(in)courage

(in)courage, www.incourage.me, is a new Christian blog, with lots of writers, including Angie Smith, from Bring the Rain. They kick off today and asked readers to write about what encourages them.

People with courage, encourage me.

What is courage and how do you get it? Well, courage is a noun, but really it's an adjective. Courage, to me, is bold, confident, brave, and most importantly trusting. Bold is my husband, Kyle. He's not fearful of confrontation nor adversity. He faces it every day in his profession. Confident are my little girls. The world hasn't beaten them down, told them they don't measure up, or they don't look like the girls in magazines. Brave is what I want to be. I want to raise my girls to be brave, because being brave, means you have courage, and all of the other adjectives including the most important one...trusting. What is trusting?

Faith is trusting God. From my own life, I can tell you what trusting isn't. Two years ago, I was having a full blown love affair with worry, it was my obsession. I was chained to it, in a prison of my own making. I told people that I had a strong faith in God, but I wasn't fooling anyone, particularly Him. I didn't want to worry anymore...it's oppressive, draining, and fruitless. So, I desperately wanted to learn how to really trust God. If I know God is omnipotent and sovereign and therefore in control of everything, including my life, then all the worrying should stop, right? It didn't. And so, one morning in BSF, our Lecturer was telling us how we could learn to trust God. My ears perked up, as she said we need to read God's Word, to understand it, understand it, so we could trust in it. I thought wow, I want to remember that...read, understand, trust...and so, the acronym, which I love to do, became RUT (read, understand, trust). Ahha, to get out of the worry RUT, I will read the Bible, so that I can understand it, understand it, so that I can trust God. And trusting God has set me free.

"...Christ has made us free..." Galatians 5:1

With that freedom, we can (in)courage others by having the courage to be bold in our convictions, confident in our eternity, brave in the battle, and trusting Jesus through it all.