What you’ve just read were our true feelings when we were unable to be brave in our lives. For both of us, life was out of control, and “brave” would not have been a description of us. We were letting the world win, seeing no hope and finding no strength for the job of life. It wasn’t until we learned some things about this life and the next that we finally were able to see things as they really are and to gain the bravery we needed to not only deal with our crazy fears but to continually conquer them.
The natural tendency of all of us humans is to fear. It’s about self-preservation. Self-preservation is the most important thing in life, because without it, well, there is no life. So when things get rough, dangerous, or uncertain, humans fear the worst.
Can you relate? Do you ever doubt the best and fear the worst? Are you stressed? Do you worry? When you want to just give up, stop the fight, and hide in your room, you have lost your bravery. When pain and suffering are knocking on your door and threatening to whup you upside the head and you are going crazy with just the thought of it all, you need to be brave.
Everyone has times in their lives when God just doesn’t come through the way we expected, when heaven even sounds empty, if not angry. That’s really what’s at the root of all your fear, doubt, worry, and stress: this sense that your world is a mess and no one cares—or at the very least, no one who can do anything about it.
Fear tells you that God has checked out, that his anger is stronger than his love, and that you are doing this thing called life all alone. Fear isn’t just about the inability to charge into battle, but it’s about your inability to cope with everyday life and your desire to just give up. And that’s where being brave comes in.
The Brave aren’t genetically different from the rest of us; they just have learned to see things differently. They know the answer to the question “Why?” and because of that they have the courage to face their fears and their doubts. The Brave have faith—not in themselves but in their God. When everything around them says he’s checked out and not to be trusted, their faith kicks in and takes over. That’s because they fear God more than they fear anything else in this world. That doesn’t mean they are scared of him, but they know his power, his ability, and his love, and they know that they're bigger than even the biggest pain or trouble they could ever face.
With just a simple acceptance of what God wants to give you, you too can have the bravery you’ve been missing. When you learn the truth about your life from the perspective of the divine, things change in a major way. For us they sure did.
That’s the way things are for us today, at least most days. We still have our cowardly moments, but we’ve come a long way in the past few years. We’ve seen some amazing acts of God and learned some incredible things about him. He can be trusted, we know that for sure. And when you know that for sure, brave will be a description of you. Your fear and doubt is about your inability to manage your world. We can totally relate to that. Life gets out of control a lot. Lots of dangerous things, stupid things, and downright ugly things can happen to you. But the one thing we are sure of is the one thing that never changes, and that is God’s goodness and power.
In The Brave we want to convince you of that and reveal to you God’s hand in your life. We want you to know that you aren’t alone and that what you can’t control, he can. In the chapters that follow, you are going to get the truth about who God is and why hard things happen in your life. We are going to talk about your pain and your suffering and about his. We are going to talk about what you fear that makes sense and what you fear that is pointless. What we hope to do is to give you all the bravery you need to deal with all the stuff in your life with calm, peace, and hope.
2–9 Odd Numbers True: Scared—We are defining being scared as letting being afraid control you. Being scared is being full of fear. It is seeing the things that are fearful as important in your life and even as defining your life. “I’m afraid of flying, so I won’t get on an airplane” is a statement a scared person makes. Hayley knows all about this. Most of her life she was scared of flying. She was sure that any plane she got on would crash and she would die a torturous and horrible death. She would do anything she could not to have to fly. Each time she did have to fly, she would panic and freak out the entire flight. So she knows about being consumed with fear, and it’s no fun. The lack of brave in a life is horrific. It gives fear the main stage in life. But that doesn’t have to be the final story; it wasn’t for Hayley, and it doesn’t have to be for you. You can take charge by giving God control and changing the way you live. Turn scared into brave!
2–9 Even Numbers True: Self-Confident—Self-confidence is an amazing thing. It makes life more manageable. It gives you self-control, certainty, and the ability to be brave. Self-confident people look at scared people and think, “That makes no sense.” Their confidence comes naturally; they are sure of their abilities, their skills, and their strengths. They can take care of situations and handle whatever comes. Their lives exhibit much bravery and success, but it isn’t a constant. They can have moments of fear, doubt, and insecurity. Of course, their strong sense of self can override most of that and get them back on top. The trouble with self-confidence, however, is in the word self. Confidence in that which is human is weak at best, because humans are broken, sinful, and imperfect. We all are. And while self-confidence has its amazing traits, it can also quickly plummet in the face of failure or rejection, or just as bad, it can become deceptive, self-important, a cover-up for insecurities, or just plain prideful. Self-confidence sounds better than it really is.
