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The Courage to Overcome the Fear of Failure (01/10/16) (Traditional)

Dr. Tom Pace - 7/2/2019

The Courage to Risk: Overcoming the Fear of Failure
January 10, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
Joshua 1:6-9

“Be strong and courageous; for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them.Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go.This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful.I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for theLordyour God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:6-9)
We begin a series of sermons on courage. This has been on my heart a lot lately, really as I looked at my own life and my own decisions and my own heart, and as I looked around me at what’s going on in the world around us, and how often we operate out of fear instead of out of courage. So for five weeks we’re going to look at what it means to be courageous, how often the Scriptures reminds us not to be afraid and challenges us to step out in faith and courage.
So here’s where we are today. I hope you’ll take your bulletin insert and follow along and take some notes if you’d like. But take a look at the outline in there and the Scripture.
Let me give you the context first. The children of Israel have been almost at this very place before. Let me remind you of the story. Moses leads the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt across the Red Sea. Remember the Red Sea parts, and they go across. They go to Mt. Sinai where they receive the Law, then Moses leads them through the wilderness straight toward the Promised Land. And they come to a place called Kadesh. It’s at the very base of Israel, south of what we today call Gaza, but it is in the desert. Israel is just north of that.
He sends out twelve spies into Israel. He says to them, “We’ve come to the Promised Land. Let’s see what it’s like.” So Joshua and Caleb lead the spies into Israel, and they’re there for 40 days. They check out the land, and they say, “Indeed, it is a land flowing with milk and honey. It is beautiful. It is prosperous.” Milk and honey have to with shepherding and with agriculture. That’s the picture we have with milk and honey. In fact, Joshua cuts off a giant bunch of grapes to take back to show Moses and the people of Israel just how awesome the land of Israel is.
But the spies also notice that the people who live there are giants. They are warriors, and they’re terrifying. So when the spies come back to report to Moses and the people of Israel, they have a mixed message. Joshua and Caleb say, “Let’s go, man! Let’s head into the Promise Land. We can do this!”
But the other ten spies say, “Yeah, it’s awesome over there, but you know the people are giants.” Here’s exactly what they said, “We are like grasshoppers to them.”
So the people of Israel get furious. And they say, “We’re not going to go! Why, Moses, did you lead us out here…?” We call this the “Back to Egypt contingent.” In every group there’s a “back to Egypt contingent.” “We were better back there in Egypt. Why didn’t you leave us back there? At least we had enough to eat. At least we weren’t going to be killed. So why didn’t you just leave us there?” So here’s what happened. They don’t go in. And God says, “Listen, because you didn’t trust, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to wander in the desert one year for every day the spies were in Israel. Forty years you’re going to wander…”(Most scholars believe they had already been out about three years, so it’s 37 years more years.)”…and what’s more every man of fighting age at this time will have died before you cross except for Joshua and Caleb, because they trusted me. In fact, Moses, even you will die.”
So they wandered for 37 more years through the desert, and now they come to this place where they are right now. They have a decision to make. “What are we going to do now? Everybody else is gone.” The only thing they know is the desert and the promise. They don’t know anything else.
What can we learn from this story? Well, there are five things I want to lift up to you, because they really spoke to me.
Here’s the first one. We live in these kinds of moments of decisions. Here’s how this Scripture begins – you can look and follow along. “After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord spoke to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying, ‘My servant Moses is dead.’”
Now what does that mean? It means two things. First, it means “You’re in charge. You’ve seen how Moses struggled to lead this stiff-necked people. You’ve seen how they fight against him. Good luck!” That’s my version. That’s not what Scripture says. “Good luck, Joshua, hang in there but you’re in charge.”
Here’s the second thing – it’s time. Remember how everybody had to die including Moses before they could cross over? Moses is dead so it’s time now. What are you going to do?
We face these kinds of decisions. They might be big decisions. Will I get married or will I not? I found a partner, I love my partner, and she or he isn’t perfect. They come with some baggage. Will I get married? Will I step out in faith, or not? Should I take this new job or should I stay in what I’ve got? Should I retire? Or should I not? Should I give myself fully to following Christ or should I not? You see there are all these big decisions, major ones, the ones we view as defining moments. Am I going to step out in courage or am I going to hold on to comfort?
But I would tell you that I think that makes it a little too simple. I think we are defined as courageous or not courageous people not based on what we do in the big moments but on what we do every day. We’re faced with dozens, hundreds of little decisions, little moments in which we decide whether we’ll be courageous people or whether we’ll be fearful people, whether we’ll be courageous people or whether we will choose to be comfortable people.
