharpen your mind. Eviscerate your fear. Strengthen your will. Be a man.
“The way to make people resilient is by voluntarily exposing them to things they are afraid of and that make them uncomfortable”. ~ Jordan Peterson.
- Identify Fear (Fear of talking to others)
- Identify the smallest action you can take in facing that fear (Looking at pictures or reading actricles about talking to others.
- Plan the action (Write down a few things to say to someone else)
- Take Action (Talk to the other person. Go over your lines and work from there).
Conduct Yourselves Like Men.
One thought on “Courage”