Living Sermons on Courage

eDevotion

Encouragement for your daily walk with God 

I’m convinced that Satan uses fear to immobilize our witness more than anything else. And that’s what caught my eye in an article in Christianity Today. It was an interview with Heather Mercer, on the 10th anniversary of her release from a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan.  She told the interviewer, “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it. God sent me to prison to set me free. I don't think I realized how much fear I actually had in my life until I had to confront some of my deepest, darkest fears. When I first set out to go to Afghanistan, I knew it might cost me my life to reach Muslims with the love of Jesus. Then I had this opportunity to face that fear of, ‘What would I do if someone tried to kill me for sharing the gospel?’ God made Himself known in such a profound way that now, what do I have to fear?”    

Today, Heather and her husband, an Iraqi Christian, continue to minister in the northern, Kurdish region of Iraq.

Wycliff magazine tells the story of Sue Ambrose in Papua New Guinea. She went out for a walk on day, and was attacked by a man wielding a knife. The man ran off and she was rushed to a clinic where co-workers were astonished at her condition; many abrasions, a damaged hand, a puncture wound just below her lungs, and the knife stuck in her hip! 

  

The clinical staff remarked about how calm she was through the process of stabilization. Afterwards, she was transferred to a medical facility in Australia. 

While in the hospital, Sue said she was visited by an angel, “A big warrior kind of guy that was eight or ten feet tall with his sword raised, saying, ‘No, that is enough! I am not going to let you kill her.’ That really opened my eyes to the whole spiritual realm; that this man was part of Satan’s attacks on us, on the training centre and on the work of SIL [Summer Institute of Linguistics].”   

  

Two and a half weeks later, she returned to Papua New Guinea to continue in ministry.

I call these two incidents, “Living Sermons on Courage.” They challenge us to reject fear and to be courageous in our witness and ministry.

RESOLVED:  I will not allow the enemy to use the tactic of fear against me.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1.7