Bravery doesn’t happen in the absence of fear. That’s because there has to be fear in order for there to be courage and in order for the brave to exist. You wouldn’t say, “I was so brave to hold that puppy!” or “It took a lot of courage to eat that piece of chocolate cake.” No fear, no bravery. It is because of the fearful things in life that the Brave even need to exist. So if you have fear, then you have been given the chance to be brave. The long-dead American general George Patton is often quoted as saying, “If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.” See, it’s the frightening nature of something that lays the foundation for bravery. So in any discussion of the idea of the Brave, we have to know bravery’s source: fear.
Fear is an important part of life. Most people don’t like it and don’t want it, but we all have it. Somewhere deep down you have things that you fear, no question. What you fear says a lot about you. In fact, your fears can explain your faith. People who don’t fear God have no faith. People who fear other people don’t fear God enough. Fear is a good gauge of faith. So let’s look deeper into the face of fear and see if that doesn’t help the brave in your life to grow.
Good Fear, Bad Fear
First of all, you have to know that not all fear is bad. There is good fear and bad fear; fear to be obeyed and fear to fight against. Good fear leads you to do things that are good and healthy, things that serve God and lead you away from danger and toward safety. Good fear says, “There’s a hurricane coming and people are being evacuated, so I’m gonna get in the car and go.” Good fear says, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31 NIV). Good fear protects you from destruction and keeps your fears from becoming reality. This kind of fear needs to be responded to with an action that does something about it. This is a saving kind of fear. In fact, it’s the fear of God himself that leads people to confess that they have gotten life all wrong and to realize that they have sinned. That fear of God’s punishment for sin—fear of life forever separated from him—leads to the most important event in a human’s life: their salvation.
You can’t categorically say that fear is bad and that you want nothing to do with it, because there are a lot of fearful things that are fearful for a reason. In these cases bravery over good fear would be insane. To say “I’m brave! I can go pet that alligator” is crazy and stupid. Some fearful things exist in order to serve you and your faith.
This is why good fears and bad fears get all muddled: because the bad fears promise to do the same thing for you. They promise to protect you from whatever you fear. Maybe you fear rejection, failure, dangers that are out of your control, or never finding love. Maybe you’re afraid of not pleasing others and what they might do to you. These kinds of fears pretend to be good fears, set in place for your own protection. Like the fear of leaving your house to avoid getting in a terrible accident, they claim to be for your own safety. But what these fears also bring is a life in a prison of your own making, shackled with worry and the sin that is required to keep those fears from becoming a reality.
When fear leads to a sinful action, then you’ve got a problem. It’s like this: you are afraid of not being liked, so you lie about something in order to impress someone, and your fear of not being liked trumps your fear of God and your obedience to his command not to lie. When your fear of losing your loved ones in a freak car accident leads you to worry every time they get into a car, you choose trusting your fear over trusting your God. So the key to bravery isn’t getting rid of the fear but fearing the right thing.
To sum it up, good fear leads you closer to God, while bad fear leads you away from God and toward sin. Fear will always be a part of our human condition. We will always have opportunities to fear for ourselves and for others, but that doesn’t mean that fear has to control us. Fear can be controlled, surrendered, and used for good when we quickly distinguish between good fear and bad fear.
The Brave Fear God
The most important good fear is the fear of God. Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” That means the fear of God is a healthy fear, because it brings knowledge, and with knowledge comes a bunch of other amazing things like wisdom, hope, peace, rest, love, and joy. To stand up in the face of the fear of God isn’t bravery; it’s stupidity. The people who reject the fear of God are rejecting God himself, because their taming of his awesome power makes him no longer God but “the big guy upstairs” or “my buddy God.” A lack of fear leads to a lack of reverence and awe. How can you bow down to and worship one whose power isn’t big enough to fear?
