Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid.
Do not be discouraged.
For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1.9.
Whenever there is a call to courage,
sometimes my initial reaction is actually fear.
Because I think to myself,
well, I don't feel like a brave person.
How am I supposed to be courageous?
And then I realized that maybe that reaction
is the whole point.
Because scripture doesn't treat courage
like a personality trait.
It's actually a command.
And you don't command someone to have brown eyes.
You command something that requires a decision.
Courage is a choice.
It's not a trait that some people are born with
and some people aren't.
And that's really good news.
And here's what stopped me in my tracks.
In scripture, God never gives the command
without giving a guarantee.
In Joshua 1.9, in Deuteronomy 31.6, in Isaiah 41.10,
when God commands us to be courageous,
he follows it with a guarantee, because I am with you.
The command is never separated from the promise.
And that means that courage is not supposed to be
something that we manufacture on our own
or something we're born with.
It grows from knowing that God is with us.
He's not visiting.
He's not just checking in with us periodically.
But he is permanently united to you in Christ.