It’s that way of life. You see, being courageous is a habit. You don’t face the big decisions courageously unless you first learn to face the small ones, the little ones. So when they tell that joke that demeans someone else and is inappropriate, do you just laugh? Do you laugh along with it or do you say, “You know, I don’t know if that’s right.” Do you have the courage to make that statement? Do you sign up for that ministry that may take a little extra time or do you just say, “I think I’ll stay away. I want to be more comfortable.” Do I make that gift or do I hold onto the money because you think you’d be a little more secure that way? There is just time and time again that we face these decisions and it becomes a way of life. So the question is what kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to be courageous?
My father-in-law Dr. Boyd Wagner is a pastor emeritus here at St. Luke’s. Many of you know him. I’ve had the privilege of knowing him for maybe a thousand years. I don’t know how long, since I was a child, literally. I remember once when he took me on my first trip to Israel, and we were riding on the bus with a pack of church people. He made arrangements for me to come along with him. We pulled into the hotel at Jerusalem. We’d been out seeing some sight, I don’t remember what. And as we drove in, there was this throng of people near our hotel. Our hotel was near the Knesset, which is the seat of the Israeli government. Now the whole street was packed. And the tour guide said, “You just need to get off the bus and go right into the hotel.”
So we get off the bus and Boyd said, “Let’s go check this out. Let’s go see what this is about!” So off we go pushing our way through a crowd. Then pretty soon there are busses and people camping around and all of a sudden these people start running at us. They’re like running toward us.
Later as we got back to the hotel alive, we learned that there was a demonstration that turned into a riot of Ethiopian Jews. They had come to demonstrate their not having adequate representation in the parliament. So the police began to fire rubber bullets at them. We were like Forest Gump right there in the middle, just showing up, waving. But Boyd’s spirit was “Let’s do this! Let’s try this!”
Now there’s a difference between being careless and being bold, and sometimes he walks a line. But the truth is that there’s this way of life. Right now he lives in an apartment complex where many senior adults live, and he said to us the other day, “Hey, I’m going to be in a play. I’m starring in a play.” And I said, “You’re in a play?” And he said, “Why not? I have rehearsal right after my swimming lesson.”
Now here’s why I tell you the story. It’s got that “go for it” spirit. That spirit that is a way of life, a habit you develop. It becomes a part of your heart, and you begin to have the courage to face bigger things as you learn to step out and try smaller things of being bold. So these moments are not just big ones, they’re small ones.
Some of you may know the author Veronica Roth. She’s only 27, and she already has three best seller runaway young adult novels called “The Divergent Series.” Maybe you’ve seen them or read them. Here’s what she writes: “There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you’ve ever known or everyone you’ve ever loved for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life, just that slow walk, to keep stepping out in faith and letting God form you and support you and teach you to trust.”
So there are these moments. Now when we face these moments here’s the second thing. When we face these moments we are to take the step of courage. In verse 2 it says, “My servant Moses is dead; now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people to the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites.” Then he goes on over and over again, three times, like it’s a mantra. We read it together a few minutes ago. Verse 5, “Be strong and of good courage, very courageous.” In verse 6, “Be strong and courageous.” In verse 7: “Only be strong and very courageous.” In verse 9: “I hereby command you to be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened or dismayed.” Do you see the mantra here? When it comes time to make that decision, to face that moment, you take the step of courage. Be strong and courageous.
There’s another passage two chapters later that I really wanted to use as our Scripture today, but this one has this “Be strong and courageous” refrain that I think is so great. In Chapter 3 Joshua does indeed lead the Children of Israel across the Jordan into the Promised Land. But here’s how it works. God says to Joshua, “I want the priests to step into the Jordan River with the Ark of the Covenant, and when they step into the Jordan River the waters of the Jordan will stop and the Children of Israel will be able to walk across.” It’s just like Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. But here’s what’s so cool. The waters aren’t going to stop until you put your feet in. It’s not like you can stand on the side of the river and say, “Okay, God, stop ’em and I’ll step in!” No, it works the other way. You take the step and the waters will stop. We have to take that step of faith. We have to try it. We’ve got to decide we’re going to be bold and courageous.
I usually fall asleep about 10:10, something like that; as long as it takes to get ready for bed and get in bed I go to sleep. This last week I got caught in a TV show, a documentary on PBS about Henry Ford. It was the series “American Experience” and was one of the biography documentaries. It was so interesting to me.
