A Call to Courage
This past weekend, as part of our Rocky Series, I spoke about COURAGE.
This week, I had a conversation with someone that illustrated to me the need we have to be people of courage as followers of Jesus.
The conversation centred around a particular situation that required resolution but taking those steps to resolve the matter were difficult and even unpleasant. The person in question obviously wasn’t keen on dealing with it. I understand that entirely. I really do. It was a sticky, messy and unpleasant thing that would be better just to ignore and avoid if possible. But, with Jesus, avoidance is seldom the solution. Jesus isn’t ok with skirting around problems and pretending they’re not there. Instead, Jesus is far more interested in sorting things out, getting to the heart of the matter and transforming situations, relationships and issues from muck to something good and beautiful. Jesus isn’t interested in confrontation just for confrontation’s sake. He isn’t about “getting it off our chest” by unloading on someone who has done us wrong. He’s about healing.
But, that kind of following of Jesus takes a great deal of courage, because it isn’t easy and it doesn’t come naturally to us. We’d rather avoid and evade. We’d rather ignore the infection and pretend it isn’t there. But, Jesus is all about healing. And that takes courage to step aside of pride, pain, unforgiveness, and whatever else holds us back, and to be people of courage.
Deep down, I think the person I was chatting with knew exactly what Jesus would have them do. I think more often than not we all know what Jesus would have us do. But it’s hard and messy, and so we hold back. We need courage and faith to trust that Jesus can do something amazing in the midst of even the most dysfunctional or painful circumstance, not willing to accept brokenness as ok.
I’m more convinced than ever that we are being called to courage.