Called to a New NormalSample

More heart, More Courage

Courage (n).—mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

Our English word courage comes from an Anglo-French word that means “more heart”. A courageous person, then, is a person who is distinguished by having more heart. He is wholehearted in what he’s doing. She is all there, and she is all dialed in. He may not be perfect, but he has integrity. She is “integrated”—all of her is moving in the same direction. If you want more courage, in reality what you really need is more heart. That doesn’t mean that your knees won’t ever knock or that your heart won’t ever flutter. More heart doesn’t mean you never feel uncertain, intimidated, or outmatched. More heart doesn’t mean you naturally live in perpetual tranquility, or that you are always calm and collected. More heart has to do with the courage we possess. If strength is related to trust in God, courage is what happens when God’s strength permeates your soul. Living with more heart has to do with the resolve and focus that flows from a convinced heart. 

“We are more than conquerors through him who loved us,” the apostle Paul said in Romans 8:37. The idea is not that we’d meagerly survive, that we’d barely get by, or even that we’d merely win, succeed, or conquer. Rather it is that we are more than conquerors. There is a kind of victory that God makes possible that transcends our feeble ideas of victory.

When God calls you to be courageous, it is not just for you; it always affects the people around you, even people you have not yet met. 

Over and over again—first to Moses and then to Joshua— God says to be strong and courageous. In Joshua 1:6, God says, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers, ” (ESV). The reason you are called to be strong and courageous is not for you or about you; it has direct implications for everyone around you. 

I don’t know who has labeled you, named you, spoken against you, or spoken into you. But I know that a better word has been spoken over you than any words spoken out of fear. It is the voice of the One who calls you “beloved”. It is the voice that says in the words of 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (NIV). You are chosen, royal, special, and summoned by God out of the ordinary into the new normal. God’s voice calls you into the land even now; He tells you that you are not defeated or unqualified. Rather, you are more than a conqueror. His voice calls you to take the promised land. 

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” (Romans 8:37-39, NIV).