Courageous Faith

Good evening, I am glad to get to speak with you all tonight. My name is Shane, and I want to talk to you tonight about having courageous faith. Your note sheet also includes the references, so if you'd like, you can review them later. You could even sit around the table at lunch tomorrow or for dinner with your family and talk about this, too.

If we are going to talk about having courageous faith, I think we have to know what courage and faith are. We can’t have it if we don’t even know what it is. Who thinks they know what courage is?

“The ability to do something that frightens you.”

So, what frightens you? Can I be honest with you guys? And I know we really don’t know each other, but I absolutely hate being afraid. I don’t like scary movies. I don’t like scary shows, costumes, decorations, or any of it. When I was in college, I had a friend whose parents worked for King’s Dominion, like Carowinds. We went up one Saturday in the fall for their Halloween stuff, and I hated it. Not one haunted house was fun. I tried to talk to the people to get them not to scare me. The highlight of the day was getting a cinnamon roll on the way out. I needed courage; I didn’t really have it, but I needed it that night.

Maybe your frightening thing isn’t haunted houses, but there is probably something that frightens you. When we think about our faith, though, we have a different fear a lot of times. Maybe a fear of rejection? Maybe we are afraid of what people may think? What if this goes poorly? Guess what? We all have those thoughts. I don’t know that I have met a follower of Jesus who hasn’t thought that at some time.

So, to be courageous, we have to start to face our fears. And we can do that. What is faith?

Faith = Belief, trust, and loyalty to something.

Since we are at church, we are talking about putting our faith in Jesus. He is our only hope in life. So, what does it mean for us to have courage with our faith? Tonight, I want us to look at the life of Paul, just a small sample of things he did, and see how it can guide us as we seek to live out a courageous faith.

1. We Can’t Fake Our Faith

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. 4 And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. 8 Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Acts 9:1–9.

Paul enters our Bibles not as a spiritual giant full of faith, but as the guy trying to get Christians thrown in jail. He is an enemy of the Church. He is persecuting and actively seeking to stop the church from growing. He is doing everything opposite of having a courageous faith in Jesus. But in Acts 9, that changes; he changes. He has a radical encounter with Jesus, and his life is forever changed.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the other Christians at this time. You know you have one big enemy, and one day he walks into your church service. How do you feel? Probably a little freaked out? Wouldn’t it seem like a great move to lie about knowing Jesus to get into the church to arrest them quicker?

Paul could not fake the faith he had now. It would have been easy to spot. It would have been obvious to the actual believers that Paul had not really changed. If we want a courageous faith, we first have to make sure we have a real faith in Jesus.

It can be easy for us to have a fake faith. To know the answers, to know how to act and speak at church. To have the outward things all checked off, but be missing all of the actual inside change. Faith in Jesus is not just our outsides being cleaned up; it is a heart change.

Our first step to having a courageous faith is to have a real faith in Jesus Christ.

To actually know Him as our lord and Savior. Everything from Acts 9 forward in the Bible that Paul does is because of this faith.

2. Stand for Truth, Even When It Is Hard.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Galatians 2:11–14.

Have you ever had to say a hard truth to someone? Maybe a friend hurts you, and you know you need to tell them. Or maybe they ask for your opinion about something, and you know that if you tell them the truth, it may not be what they want to hear. That can be super hard to do and navigate. Have you ever been asked a really hard question about what it means to follow Jesus?

I have a lot of family who are not believers. They were brought up kind of in the church, but as adults, they do not attend. And some have chosen to live their lives in a way that is contrary to what we see God call us to do. And there are times when they want to ask me questions about God, Jesus, and the world. I have a choice in that moment; I can tell the truth, in love, or I can try and appease them. And let me tell you, it can be a hard choice.

In this passage from Galatians, Paul has that same situation. Peter, you know the guy who denied Christ, had seemed to flip-flop on a situation to maybe appease someone. Paul sees this, and confronts Peter on it. How easy do you think that was? Peter is a big deal in the church. He was one of the disciples in the inner circle of Jesus, and Paul is going to call him out. Do you think Paul was right to do this? Probably.

If we want to have courageous faith, we have to stand for what is true, even when it is hard. We have to stand for what the Bible calls right and wrong. We have to stand up for the truth, and this can be hard at times. You could face all kinds of responses to your stance on truth, and not always good ones.

While we stand for truth, we have to do so with grace, mercy, and love.

We stand up for what we believe in, not to gain some kind of point in a debate, but to point people to the source of truth, Jesus.

(Talk About Terry from WSRM; He doesn’t want the help cause he doesn’t want the truth.)

3. We Remain Humble

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

1 Timothy 1:15.

Morgan, my wife, teaches 3rd grade, and each year her 3rd graders read Charlotte’s Web. The story of a spider writing words in her web to show that a pig, Wilbur, is worth saving. Charlotte uses words like radiant, terrific, some pig, and humble. I can think of a lot of ways to describe a pig, but I don’t know that humble is ever a word I would use. I mean, how would a pig even show humility? But what it does show is how much we value someone who is humble in life. To be humble is to not be proud or arrogant.

Paul could have easily been proud or arrogant in his faith. He had all the earthly right to point to what he had done for the church. But look at what he says in his letter to Timothy, “Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” Even with all that Paul had seen God do, he still counted himself as the worst of sinners. There was no arrogance or pride.

If we want to have a courageous faith, we must always remember who we put our faith in.

It is not in us, not in what we can do, but in what Christ has done. Shane can’t save you, your parents can’t save you, your good works can’t, it is only in the sacrifice of Jesus that we find salvation.