ON COURAGE

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

—Joshua 1:9

 

I wish to give you a sentence of few words but of tremendous power, which, if received and retained in your mind, can give you courage to overcome every difficulty. You may question whether words can accomplish so great a result, but you must never minimize the creative force of an active idea. A mental concept has more voltage than electricity; civilizations are changed by ideas. Was it not Emerson who said, “Beware of an idea whose time has come”?

We have in my church a woman who has been extraordinarily successful in the institutional care of children. Over a period of time she has adopted the practice of approaching the children who are most neglected and have developed a feeling of inability, and every night just before they go to sleep she says something courageous to them. Her theory is that courageous thoughts planted in their minds just before they go to sleep will lodge deepest in their consciousness. She has observed these children and reports that, in a remarkably short time, their IQs have been raised by fifteen to twenty points.

Now it would not hurt some of us to have our IQs raised, but that is not the function of this book. But we do need to have our courage raised. I am going to give you a sentence, and if you will open your mind to receive it and will conceive of the thought as dropping from your conscious into your unconscious mind, it can, in due course, raise your courage until you are sufficient for every difficulty. These are the words: “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” That comes from the first chapter of Joshua, the ninth verse. When you go home, I wish you would write those words down and say them over and over to yourself, for courage is an absolute necessity in this life.

I have in my pocket a Swedish proverb taken from Amos Parrish's magazine. As a matter of fact, I think this proverb is enough to give you this morning: “Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things will be yours.” You will notice the proverb states, “Fear less.” In other words, get more courage. How do you go about doing this?

First, you must practice courage. I can only repeat that which I have often said. In athletics, if you want to succeed, you practice. To be a good musician, one must practice. Why do we assume that we may become expert in the spiritual realm without practice? If you are filled with fear, you probably have practiced fear for so long that you have become expert at it. The secret of courage is to practice courage. Set yourself daily to thinking courageous thoughts. If there is a situation in your life that fills you with fear, endow it not with threatening qualities but with beautiful ones. Think it into an advantage to you, an asset. A psychiatrist had for a patient a little girl who frequently dreamed of being attacked by a tiger, so that she shrieked in terror. Upon investigation he discovered that an angry cat had once sprung at her, and later, in a zoo, she had seen a tiger. Asked to describe the tiger of her dreams, she said he had a big white spot on his forehead and stripes all round him; big red eyes and big teeth and it snarled at her.

“I have seen that same tiger,” the psychiatrist told her. “You have the wrong idea of him. He isn't a mean old tiger. He is a great, big pussycat, and he wants to play with you. If you will notice, his claws are not showing. They are drawn in because he would not hurt a little girl for anything in the world. You think he is snarling, but that is his way of smiling. If you will look deeply into this tiger's eyes, you will see that he is kindly. Anyway, he is not a tiger, but just a great, big old pussycat. Next time you see him, say, ‘Hello there, big old pussycat,' and you will love him.”

Well, the little girl had that quality that, God help us, most of us do not possess—that of wonder. Next time she encountered the tiger in her dream, though she shrank back at first, she said to him, “Nice tiger, come play with me.” She learned to like him and did not dream about him again. That story is right out of a scientific laboratory.

Do your tigers spring at you at night? A man wakes up in the night with a little pain, which he imagines is a heart attack. Probably it is not that at all. Look your tiger in the face. Say to yourself, “I think my heart is all right. I put my heart in the hands of the Lord.” It is how you think about such things that is important. Practice thinking courageous thoughts. If you are really in earnest about getting courage, go through the Bible and copy down on cards every statement you find that has to do with courage, and every day commit one of them to memory. When you find a sentence in the book you are reading that fits your need, commit it to memory. Fill your mind with these thoughts. With your mind filled with courageous thoughts there will be no room for fear. I know this works for I have tried it on myself. It requires great willpower because we are more at home with our fear-thoughts. Charles Dickens said, “Men love their chains.” That sounds ridiculous, but it is a fact that we grow to feel comfortable with the fetters to which we are accustomed. We even take a certain comfort in our miseries. If you are a victim of fear, you must say to yourself, “I will practice this idea of putting courage-thoughts in my mind.”

I met a man the other day who taught me something. The plane that was taking me to a city where I was to make a speech was late in arriving at the gate. I ran through the airport and out to the cab stand carrying my heavy bag.

“Taxi?” asked a man, and when I nodded, he grabbed my bag and put me into his cab. “I saw what you did,” he reproached me, “running up those stairs two at a time, and at your age. You ought to have more sense!”

“What do you mean, at my age?” I protested. “I'm not puffing, am I?”

“Fellows like you are dying like flies of heart attacks. I know, I carry them around. They work so hard to get somewhere that when they get there they keel over. What's the use of getting there if when you get there you can't stay?”

“That sounds like logic,” I agreed.

“These men ought to practice calmness,” he continued. “They are victims of tension. If they'd learn to be quiet they'd live longer and be happier. Nobody should worry about anything. Worry's bad for them. A lot of people have what I call the worry habit. They ought to break themselves of it.”

“My friend,” I said, “you are a philosopher. It is a pleasure to talk to you.”

