Finding Courage
Oct 4, 2009
Fear is one of the great controllers of our lives. Fear can be a good thing, but for the most part fear keeps us bound up crippling and destroying creativity, success, and prosperity. When I speak of prosperity, I am not speaking of financial prosperity. I am referring to prospering in the spiritual, emotional, and relational aspects of our lives, which lead to a sense of well being or what the Hebrews called ‘shalom.’
During the dark days of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt echoed the sentiments of both Henry David Thoreau and French essayist, Montaigne when he stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Throughout the Bible we see example after example of people using their fear as an impetus to seek God and allowing God to transform that fear into courage. One such person is not a Bible heavyweight, and one that most people are not familiar. Her name is Esther. Esther lived during the Babylonian captivity when the Hebrew people were taken as slaves by the army of the Medes and Persians around 470BC.
Ruling this vast empire was Xerxes who was also looking for a queen. Of all the women in his empire, this slave girl found favor with the King and Esther became his queen. Unbeknownst to her God was at work not only in her life, but also with his chosen people of which she was one.
No one in the palace knew that Esther was a Jew. Years earlier her cousin, Mordecai had learned of a plot to overthrow the king. He had warned the king of this plot and the rebellion was put down. In gratitude, the king was deeply indebted to Mordecai. The intrigue deepens because the king’s trusted aide Hamann is plotting to kill the queen’s cousin, Mordecai and kill off all the Jews in the empire. (An ancient Adolf Hitler)
Now Queen Esther is in a palava, a conundrum, a pickle. She knows of evil Hamann’s plot and she knows the King needs to know about it. But she is afraid. She is afraid of outing herself as a Jew and she is afraid for her life. If Hamann launches his genocide she may escape undetected, but her people will all perish. But if she enters the King’s presence without his invitation, she might be killed. No one enters the king’s presence uninvited. If you do so and the King raises his golden scepter, then you are welcome and accepted. If he does not, you are killed. It was as simple and as terrifying as that.
Read Esther 7:3-6. Indeed Esther did make the decision to go before her king. She moved from self-preservation of her own life to the greater concern for her people. God had Esther in the right place in the palace at the right moment for such a time as this. When Esther was worried about her personal safety she was fearful, unsure, hesitant and uncertain. When she got out of herself and saw the greater issue, she found the courage in spite of her fears, to do the right and good thing. In doing so she was leaving the consequences in God’s hands. And God was at work. The gallows built by Hamann to hang Mordecai was used instead to hang Hamann himself. God’s people were saved by the courage of Queen Esther who was willing to put her own life on the line for the sake of God’s people.
Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage overcomes our fears. How is that possible? Only by God’s grace. David declares in Psalm 27, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” David faced Goliath in the courage of the Lord and defeated him with a slingshot and stone. Daniel faced the lions and God closed their mouths. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace and God saved them through that fire. Time and again the Apostle Paul put found himself in fearful situations. We read in 1 Thess. 2:2 (NLT), “You know how badly we have been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, even though we were surrounded by many who oppose us.”
What fear is keeping you a prisoner in your own skin? What fearful attitude is limiting your walk with Jesus? What is fear doing in your heart? How are your fears controlling you and destroying your joy, peace and well being?
When Queen Esther took her eyes off herself, God was able to use her to save his people from annihilation. She surrendered to God’s plan for her life, and through that surrender God did an awesome work. Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:25, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” When we lose ourselves in Christ, His Spirit works in us and through us “to do and to will His good pleasure.”
Paul asked the Roman Christians in chapter 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” And then he said, “For we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Satan uses our fears to defeat us. It is the cross of Jesus that defeats Satan and takes the power out of our fears.