Fear Part 3: Faith and Courage

(This is Part 3 in a series on fear and leadership. If you haven’t already, take a minute to read Part 1 and Part 2.)

Listen to the five-minute Faith and Courage audio program from Coach’s Corner. 

As you know I believe the greatest fear is the fear of the unknown, and that the answer to this uncertainty is faith. Today I will talk about the relationship between faith and courage.

Now my simple definition of faith is “belief.” When I believe in someone, I have faith in that person. When I believe in something, like my car, I have faith in it. Faith that it will do what I expect it to do, that it will come through for me. When I believe in God and believe God does what he promises, I have faith in God.

Conversely, when I don’t believe in someone, I lack faith in that person. So what does it look like to lack faith? When I lack faith, I tend to worry more. I have anxiety. I become more controlling, because I’m not confident in the outcome and feel that I have to fill in that gap.

I believe there are two categories of belief (or faith): preferred and actual. My words reveal my preferred beliefs, while my actions and behavior reveal my actual beliefs. These don’t always match up. When I show fear, I show that my actual beliefs have not yet caught up with my preferred beliefs. My faith is not yet deeply embedded in me.

This is where courage comes in. Courage is when I don’t really have faith in something or someone, and yet I act as if I do because I want to have that faith. Courage can bridge the gap between my actual beliefs and my preferred beliefs. I have a friend who climbs mountain faces, something most of us would consider crazy, scary stuff. He says it’s not scary for him anymore because he learns what he needs to know before climbing a cliff and practices enough to know he can do it without failure.  It’s not scary to him because he has faith in his ability to do it, but I bet it took some courage the first few times he scaled those mountains.

Let’s take driving across a bridge as another example of courage. When I drive across a bridge every day on my way to work and don’t think twice about it, that shows that I have faith in that bridge—that the structure is sound, that the designers knew what they were doing, that the bridge has been well maintained. But let’s say I’m off in the countryside, and I come across a rickety, old covered bridge that creaks and groans when I start to drive across it. That’s a different story from the bridge I cross every day going to work. I realize that the covered bridge has worked fine for decades, but it sends me signals that says maybe it’s going to fail. Choosing to trust the people who built and maintained the bridge and to drive across it in spite of my fears takes courage.

Remember the quote I shared with you in the last few posts:

Feed your faith and starve your fear to death.

Acting courageously, based on your preferred faith, will feed your real faith and starve your fears to death.

When I say God has me in his hands and I have nothing to worry about, but I worry about many things in life, I’m demonstrating a preferred faith, one that is not quite real for me yet. Have you ever met someone that has such deep faith that nothing seems to cause him or her fear? Maybe you’re one of those people. What a gift to have such faith. Most of us are still working on it.

So is courage a good thing?  Yes, because we often lack faith.

How could you feed your faith this week more than you normally do?

• Spend more time with God?
• Act more courageously when you know what should be done?
• Decided to trust God, to trust others, and to trust yourself, with God’s help, and take a step forward in courage?

I hope you take something on this week.  This is where real growth happens.

Post by Rodger.

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