Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

The root of the word courage comes from the Latin cor, the word for the heart. Author and researcher Brené Brown says, “Courage is a heart word.”

So much of our lives demand that we be courageous. In big and small decisions, we are constantly invited to be courageous and live from the place of our hearts.

To live from our hearts is to live from our deepest place of vulnerability and trust our gut instinct. 

However, instead of living from a place of courage, we often live from a place of fear.

We are held back because we don’t think we are good enough, that things won’t work out anyway, and that we are comfortable with our current situation. Our fears calculate all the little details and consume us with worries and preoccupations about things we have no need to be concerned about.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?” (Matthew 6:25-27).

Our fear of not having enough or not being enough—a scarcity mentality—holds us back! 

And I think at the root of our cowardice is an unwillingness to embrace uncertainty, to take leaps of faith and to trust in the Lord.

I love to keep things under control in a nice and tidy box. It’s a box that loves to avoid any sort of risk or opportunity to fail. But that armour prevents the power of God from moving in me and through me to do great things in my own life and the lives of others.  

In her popular 2012 TED Talk, Brené Brown says, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

Vulnerability is true courage because we accept ourselves as we are and love ourselves as we are. Our vulnerability allows us to share with the world our real selves. Jesus desires to use the real you. By accepting our weaknesses and flaws, we allow Jesus to go to work.

Cowardice gives us false armour that limits God from moving in our lives. However, being vulnerable, without any such armour or defences, is where true strength lies and where God moves most. God can’t move if the armour of cowardice and fear weighs us down.

So yes, be afraid. But be even more brave. Turn to the Lord and trust in His promises and His plan. 

Patrick is a beloved son of the Father who desires to use his gifts to build up the Kingdom of God. You can read more of his writing on his blog.