COURAGE

My word for 2023 is COURAGE. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the power to stand resolute in the face of fearful circumstances, committed to truth and integrity.

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

The New Year is a good time for reflection and forming resolutions. For my adult life, I have spent this “built-in” season to reassess and seek the Lord’s input on the big picture of my life.

This year, instead of making 10 different resolutions, I spent time asking the Lord to give me one word that could become a theme, recurring again again in my thinking. I’m sure there will be many areas for growth, for discipline, for opportunity, but this one word will be like a center of gravity for all the others.

The Word I received was one I’ve been thinking a lot about. In my devotions, I read it in Psalm 31:24 “Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, All you who hope in the LORD.”

The word for me in 2023 is COURAGE. I believe this is a word that is going to be important for a lot of people because I think it's going to take courage to persevere in this coming year.

Many people, reflecting on these last two years, have been discouraged. We’ve seen so much polarization. Anyone who has lived here in the US for more than 35 years have seen things emerge that are, frankly, mind blowing. We can remember when things were different, or at least, our perception of things was different.

We didn't feel like the media was constantly lying, obviously covering for an agenda. We knew the press was biased, but it didn’t feel like a sinkhole of propaganda.

We didn't feel like the the the apparatus of the American government was actually against freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular. And we didn't think that that it could be a dangerous thing to send our kids to kindergarten, where “the professionals” really didn’t care about the priorities of parents.

Many of us realize the mask is coming off on so many things. And, to be honest, I believe we’ve only begun to see the shaking start.

As Christians, it's going to be so easy for us to to want to bury our head in the sand. But now, more than ever, we have to be courageous. We have to be courageous enough to stand up, to speak up.

We have to have the courage, when told to just go along to get along, to buck the trends.

We're going to have to have the courage to say no.

We're going to have to have courage to love. It’s going to take courage to stay engaged with people, even in the face of uncomfortable disagreement. It's much easier sometimes to ghost people or disappear from their lives or let them disappear from yours.

If you're out in public, you know people who maybe are very difficult for you to love. We're going to have to have courage to love to engage and to be Christ, like in the midst of all this going on.

My prayer this year is to be a person of courage. I will have courage to do the things the Lord wants me to do. I will have courage to love. I will have courage to stand up for truth. I will have courage to speak out.

I will be a person of courage, and I pray every single Christian will grow in courage this year because when enter the presence of God and are filled with His Spirit, He promises something amazing “…be of good courage and the Lord will strengthen your heart.”

He'll give us what we need. We'll be able to make a difference. We'll be able to lift up the truth that really will set people free. Courage attracts the strength of the Lord to our cause! Courage breeds courage. And courage is what we need to live lives of significance.