EXCERPT FROM Breakthrough Courage: 9 Habits to Conquer Fear and Build a Brave Heart
God created you with the ability to overcome obstacles. Embracing hardship builds strong people. You have what it takes to overcome the challenges each day brings because God made you to be an overcomer. The entire Bible is a book about overcoming. Jesus challenged all of us as believers not to forget that our world will throw tribulation at us, but through Him, we can be overcomers.
Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good courage, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
One of the many aspects of Jesus I have grown to appreciate is His constant appeal to reality. Jesus never promises us some ideal, “pie in the sky” life. Rather, He is realistic in His description of life’s challenges.
Hard Leads to Easy, and Death Leads to Life
In calling us to a higher purpose for our existence, Jesus makes a counterintuitive statement:
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth…he who does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34~39)
In other words, “Hard leads to easy, and death leads to life.” Note that Jesus did not say, “Take up your bed and follow Me!” He never promised comfort and ease. The direction of being a brave disciple of the Kingdom of God is the cross.
Never did Jesus proclaim you would have an easy life. He says that what you are looking for is the authentic life—but such a life comes only through death of self. Death leads to life.
Jesus used the cross as a metaphor for life even before He was crucified. He uses “the cross” as the symbol He wanted His disciples to visualize in following Him.
The Roman cross was the cruelest, most hideous picture of reality Jesus could have used. Nothing in our modern world compares to it. It was a form of capital punishment in which the victim was nailed to a wooden beam until bleeding out, exhaustion, or asphyxiation brought about expiration. It was a slow, torturous death.
In our modern vernacular, Jesus is saying: “Embrace the hardest and most difficult things and follow Me!” Facing this life with strength and courage will be strenuous. He did not come to bring ease and comfort. He is challenging you to take ownership of your destiny by taking up your cross. No one else can do it for you.
Rosa Parks embraced hard. She faced racial segregation head on by refusing to sit in the “blacks only” seating in the back of an Alabama bus on December 1, 1955. Parks went on to write about the event, saying, “The only tired I was tired of was giving in.” She stepped out with fearful bravery! Her act of facing, rather than running away from hardship, is considered one of the pivotal acts of the Civil Rights Movement.
As a young girl, Bethany Hamilton loved surfing and dreamed of competing professionally. But at the age of thirteen, a shark bit off her left arm. Instead of giving up, she embraced difficulty and went back to surfing a month after the accident and went on the win a national championship eleven years later. You could write a whole encyclopedia covering the men and women throughout history who embraced and overcame the “hard” in their lives. If you are going to walk in courage, you will have to face fear and difficulty!
Pastor Steve
