Win The World: Christian Courage

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

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We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

Well, I say that I'm really grateful disciples to campus and youth group, especially.

So thank you so much for taking the time or sacrificing your time and money and energy and spiritual focus or whatever.

I know that you could be at home and work at your campuses, you know, evangelize Americans, which is your kind of goal, mission field, but you do it here to help us out.

And we are really grateful for that.

Thank you so much.

All right.

I have 15 minutes.

Like you said, now I have 14 and a half, so let's talk about virtual courage for 15 minutes.

Come on, bro.

So, um, courage is one of the main virtues, um, amazing Greece, uh, if you read, if you have time and if you have interest, if you read old, um, Greek philosophers like Plato or Aristotle, they talked about virtues of courage all the time, because it was one of the main virtues that you had to have to sustain life of your household or your city or your country.

So, and it was also very much connected with the virtue of friendship at that time.

Uh, if you read, um, for example, the old, uh, Japanese Samurai codes of Bushido, uh, virtues, one of the main virtues there and, uh, somehow soldiers had to be courageous enough to give their life for the cause and not be afraid of death.

And I think also in our times, virtue is one of the good, uh, courage is one of the virtues that's really highlighted that is, is, um, important in society.

And if you look at the modern culture, the movies, you know, courage is something that people admire.

They want to lift it up and they want to live courageously.

But what does it mean to live courageously as a Christian?

Is it similar to Bushido code or is it similar to Aristotle or Plato or ancient Greek virtue of courage?

John 1633, John 1633, Jesus says, I have told you these things so that in me, you may have peace in this world.

You will have trouble, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.

So to take heart means get courage, get confidence.

And Jesus says that we need courage in this world because there is a lot of trouble, uh, not only in everyone's life, but also Christians have a particular kinds of troubles that they need to go through.

So let me give a definition of courage.

Um, it's not mine, but I like it.

Person behaves courageously when he or she chooses a course of action based upon a criteria based upon a certain set of values or ideals against immense pressure to do otherwise.

Person behaves courageously when he or she chooses a course of action based upon a certain set of values or ideals against immense pressure to do otherwise.

So you need to have values or ideals and something goes against these values and ideas, but you still act according to these values or ideas.

Um, I think Christian virtue is a specific kind of virtue because first it has to do with love.

Christian courage is very much connected with love.

And if you meet first John four in 17 and 18, John says, this is how love is made complete amongst us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment in this world.

We are like Jesus.

There is no fear in love.

But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.

The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

So in verse 17, John tells us how to have confidence or boldness on the day of judgment.

A lot of people are afraid of judgment and even as Christians, we can sometimes feel, you know, I don't know, have a little bit of good life.

Am I good with God?

God judged me mercifully, but the answer here is love.

If we love God and if we believe that God loves us, then it takes away the fear.

So love is pure against the fear.

Also, love should be the motivation for Christian courage.

We have black bears living in Estonia in the forests.

There's quite a lot of them, actually.

And, you know, I I've been doing hunting sometimes and I've seen them a couple of times quite closely.

Once it was about 20 meters away from me and I have a gun and everything.

But still, you see black bear in the forest, you know, your adrenaline goes up.

But actually, they are quite fearful animals.

You know, you don't have to be afraid of them because they are afraid of human beings.

And when they smell human beings or when they hear something, they just run away.

But when you get in between the mother and their cubs, that's the dangerous situation.

That's when they will attack you almost certainly.

So you have to be careful in this situation.

So bear is a fearful animal.

But if someone threatens their cubs, they will be ready to attack.

They don't have fear.

Of course, you can say that, you know, animals have fear or courage.

I think it's more instinct.

But same goes for human beings.

Right.

I mean, someone can be really timid person.

But if someone is attacking somebody they love, suddenly they are courageous.

If someone is attacking a child, parents can do crazy things to protect their child.

Right.

So love can really give strength or courage.

So love is the motivation and strength for courage.

But Christian courage is also lived out with love.

There is a story of a man, he's actually from Michigan, I think, I don't think you ever heard of the guy.

His name is Lawrence Rosebo, he's a Catholic missionary.

He was a priest and nonviolent protester.

So this was a crazy guy.

He actually protested against the Vietnam War.

So what he did actually was, I don't know if you can call it nonviolent, but he broke into the draft office and burned all the documents of the people that were supposed to be drafted into Vietnam War.

So they didn't have the documents.

In these days, you didn't have electronic files.

Right.

They were just gone.

So they arrested him.

He was in prison for 10 years for that, for a year for that, not 10 years.

And then he climbed over the fence of a nuclear weapons silo and protested there.

And he was arrested again as a crazy guy.

But and he was actually killed in Guatemala.

He served as a missionary and a priest there.

And he was shot dead.

You see, you know, probably he was doing some crazy stuff again.

But before they went to protest against something, they always would pray the whole night before the protest.

They would spend the whole night in prayer.

And then in the morning they had a mass.

You know, they were Catholics, of course.

You know, let's call it devotional.

So one thing they reminded each other was that don't hate the people that will arrest you.

You can't hate the people that will arrest you.

You need to do this out of love.

And the world doesn't need another angry person.

So if you can't do it out of love, if you can't love the people that will come and arrest you and maybe they have their hands and they will correct your behavior somehow, you have to love them.

