Courage

I keep thinking about my previous post and how I wrote that I get discouraged. At one point as the word passed through my mind, I realized that "discouraged" has "courage" in it. Courage has a special meaning for me as it came up during my inner healing; what Jesus thinks of me. One of it's definition on dictionary.com is - the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear. From that definition it would appear that it depends on my mind, whether I will be courageous or not. And the Bible seems to tell that courage is for the taking, as it commends to "take courage".

"Wait for the Lord; be strong,

and let your heart take courage;

wait for the Lord!"

~Psalm 27:14

I also looked up the dreaded "discourage". And here are the words that came up: deprive of courage, hope, or confidence; dispirit; dishearten - to depress the hope, courage - to make sad or gloomy; lower in spirits; to lower in force, vigor, activity; weaken; make dull; to lower in amount or value; to put in a lower position.

All of which I don't want but could relate to. No wonder I feel awful. 
 

Today I read in my daily devotional that it was said of Jesus - "He shall not fail nor be discouraged," because He never worked from His own individual standpoint but always from the standpoint of His Father, and we have to learn to do the same.

 

And one more word came up - encourage. Which means to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence; to stimulate by assistance, approval; to promote, advance, or foster. All of which I would gladly receive.
 

"May the God of endurance and encouragement
grant you to live in such harmony with one another,

in accord with Christ Jesus."

~Romans 15:5

 

And wouldn't you know it, tomorrows devotional title is "Individual discouragement and personal enlargement", which I could not resist reading today.

 

Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After the first strike for God and for the right, God allowed Moses to be driven into blank discouragement, He sent him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared and told Moses to go and bring forth His people, and Moses said- "Who am I, that I should go?" In the beginning Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.

 

We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing, then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call, and we get the quaver in and say - "Oh, who am I?" We have to learn the first great stride of God - "I AM THAT I AM hath sent thee." We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God (see Matthew 3:17). We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision - "This is what God wants me to do"; but we have not got into God's stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead. (My Utmost for His Highest - O. Chambers)

 

When I think of courage, I don't feel it's me - courageous. But I can choose to set my mind and let Jesus enable me to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear, because of His love for me.

 

"There is no fear in love,

but perfect love casts out fear.

For fear has to do with punishment,

and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."

~1 John 4:18

 

Father, help me to never work from my own individual standpoint but always from Yours. Jesus, may we encourage one another and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Lord, help me to take courage, to be strong and courageous.

Keep CZECHING IN!