Power of Courageous Courage

Key Scripture: "So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith-complete confidence-in God that it will be exactly as it was told me.” Acts 27:25

Power Point:

We have so many wonderful examples of courage in scripture. The Apostle Paul is definitely one of my favorites.  In this passage Paul has been placed on a ship headed for Rome. The ship encounters every disaster imaginable. Everyone is terrified but Paul, who at this point is definitely the “low man on the totem pole”.  He’s a prisoner with no authority whatever but he has a word from the Lord.  His word was: “Take courage Paul, for as you have borne faithful witness concerning Me at Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness at Rome.” This word came “as the Lord stood beside him.” Whew! I guess that would give me new courage too. (But I digress.) The point is that God Himself had told Paul that he would be going to Rome. The circumstances looked anything but promising but Paul “took courage” from God’s word to him. If you think about it, he simply followed a couple of steps which we can follow too.

Lack of Confidence

First he encountered God in an intimate place and God talked to him as an intimate friend, telling him things that were going to happen. That's our privilege too because of Jesus.

Secondly: Every possible test of that word that could destroy his faith happened. Satan will always try to steal our courage by discouraging us. If Paul had walked by what he was “seeing”, he would have jumped off that ship! Instead he reminded himself of God’s word to him and he believed it. In fact he himself says, “I have faith.”  He had complete confidence in God that it would be exactly as He had said.

His faith gave him courage and his courage ‘infected” the other passengers and they were all delivered safely to Malta.

When it says that Paul “took” courage, it means that he thought about it, then made a quality decision to choose courage and apply it to his situation. It meant that circumstances could not discourage his courage.

Beloved you can be courageous too. Paul had already asked Jesus to make him bolder. It seems that He did. You can "take" courage just as Paul did

because you know that you know that you know that God is on your side, that He is able to keep you and bless you and that He really, really wants to!

That should give us all cheerful courage shouldn’t it?

Power Thought:

Take courage from Who He is and know that He is always there for you. That should make you cheerful!