Quotes about Courage

Yes, Paul led his friends into all sorts of risks for Christ's sake, but they followed him cheerfully, confident of his love for them. Paul's letters glow with warm appreciation and personal affection for his fellows.

The word never means the spirit which sits with folded hands and simply bears things. It is victorious endurance … Christian steadfastness, the brave and courageous acceptance of everything life can do to us, and the transmuting of even the worst into another step on the upward way. It is the courageous and triumphant ability to bear things, which enables a man to pass breaking point and not to break, and always to greet the unseen with a cheer.7

Paul admitted to knowing fear, but it never stopped him. "I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling," he reported in 1 Corinthians 2:3, but the verb is came. He did not stay home out of fear for the journey.

Pursuing the goal, the leader never looks back or calculates escape strategies if plans turn sour. Nor does a true leader cast blame for failure on subordinates.

Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith.

It is a pitiable cowardice to try to overcome fear by ignoring the facts. We do not become masters of our fate by saying that we are. And such blatancy of pride, futile as it is, is not even noble in its futility. It would be noble to rebel against a capricious tyrant, but it is not noble to rebel against the moral law of God.

Exodus 4:14). Let us not pass the buck of leadership because we think ourselves incapable.

Leaders require courage of the highest order -- always moral courage -- and often physical courage as well. Courage is that quality of mind that enables people to encounter danger or difficulty firmly, without fear or discouragement.

Not everyone is courageous by nature. But whether we are bold or reticent, God calls leaders to be of good courage and not to capitulate to fear. Such a call to courage would be rather pointless if nobody feared anything. Because fear is a real part of life, God gives us the Holy Spirit, who fills us with power. But we must let the power do its work, and not fear.

I am in fact a Hobbit, in all but size.

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.