A healthy fear of God doesn’t lead to sin. It doesn’t make you worry, stress, fear for your safety, or doubt his love, kindness, grace, or forgiveness. That would be the fear of a god with human attributes. If God were vindictive, evil, unforgiving, and unloving, then yes, you should fear him like you fear an abusive father. But knowing that God is love and that his very nature can’t be separated from his attributes of kindness, mercy, grace, and righteousness, you have to know that the fear of God that is the beginning of knowledge is a healthy fear. It’s not a fear of the unpredictability and volatility of God but of the awesomeness and holiness of God. When you can conceive of such a powerful being reaching down and loving you, giving you not only your life but the life of his Son as well, then your fear is less a fear of his wrath and more a fear of hurting him or disappointing him.
When Hayley was growing up, she never got into trouble. It wasn’t because she was afraid of the punishment of her dad but because she was afraid of disappointing him, of hurting him. She wanted so badly to please him, because she loved and admired him so, and the “fear” of failing at that is what compelled her to obedience and respect, not the fear of his anger or temper. The same is true with God. When you fear not loving him as he deserves rather than fearing his wrath or violence, then you fear God properly.
The fear of God comes from a correct understanding not of God’s unpredictability but of the absolute predictability of his unwavering love, grace, generosity, mercy, and kindness and an understanding of his hatred of all things sinful. When you understand what pleases God and what angers him, then you prefer the former over the latter. A real understanding of the nature of God’s holiness and his desire for holiness in the lives of those who love him produces the fear of God in your life.
This fear of God—of hurting him, of disappointing him—is a fear that compels you to righteousness. In other words, it makes you want to do right, to be good, to obey God’s Word. When you take God at his word, you are bound to feel a real fear of disagreeing with him, of turning to sin, of choosing to reject his commands and his teachings. The writer of Psalm 119 understood that fear when he said, “My body shudders in fear of you, and I am afraid of your regulations” (v. 120). Peter puts it this way: “If you call God your Father, live your time as temporary residents on earth in fear. He is the God who judges all people by what they have done, and he doesn’t play favorites” (1 Pet. 1:17).
This fear of God shouldn’t freak you out and scare you but should drive you to stand in awe, to worship his greatness, and to fear not his wrath, because that has been taken up by the death of Christ on the cross, but being separated from him by disbelief. The failure to fear him as God is what should be feared. The Brave don’t reject the fear of God but embrace it as fuel for the bravery they need in the rest of life.
The Brave Respect Danger
Another kind of fear that doesn’t need to be overcome by the Brave is a fear of real danger. This kind of fear needs to be listened to, because its goal is to lead you to safety, protect you, and even save your life. For example, the fear of being burned is a good fear when you are in a home that is on fire. Knowing what to fear—the fire, in this case—will protect you from harm. Good fear doesn’t need bravery; it needs quick and decisive action. No one sees fire climbing up the walls and has to think about whether they are going to get out or not. The fear compels you to action. So good fear leads you to good actions.
Some Christians take the position that having no fear is good, so when danger comes, they refuse it. They claim they don’t need things that other people need, because God has them covered. While that is true to some extent, it isn’t true in all cases.
Have you heard the story of the man who was caught in a flood? As the waters rose, he refused to fear. When the water came to his front door, some men came by in wading boots and said, “It’s time to go, the water is rising.” But the man just said, “God will save me. I’m going to wait on him.” So the men left. Then the waters pushed the man up to the second floor of his house. As he hung out the window, some people came by in a boat and said, “Get in! It isn’t safe in there. We’re here to help you.” But the man said, “No, that’s okay. I’m trusting God. He’ll save me.” So the people left. The water continued to rise as predicted, and the man had to make a hole in his roof and crawl out on top. As he stood teetering on his rooftop, a helicopter came by and lowered a lifeline. The man looked up and said, “No, thank you. I’m waiting on God to save me.” Not long after that, the water rose and covered the man’s house, and soon he found himself in a river of rushing water. Unable to stay afloat, the man drowned. When he got to heaven, he asked God, “Why didn’t you save me? I trusted you!” God looked at him and shook his head. “I sent you some men in boots to take you to safety, but you refused. Then I sent you a boat, but you rejected that. Finally I sent a helicopter, but you wouldn’t take the help I sent.”
