The Courage to Live a Life that Demands Explanation (Brian Russell)

I had the opportunity to participate in a four day spiritual retreat that ended this past Sunday evening. I spent much of the time in prayer and reflection. As I listened to speakers, prayed, and read Scripture, one word kept resonating in my being: Courage.

Courage is the key that unlocks the door to the life of God’s dreams. Do you believe this? C. S. Lewis, the 20th century writer and follower of Jesus, once wrote of courage:Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.

Why do I write and talk about courage so much? It’s simple. We live in a moment in history in which I believe that God is looking for women and men who desire to live for something greater than their own wants, desires, and circumstances. The Western world is at a crossroads. Our world is growing increasingly violent. People are scared. People are hungry. People are desperate. As my friend Alex McManus says, “The Western world has lost its faith in the shadows of church steeples.” How can this be? Where is the Church? Where are Jesus’ followers? Too often we find ourselves scared. The great temptation for us is to turn inward, hunker down, celebrate our own traditions, and pray for God’s blessing and protection on our own lives rather than allowing God to unleash us to live lives of purpose and significance in authentic community.

God has created each one of us for so much more. Most of us have barely scratched the surface of the life that God wants us to live. We have grown used to broken relationships, cruelty, pain, unhappiness, and the nagging feeling that life is slipping us by. We settle for mediocrity. Friends, don’t give up yet. We are to live lives that demand explanation.

JESUS CHRIST WANTS TO REWRITE EACH OF OUR LIVES INTO A GRAND EPIC OF REPENTANCE, RENEWAL, AND RESTORATION. This is the subject matter of our current series in worship: The Courage to Live.
This story begins in an encounter with God in the shadow of Jesus’ cross. On the cross, Jesus gave his life so that we may find true life. In the shadow of the cross, Jesus invites us to bring all of our brokenness, our hurts, our shame, our fears, our guilt—everything.

This takes courage, but when we come to the cross, God takes each of us and does something extraordinary. He adds us to the masterpiece that he is creating through the lives of those who come to the cross and become followers of Jesus, the crucified one. Following Jesus takes courage. It takes courage to receive God’s love and grace. It takes courage to admit to our need for change—for realigning our lives in light of God’s mission to bring hope, wholeness, and restoration to our world. It takes courage to surrender to the way of the cross by turning from a life centered on self to a life centered on serving God and others. It takes courage to follow Jesus into the world.

My own community of faith seeks to exist as an outpost of hope for the world. Our mission is to ignite humanity one dreamer at a time. I count it a privilege to worship and serve together with my friends and partners at Awaken Orlando as God shapes each of us into a person of God’s dreams so that we can live by faith, be known by love, and be a voice of hope in a world that is desperate for those things that only God can give. I am excited about how God is moving in our midst.