And if you can't do it out of love, don't do it at all.

So Christian courage, if you look at Jesus, it's live out in love and with love.

So love is cure against fear.

Love is a motivation for courage in Christians lives and souls who live out in love.

You didn't like what I said, right?

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So the second thing, Christian love has to do with vulnerability.

OK, so when we are threatened, what's our natural response?

To become defensive.

Yeah, to fight back, right?

We want to fight back or we want to flee.

That's another response, right?

If we believe we can resist and we can win, we fight back.

Sometimes even if you don't believe that we can win, we fight back.

We can call it and it's called courageous aggression.

Not aggression in a bad sense, but you use force, you forcefully want to change the situation or fight back.

But if you are not strong enough to resist, then we are in a position of vulnerability and our task is to bear up well.

Well, there are situations where you can't do much.

It's a good question.

Prayer is a form of fighting as well, but you can't really change the situation sometimes.

And sometimes God puts situations in our lives where we just have to bear it.

Well, you get diagnosis, life threatening disease or you are arrested.

For whatever reason, let's say for sharing your faith in some countries or doing the right thing, you can't really change the situation.

Sometimes you can pray, but you can act vulnerable in vulnerability and you can call it courageous endurance.

That's not courageous aggression, but courageous endurance.

So our picture of courage is sometimes someone fighting for a good cause.

You know, being active, doing something, taking action, doing something.

We want Spider-Man and Superman to do something.

You know, they have superpowers.

Come on, act according to your powers.

Right.

And that is why many Jews had a hard time believing in Jesus.

They looked at Jesus and they thought, you know, this guy has to be something else.

I mean, he should be a king.

He should fight against Romans.

He should lead the revolution against the Romans.

But he didn't.

He was a different kind of Messiah.

So actually, he let himself to be arrested, tortured and crucified.

So he let this to do to himself.

And that could be a good question.

Was Christ a victor or a victim?

For us, he is a victor, not a victim.

And in the Gospels, we can see how Jesus, for the most part of his life, was extremely active.

He was teaching us through his active life, through his activity.

He was preaching the gospel.

He was saving the lost.

He was healing the people.

He was taking care of the weak and he was giving a lot of teachings.

But then in the end of his life, he was actually taken and people did things to him or with him.

And he was passive at that moment of life.

They took him to the court.

They put him to prison.

They took him and they beat him, they took him and they tortured him.

And in the end of the day, they took him and put him to the cross and crucified him.

And actually, he did more in his passivity for us than through his activities.

So it was without salvation, without forgiveness of sins, without Jesus's death.

Even the teachings are quite meaningless.

So it has to do with courageous endurance.

It could be that courageous endurance is the most courageous form of courage.

Why?

Because fear is naturally most intense when we are most vulnerable.

Fear is most intense when we are most vulnerable.

Estonians know that, but my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, exactly a year ago.

And since that, it's been constant treatment, surgery, eight times chemotherapy, twenty five sessions of radiation.

And it's going on.

It's going on after this day.

And what I've seen in her is that at that moment, of course, you fight back and she fights back.

We fight in prayer, but we can't do physically much to change the situation.

We can't turn the situation around and make this happen.

It has happened.

God has allowed it to happen for some reason, and she has to endure it courageously.

And I think seeing her doing that shows me that there is a lot of courage sometimes in actions that we don't realize.

That's the courageous endurance that I see almost every day in her life, which is very inspiring to me.

It's not courageous aggression, but it's courageous endurance.

And third thing, Christian courage has to do with faith, of course, right?

1 Samuel 17 tells us a story about David and Goliath.

And, you know, sometimes people look at the story and think, you know, this guy's self-confident, he's an independent young man, he's brave enough to fight for what is right and relies on his own strength and skills.

It is true.

David is courageous.

And courage is a great, glorious virtue.

But when David faced Goliath, his courage was based upon faith.

Because in the preceding chapter, in 1 Samuel 16, Samuel the prophet had informed David that God had chosen him to be the next king of Israel and anointed him with his brothers around him.

1 Samuel 16, 13 says, Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.

And the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.

And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

So he relied on God's promise.

God had told him through the prophet, you will be next king of Israel.

And then later he meets this Goliath guy.

You know, I should be a king, you know, I can't actually die on the battlefield for becoming a king, you know, so, but of course, it's a battle, it's, you know, it's the same would be with us if God tells us a promise or whatever, we are struggling with it.

That's just the same for him.

But he relied in faith on God's promise.

And of course, he had experienced, like he says that I've, you know, I've been shepherd and I've taken care of the bear and, you know, whoever has attacked my lambs, he had experienced from before.

He looked how God had helped him in the past.

So he relied on God's promises, something that God has said, but not done yet, but also on something that God had already done in his life previously.

He relied on this experience in his relationship with God.

So Christian courage in some ways is similar to whatever kind of courage, but it's the distinctive, it's a specific kind of courage because it has to do first with love.

It's our motivation for courage.

Love is our strength for courage.

Love is why we should do it.

We should live it out in love.

Courage has to do with vulnerability and sometimes the courageous endurance is the biggest kind of courage.

We can say not only the courageous at first and the third thing, Christian courage has to do with faith.

So it's a distinctive, it's a specific kind of courage in the scriptures that you can see.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast.

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