Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” This episode is about how to be strong and courageous in the face of terrifying circumstances. Here are the words from our Lord that I promised to put in the episode summary: “My little ones, when you feel that your cup is empty and you have nowhere else to go, call me, talk to me, sing to me, call out love to me, and I will fill that cup to overflowing. In my Name is your refuge, your courage. In my Name is all the power that you need to go on each day with all you do. In my Name alone you will find comfort, rest, courage, love, mercy poured out upon you by me, just for your calling on my Name, Jesus. Go and spread my love to one and all. Fear not to move forward in my love, my joy and my power. Love is meant to be shared. As I love you so must you love others. I am always with you.” Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Be Strong and Courageous
Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Do you ever wish things were as easy at they seemed. Be strong and courageous, that seems pretty easy. I can do that. I can do that right up until I can’t. I can do that when things are going my way. I can do that when my kids are nice and safe. I can do that when my marriage is going great. I can do that when my husband’s job is nice and secure. I can do that when our health is great. Then there are the other times. How can I be strong and courageous when we find out my husband has testicular cancer? How can I be strong and courageous when we find out my husband lost his job? What about when our children are sick, or unsafe? What about when are marriage is falling apart. How does one be strong and courageous when things are in turmoil and you don’t know what way is up?
This verse says, “Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” This verse shows us that the Lord knows us, He knows our heart. He not only tells us not to be afraid, but he tells us not be be terrified. That is what many of us feel when we are faced with the unknown. And who could blame us, the unknown is terrifying. It is scary when you find out that a loved one has a disease that has claimed the lives of so many. I know there are many different kinods of cancer and some are more curable than others. However, anyone that hears their loved one has cancer, they are terrified. They don’t wait to hear any details. Just the word cancer brings up all these scary feelings, for those that have it and for those whose loved one has it. It is similar with all the other things I mentioned. You are terrified when you are unsure about your child’s safety, and when your marriage is falling apart. It is terrifying to be losing your job unexpectedly and not have a plan, especially if you have a wife and kids to take care of. So, if all these things are terrifying, and God knows it, why is He telling us not to be afraid?
The Lord is telling us not to be afraid because even though it may feel terrifying and we may feel very alone, we are not alone. He is there with us. God never leaves our side and He never forsakes us. I looked up the word forsake, which I find myself doing a lot while writing these episodes. I find it really helps me understand the verses better if I know the actual meaning of the word, not just kinda know what it means. Does that makes sense? Do you ever find that you know what some words mean, either from past knowledge, or from context, but if you were asked to give a definition, you are not sure you could? Forsake was one of these words for me. The actual definition of the word is abandon. God will never abandon us. He is always with us from before our conception until after our death. We can count on that. He is with us whether we can feel Him or not.
How does knowing this help us to be courageous and strong? Knowing this helps us because if we know that God is always with us we can lean in and rely on Him when we don’t have the strength. I have talked about my prayer group before and how we create these bookmarks each month from all the words that have been given to us throughout the meetings. The one we discussed at today’s meeting goes really well with this verse. Here is what it said, “My little ones, when you feel that your cup is empty and you have nowhere else to go, call me, talk to me, sing to me, call out love to me, and I will fill that cup to overflowing. In my Name is your refuge, your courage. In my Name is all the power that you need to go on each day with all you do. In my Name alone you will find comfort, rest, courage, love, mercy poured out upon you by me, just for your calling on my Name, Jesus. Go and spread my love to one and all. Fear not to move forward in my love, my joy and my power. Love is meant to be shared. As I love you so must you love others. I am always with you.” Let me read that one more time. This goes so perfectly with this verse. God is telling us once again to not be afraid and to go forth with courage.
God is telling us right here what we need to do to go forth with courage. We just need to call upon His name. We don’t need to do a million things, we don’t have to be perfect enough, we don’t have to be holy enough. In His name is our refuge, and our courage. You may not feel as though you have enough courage to make it through all the uncertainty, but God has more than enough. All the courage you need is found in His name. Just call upon Him. I will make sure to put those words from our Lord, in the episode summary so you can take a look at them because I am sure when each one of us reads it, we will all see different things. The exact words you need to hear today are different from the ones I need to hear but they are all contained in this message. Even in that first line it is showing us God is not expecting us all to do the same thing. He is sayin, call me, talk to me, sing to me, whatever works best for you, just call on the Lord’s name, any way that you know how. He is not picky. He is not looking for perfection. That is something we place on ourselves and it gets in the way of what He is calling us to. The message also says, “In my name is all the power that you need to go on each day with all you do.”
Everything we need is found in Him and only in Him. You can search elsewhere, we all do. We look to our friends and family for strength, we look to the internet, we look to the world, we look to TV and movies, we look everywhere for the strength and power we need to get through our day and yet we don’t find it. We will never find what we are looking for out there. We need to look within and we need to turn our eyes to God. He says it right here in this message to us, “In my name alone you will find comfort, rest, courage, love, and mercy poured out upon you by me.” Take a minute and think about it. Can you name one other thing that can provide you all of that?
There are still going to be uncertain times in your life. There will still be times when you get terrifying news. Hopefully, you can now face that news with a little more courage and strength knowing that when you feel weak, terrified, afraid, uncertain, you can call upon Jesus’ name and the Lord will give you all the strength, courage, love, comfort, rest, and mercy you need. You can be strong and courageous, not because you are strong on your own, but because God is strong and He will hold you up when you can’t stand. You can be strong because God will never leave you or forsake you. He is always there and if you ever need His strength or His power it is only one call away.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful that you never abandon us. I know we give you plenty of reasons to go and the fact that you stick around and you love us anyway is something we can never thank you enough for. Lord, help us to call on you. Help us to know you are there. Help us to stop looking in all the wrong places for our strength and our courage. Help us to turn to you at the first sign of trouble instead of as a last resort. Lord, we are so sorry that we do that. We are sorry we seek you last. Help us to seek you first. You are so amazing. You give us so much and we are so grateful. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!