I guarantee on my honor that what follows is the truth. This cabby began to quote statements that I myself had made. He quoted me word for word. “Where did you get these ideas?” I asked him.

“I read them in the daily paper,” he said. And he gave my own name as author of the column I had been writing for the newspapers.

When I paid my fare I told him who I was, for though I may have given him ideas, he had given me what I am now trying to give you. He was a rough kind of fellow, but when I went away I think I shall never forget the happy, glorious look on his face as he said, “Remember now, you can give yourself peace and power and live a long while if you just let these things soak into your mind.”

One of the great things about preaching is what you get back from the congregation. Anybody who thinks preaching is an act where a man stands on an elevated structure and hands down wisdom to the people, telling them to do this and do that, has a wrong concept. Preaching is a laboratory experience; the preacher gathers techniques of life and submits them to other technicians in the laboratory, meaning the congregation. They in turn put them to the test and report back to him. One says, “This technique works beautifully and while I was working at it I found another.”

“Good,” says the preacher. “Let me test it in our laboratory.” And before very long, the preacher and his congregation have built up a body of spiritual practices that will enable anyone to overcome any difficulty. Practice, then, thinking courageous thoughts, and the greatest thought with which to begin is the text, “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

Then there's the second part of the Scripture: “For the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” God is with you wherever you go and under whatever circumstances you may be living. If you will believe that, and practice it and yield yourself to it—it makes no difference what obstacle or difficulty you have—I now assert without fear of successful contradiction, you can overcome anything in this life. We are told you will not be tempted above that which you are able to withstand; that you can rise above every difficulty. Lawrence of Arabia said, “There is nothing man cannot stand.” Once, when beaten by the enemy with whips until he thought he could stand no more, he found new reservoirs of power and was able to say to them, “Lay on! I can take it.” If a human being has within himself these deeper levels of fortitude, so does he possess tremendous powers for overcoming his difficulties. And if he believes in God and practices the presence of God on the basis that God is with him under any circumstance or condition, then I tell you he can have courage to overcome anything.

I am going to illustrate. We are about to publish in our magazine Guideposts one of the most thrilling and remarkable stories that has come to my attention in years. This story has been given the glorious title, “By Wheelchair to the Stars.” You don't often go to the stars by wheelchair, do you? But this man did. At the age of seventeen, he was seized with rheumatic fever. Complications set in, and severe arthritis. The mere wearing of his clothes was torture. He cringed when a window shade flapped. At seventeen he was finished, through, useless. The word “useless” cut into his mind more painfully than the nerve ends that so tormented him. His father and mother were textile workers; that left him sitting at home alone all day in a wheelchair that his father had made, suffering excruciating pain in body and mind. But he had the good old American spirit, the manhood that has always characterized our people. He wanted to learn. He wanted to do something. Somebody suggested that he could illustrate greeting cards—he had a decent artistic talent. Not a bad idea, but that wouldn't thrill you, would it? But he said he would try. He worked six months to make a card that sold for a dollar. His hand became so crippled he could hardly use it. Just when he thought he was making progress and had gained a certain self-confidence, he had a bitter experience. He slipped and fell out of his chair about eight o'clock one morning and lay on the floor, helpless, for hours.

He tells the story in his own words: “I couldn't rise. I struggled and sweated and wept with impotence. And on the kitchen floor I battled again the wave of black bitterness that I'd only recently conquered. Hours passed. If I ever prayed in my life, I prayed then.

“Eventually, the mailman came on his late-morning round. Our mailbox was outside the kitchen, and when I heard him come I yelled for him. He came in and picked me up. And we chatted. I just wouldn't let him see how humiliated I felt. So I got to joking to hide my feelings.”

“Harry,” said the carrier, “you've got what it takes. I wish I had your courage. Where did you get it?”

“I haven't any really,” Harry replied. “What little I've got came from a Book where it says, ‘With God nothing is impossible.'”

During the next year Harry made eight thousand dollars from selling his greeting cards. He began selling them through the mail and word-of-mouth. The family put a mortgage on the house, borrowed some more, and bought twelve thousand boxes of assorted cards to retail for one dollar! “If you don't sell them, what then?” asked his mother. “With God nothing is impossible,” Harry answered.

He sold not twelve thousand, but nineteen thousand! His mail-order business continued to grow, and he says, “I will never forget the first time I realized that I had done a million dollars worth of business.”

Now Harry rides in a plane, which he flies himself. He has even learned to play the Hammond organ. He plays the melody with one finger of the right hand and fills in the harmony with the left hand, supplying the bass with one fairly good foot. He concludes this article, “By Wheelchair to the Stars,” by thanking God for the terrible struggle he has had and for the pain God, in His wisdom, gave to him. And he thanks God that he has found the greatest secret in this life, which is, “With God nothing is impossible.”

Remember this: you can go to the stars by wheelchair. You, too, my friends, with your little troubles and your big troubles. This is a fact, worked out in the laboratory of Christian Experience. “Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.” Practice that. Why can you be sure of success? Because in the glorious concluding line it says, “for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest,” even though it be through the darkest shadows in the world. Always have courage, over all difficulties.