Sometimes God sends dangerous and fearful things that are meant to be run from, not stood up to. The warning of real danger might just be God’s way of saving you, but you’ll never receive that if you don’t heed the warning. The Old Testament is full of cases where disaster was coming and God’s people were told to get out. When God was set to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he told Lot and his family to get out (see Gen. 19:12–29). It would have been silly for them to say, “No, we’ll be brave and stay. No fear!” when God had told them to get up and get going because the end was coming. And while God doesn’t tell us directly to get out when danger is imminent, like he did in the days of the prophets, he does send others to notify us of real danger. So when the StormTracker 3000 says the tornado is headed for your house, don’t stand up and bravely defy it, but take cover. Pray, of course. Trust God, yes. Don’t worry, definitely! But don’t be stupidly brave in the face of real danger. Avoid the stupid bravery Satan tempted Jesus with when he told him to jump off of the tall temple, knowing that the angels would save him (see Matt. 4:5–7). The fear of God requires that we fear him enough to protect the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is our bodies (see 1 Cor. 6:19). Being a fool by ignoring the warning signs is stupid bravery.
The Brave Don’t Fear People
One of the most common fears in the world is the fear of people—not just what people might do to you but also what people might think about you. You’re fearing people when you get stressed out about what people think about you or when you make decisions and do things because you don’t want someone to dislike you or hate you. You also do things out of this fear when you imagine that your value or worth is based on what other people think about you rather than on what God knows about you. This is nothing new. John 12:42–43 says, “Many rulers believed in Jesus. However, they wouldn’t admit it publicly because the Pharisees would have thrown them out of the synagogue. They were more concerned about what people thought of them than about what God thought of them.” Fearing the disapproval of people more than you fear the disapproval of God is just as much a tragedy now as it was back then.
Fearing people is an easy trap to fall into because you are surrounded by them almost continually. You can see their faces when they are mad or judgmental; you can hear their voices and see their actions. In a lot of ways, they can feel more real (and seem more important) than God, and that’s why it’s so easy to start to fall into worrying about what they think. But how exhausting it is trying to please people! And how dangerous!
It was the fear of not pleasing people that caused Michael the most pain in his life, to the point that he never ended up pleasing people. He just hurt them by not ever telling them the truth but only saying what he thought they wanted to hear. Michael’s constant reminder to escape this lifelong fear is Galatians 1:10: “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (ESV).
Bravery is called for in order to save you from your fear of people. When tempted to obsess over what another human thinks, the Brave remember who they live to please, and they run everything through that filter. If they feel an urge to please another human, they check that urge against God’s Word. Is what I’m compelled to do a commandment? Does it fit into “Turn your other cheek” (Matt. 5:39) or “If someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles with him” (Matt. 5:41)? Or am I trying to please this person so he or she won’t hate me, will do what I want, or will continue to love me? The list goes on and on. It’s all about motive. When you want to please someone, ask yourself why. The answer will help you figure out if it’s something you ought to do or not. When the motive is all about you—your status, your feelings, your fears—then it’s not a holy, God-honoring motive. Fearing making other people upset because of how that will affect you isn’t humility but pride.
The Brave do what is right, even if it might make other people mad or uncomfortable. They try to do it in a loving way, but they don’t let something like discomfort keep them from obeying God. That’s really what it’s about: your fear of discomfort. It’s uncomfortable to be disliked, judged, or thought poorly of in any way. For a lot of people pleasers, the idea of not making people happy by giving them whatever they want sounds terribly uncomfortable. The fear of people and a lack of faith to stand up for what is right, noble, and good comes from what you worship the most: your own comfort.
The Brave will risk discomfort to please God over self. They risk things like the discomfort of not living up to others’ expectations in order to do what God commands. This kind of bravery shows up when you don’t do what the world expects, when you don’t look for glory or fame, when your goal isn’t being better than others or being loved but loving others more than yourself (see Phil. 2:3).