1–2 Total True: The Brave—People who are a part of the Brave are neither scared nor self-confident but put their confidence in God. They know they can do anything if God is willing. They trust that no matter what might come, God is in control. They trust his goodness so much that even if the mountains should fall into the sea, they will not fear (see Ps. 46:1–2). That’s because they put their confidence in the perfection of God rather than in the imperfection of humans. There’s something supernatural about the Brave. That’s because being brave is next to impossible without God. And that’s the secret to all the brave that you need: brave doesn’t come from within; it comes from a faith in the one who can save you, who has only the best planned for you and the grace to give it to you.
The Brave aren’t perfect people with perfect skin, perfect smiles, and perfect muscles. They aren’t an elite Delta Squad trained to withstand extreme conditions and insurmountable odds. The Brave are not extraordinarily gifted people who fearlessly go where no man has gone before.
The Brave are imperfect, broken people who, through no strength of their own, endure all things, suffer well, replace worry with faith, and swap doubt with trust. The Brave are simply those who have learned their own limitations and are okay with them, leaving all that they lack to the one who lacks nothing. The Brave are the faithful whose lives don’t revolve around themselves but revolve around their God, who is worthy of all their attention and praise.
The Brave have no respect for the feelings that threaten their belief but all the faith imaginable in the power and the love of their God. Feelings like worry, doubt, fear, dejection, self-condemnation, self-hatred, envy, and bitterness—none of these make sense to the brave mind because these call God a liar, calling into question his faithfulness, kindness, forgiveness, justice, and love. The Brave are those who have discovered the contradictions in their feelings, thoughts, and beliefs and have worked hard to let go of fear and let God be who the Bible says he is. They have given all things to God, allowing the Holy Spirit to infiltrate and inform all of their thoughts and choices, actions and inactions because of their complete trust in God.
All this means that the Brave know who God is and what God can do, as well as who they are and what they can’t do. So the Brave are not controlled by the waves of their emotions or the danger of their circumstances. Notice we said controlled by. The Brave still have emotions, feelings, and even fears, but they quickly surrender them to God instead of giving in to them. That means they don’t freak out when everyone else freaks out. They don’t panic when all looks lost. They don’t fall into a depression when life isn’t all they thought it would be. They don’t dwell on the negative, doubting the kindness and sovereignty of God, but they believe, they hope, and they count on his mercy, power, and grace to get them through even the toughest storm. They don’t see life the same way the doubter does. They aren’t worried about what mean people think, what evil people do, or what angry people say. They trust the words of the prophet Isaiah when he said, “‘Don’t say that everything these people call a conspiracy is a conspiracy. Don’t fear what they fear. Don’t let it terrify you.’ Remember that the Lord of Armies is holy. He is the one you should fear and the one you should be terrified of. He will be a place of safety for you” (Isa. 8:12–14). That is why they are considered the Brave—not because of their own strength but because of his.
Since it has nothing to do with who you are, you too can be part of the Brave. The only strength you need to have is the strength to believe in a God who can be all that we need him to be. But maybe you say, “I already believe, but that hasn’t helped me with the fear in my life. That hasn’t made rejection any easier or failure any funner (yes, my grammar fails sometimes). How can I believe enough to become a part of the Brave?” What a good question. So glad you asked. The good news is that if you already believe, then all it will take to get brave into your life is a minor tweak or two, an adjustment in your belief, a reminder of the truth that you know in your heart of hearts. The brave you’re looking for isn’t that far away; in fact, it can be yours in a matter of moments. Bravery may have escaped you all these years just because you didn’t know one little thing about who God is that will change your entire perspective on who you are. That’s what happened to us. We suddenly saw God as sovereign—powerful enough to be in control of everything. We saw his hand in everything in our lives, and we trusted that hand. All we had to do was to understand this one thing about God, and an entire avalanche of truth started pouring down on us and giving us more bravery than we had ever imagined. And it came without an inflated view of ourselves or some amazing kung fu skills.
We aren’t writing to you from the perspective of people who have always had it all together but totally the opposite—we have been complete messes, consumed with worry, fear, doubt, addiction, idolatry, anger, and the list goes on. But we have found the secret to contentment that Paul talks about in Philippians 4:11. The life God has given us, the pain, the suffering, the isolation, the failure, the bad stuff as well as the good—all of it is fine with us, because we know who has everything under control. We are the Brave because we believe in a perfect God with a perfect plan, and we believe he has a perfect plan for you too. So if you are ready to become a part of the brave followers of the only true God, let’s get this thing going!
If you aren’t ready for that kind of ride, we understand how you feel, and we have something just for you. You get to flip ahead to the end of the book. The next chapter has a little something to help you better understand the God we are talking about and counting on for all the bravery that this life will ever require. Know God and know brave. Know fear? Then let us introduce you to the God who loves, and see if what you learn about him doesn’t just change your entire life today.