-Developing Courage

When we look at His characteristics, it wasn’t just that He was very godly in the standard categories of godliness we generally think about. He was also very, very courageous. He had a willingness to put himself at risk physically and emotionally, when it was right to do so. When we put ourselves at risk, when we jeopardize our life and limb or our emotional safety for the right reasons, we are exercising courage. The amount of courage we exercise is commensurate with the task at hand. So when there is a small threat, either physical or emotional, and we rise to the occasion, we are exercising a smaller amount of courage. When we are facing a much more difficult situation, either physical or emotional, it requires more courage.

Here is the problem, of course. What happens when we face a circumstance that is greater than the courage that we happen to have? This is a time when the Holy Spirit often, but not always, comes through for us and gives us a supernatural courage we would never be able to muster in terms of our own spiritual substance. It’s kind of like a soulish adrenaline rush where we go beyond ourselves and are able to accomplish more than what we have in ourselves in that moment. God comes to our aid, just like adrenaline might come to our aid when we are faced with a physical crisis and we can lift something much heavier than we ever could – a car off a child, for example. Even though the Holy Spirit may come through for us in particular moments and instances when we need extra strength in the area of courage, it doesn’t mean that we ought not be developing our own inherent soulish strength. How is it that we can work on strengthening our souls in the area of courage so that we can exemplify the proper courage, the virtue of courage, when the circumstance requires it?

After class one day, Dr. Cox made an observation about a circumstance of a family who was facing a situation where one of the children had a serious illness. In order to resolve the illness, there needed to be a kidney transplant. It turned out that the only kidney available that would work was the kidney of one of the other family members, the father. What happens when you’re faced with a situation like that? One would like to think that you would give up your kidney for your child. But part of our conversation was, what happens when you are faced with a demanding circumstance where you want to do what is right and virtuous, but you cannot summon the capability within yourself to do what you need to do? There is a virtue missing there. The strength of character is not there to carry out that which you know is right and which you would like to do.

His observation was: In a circumstance like this, what’s missing is courage. The courage to part with an organ of your own body, for example, on behalf of someone else. That is a big step, isn’t it? How does one develop courage? How do you ever get to a point that you can actually say, “I am going to do what I need to do. I have the courage to make this strong step of sacrifice.” It occurred to me that in this modern society there are very few circumstances where physically we are endangered such that we get some practice in exercising our courage. We have so many conveniences, so many things to make our life easier. We don’t have to go out and hunt for food. We don’t encounter wild animals. We are not in businesses and professions, for the most part, in which we lay our life on the line. We avoid pain at all costs. The minute we get a little headache, we dive for the aspirin. We have no experience with pain and challenge to our courage. Most of the time we aren’t fighting battles. It’s not that kind of society. Because we don’t have that, we don’t develop courage. Every time we get close to something that might stretch us in the area of courage, we run the other way seeking comfort and safety. Therefore, it isn’t surprising to me that there are very few things anyone will die for anymore. They say things like this: It’s just not worth your life. If somebody wants to steal your car, give it to them. It’s not worth your life.

Every time we say something like that, we give away a big chunk of civilization. Because then any bully can come along and threaten with pain and get exactly what he wants. How do we avoid that? I think we have to strengthen ourselves in the area of courage. I’m no different than anybody else. I need to do this as well. I used to be a rock climbing instructor with Summit Expedition many years ago. Our goal then was to orchestrate circumstances in which people were put in apparently dangerous situations where they had to master their fear and solve a problem. In most cases, this had to be done on the face of a rock. They were safe. They had ropes. They had good instructors. But they didn’t feel safe hanging 200 feet above the ground out in Joshua Tree. That was one of the goals, of course, to put people in situations where they were forced to make decisions under stress and they were forced to face their fears and be courageous. A lot of them were not up to it. Grown men would rather quit with tears than do the job, face the fear and come up with the courage to finish, even though it wasn’t that hard. But it was scary. Most of us don’t get practice on the rock. So what do we do?

I mentioned there were two types of threats, physical and emotional. We don’t face physical threats too often. When we do, we are generally not up to them because our courage has never been stretched. But I think we face emotional threats quite frequently. I think our tendency is to do the same that we do with the physical threat: run from it, because it is uncomfortable, scary, and it’s challenging. This is my recommendation: When you face small threats in the future, my encouragement is to rise to the occasion. Everyone can do this for small things, whether physical or emotional. Stand up to the need. Straighten your back. Lift your head up. Stick your chin out. Set your jaw and do what is right. The key will be having in mind that you are going to choose to do the courageous thing in the face of the threat so that you can strengthen the virtue of courage in your life. Just like lifting weights, you start out small first. Build on this as a habit pattern, doing the small things right, even in the face of emotional or physical threat, to strengthen your own personal courage. I’ve had this happen myself and said, “I’m going to face this that is hard with the idea that I am going to strengthen my courage. I’m going to be courageous in this.” As we start lifting the smaller weights, as it were, strengthening our courage, when the big issues face us, whether physical or emotional, we will have a reserve of courage to do the job we need to do.