The Brave Know What Can’t Be Controlled
There are a lot of things to fear in this world. A lot of fears can protect you from danger, but even more can put you in danger. The fear of being consumed by something you cannot control is one of those dangerous fears. Fearing the things you have no control over is like getting on a stationary bike to try to pedal to safety. It’s all sweat and no distance. If you can’t control something, like natural disasters or finding love, then worrying about it, fearing it, or being consumed by it is all spin and no progress.
The Brave know what can’t be controlled, and they let all of it go. They can let it go for two reasons. The first is that they know that even if they can’t control it, there is still someone who can (and is). The second is that they know that if whatever they fear should come to pass, it would be for the best, because of that someone who is in control. The sovereignty of God, the fact that all things are under his control and that nothing happens unless he directs it or allows it, makes the Brave able to be brave because they leave nothing to chance but everything to God, trusting that he has it all under control. In Ephesians 1:11 we read that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (ESV). Did you get that? “All things,” not just some things. Sovereignty means God doesn’t just have the right or the power to rule over all things but that he always does rule all things, without exception. And if he has it all under control, then anything believers might suffer would be only what is best for them.
The life of the apostle Paul was filled with hundreds of things he couldn’t control. Just read a small clip of the story of his life:
[I faced] imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Cor. 11:23–27 ESV)
He couldn’t control the whip that struck his back, the stones that hit his body, the waves that wrecked his ship, the robbers that threatened his possessions, or the wild animals that threatened his life. But look what he said about his shipwrecked and tattered life: “I consider our present sufferings insignificant compared to the glory that will soon be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).
Paul was certain that even when God let just about everything be taken away from him, it was nothing compared with what God would give him in return—eternal life, as in forever and ever and ever. Paul trusted God with the scary and hard parts of life, knowing that a life turned over to him would never be a disappointment, no matter what it looked like on the outside. He knew he was part of a story bigger than his own, one that would change the world. Because of that and because of his determination to serve the living God, he didn’t wimp out. He didn’t worry, or fear, or turn tail and run. He taught the Brave the meaning of bravery.
Knowing that God can be trusted not only with eternity but also with today, with this very second in time, will open your life to the brave that you’ve always wanted. If God can save your life for eternity, then you must believe that he can save your life for today. The brave that is enduring is the brave that is founded in the power and the presence of an all-knowing and loving God and in knowing that what is out of your control is well within his.
When you think about it, fear all comes down to this: control. There are a lot of things in your life that you can’t control. You can’t control other people. You can’t control your friends or family. You can’t control the weather, disasters, or accidents. You can’t control what the doctors do or don’t do to you while you are in surgery. You can’t control the fact that you are going to die one day. There are a ton of things you can’t control—that’s life. The problem comes when that feeling of being out of control scares you. That’s when you let fear take over, and brave walks out the door. If you have no control over something, then fearing it is useless. When Hayley was younger (like last year, ha!), she had a huge fear of tornadoes. Living in Tennessee means we see a lot of them. She would freak out every time the news said “Tornado Watch.” But when she concentrated on the fact that her fear didn’t help the situation, that it didn’t divert the storm or protect her or our family, and that only God could change the weather, she loosened up a little bit and found the brave she needed not to freak out.
Fearing what you can’t control is a waste of energy. It serves no purpose other than to stress you out and make you sick. This kind of fear says to God, “I don’t trust you with things I can’t control,” and it’s a bad fear. Being brave in those situations is refusing to let fear rule your heart. It’s refusing to let it control you. Being brave means saying no to the fear of things you can’t control because you accept that you can’t control them. Fear tells you the lie that if you fear the situation enough, you can have some kind of control over it, but fear isn’t a step in the direction of being in control—it’s a step toward being even more out of control.
Fearing the wrong things makes the Brave not so brave. But bravery can be yours if you will put your fears into perspective. Fearing God over people is the foundation of being brave. Don’t get your fears mixed up and obey the bad fears, ones that need to be disobeyed, while ignoring the good ones that are meant to protect you. Fear is a normal part of life; it’s what you do with it that will make or break you. Fear is bad when it leads you to sin instead of faith. When fear drives you away from God, you have a problem, but when it drives you to his feet, then you have found the brave you were looking for.