Henry Ford was courageous and bold. He’s not a very nice guy, so we’re not to completely emulate Henry Ford all the time. In fact he and his son were estranged, because he was so hard on him, and his son died and it broke Henry’s heart that he had died with him being so hard on him.
When Henry Ford was making the Model T’s early on they made them one at a time. Then he invented the assembly belt or began to use it for automobiles. He’d taken the idea from watching a butcher shop where the meat would move along a belt, and they’d cut slabs and parts off the meat. He said, “Well, if they can cut parts off, then we can put parts on.” So he invented that, and they were able to make Model T’s ten times as fast as before.
Then they had to have a market for it, and they began to face this HR or morale problem, because now on the assembly line, these workers, men and women, were working nine hour days, monotonously over and over doing the same thing. And they were paid $2.30 a day, and nobody wanted to really keep the job. So they’d work a few days, and then they’d quit. So he called his senior staff aside and goes out on a secret retreat. He said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to cut the work day from 9 hours to 8 hours….” Of course this is now the standard. “… and we’re going to change the pay from $2.30 a day to $5 a day.”
His senior staff thought, “That’s ridiculous.” They showed him the numbers and said, “It’ll never work.” All around the world the business world said, “It’ll never work. The economics of that just don’t happen.” Here’s what Henry Ford said, “We’re not just going to just make cars we’re going to make consumers of cars. We’re going to pay them enough so they can buy a car.” It changed everything. In fact, lots of people credit that as, rightly or wrongly, good or bad, from moving America from a nation of producers to a nation of consumers, that now consumes more than we make instead of produces more than we consume.
Now, look, I watched that, and you’d see him over and over again stepping out in boldness, the kind of life that says, “I’m going to go for it. I’m going to try it. Might be right, or it might be wrong, but man, let’s give it a try!”
Do we live with that kind of boldness? I read an interview recently with Todd Henry, who’s kind of a genius on creativity, and he had an interesting observation. He said, “We live in such a risk averse culture now. We want to do everything to cover our bases. I’m creative, because when I was small my parents would just send me out on my bike. ‘Go! Go!’ they’d say. And I would go all sorts of places. Just had to be home by dark.”
Not anymore, right? We live in a world where we want to protect our kids. They’re our greatest asset, so we focus on safety. I think that’s appropriate. I’m not criticizing. But there’s a consequence to that in that we don’t teach, we don’t form courage, we don’t form risk. We say, “Don’t talk to strangers! You just don’t know. Stay with the people you know and you’re comfortable with.”
I do understand completely. I’ve got kids and we did the same thing, “Stranger Danger” and all that stuff. But the consequence is that we find ourselves living in a time where we’re afraid. We live in that sense of being afraid to step out in that risk and live that life of boldness. Somehow we’ve got to build both up at the same time.
In the 19th century there was a Presbyterian theologian, William Shedd, and I don’t know anything about what he wrote but he made one statement that has stuck with me for a long time. He said, “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what a ship is for.” You’re safe in the harbor but that’s not what you were made for. We were made to step into the waters of the Jordan, to take hold of the Promised Land, to claim it for ourselves. So when people come to see me with a problem, often one of the questions I ask them is “So what does courage look like in this situation for you? What would be a courageous thing to do in this moment?”
And sometimes I follow it with another question because when people come usually by the time they get to a pastor’s office they’re stuck. They think, “I don’t know what to do.” So I’ll ask, “What’s one small little step of courage you can take? If courage looks like this, maybe you don’t feel like you can do that. But is there something else – can you put your foot in the water a little bit? Then let’s see what God will do. If there’s just some step we can take, that’s courageous.” It’s like a mantra. We say to ourselves, “Be strong and very courageous,” “be strong and very courageous…”
Here’s the third thing I want you to see. They do go faster, by the way, so do not panic. The Lord says in verse 7: “Be strong and very courageous being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn to the right hand or to the left so that you may be successful wherever you go. The book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth. You shall mediate on it day and night, so you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and you shall be successful.”
See, he’s warning them not to bypass their integrity, not to bypass the law, not to bypass what’s right in order to win, in order to be successful. He says, “Yes, be courageous, but being courageous means being faithful. It doesn’t mean being successful.” God is saying, “Let me worry about the success. Let me worry about that. You worry about being faithful.”
We did not give these third graders Bibles so they could grow up to be successful. We gave them Bibles so they’d do what’s right. So that God would plant God’s law in their hearts, and they would have integrity as they trusted God to step out in faith.
I confess I enjoy reading the story of Henry Ford because he was wildly successful. But the truth is that we have to hold on to our integrity in the midst of that and be faithful to what God has taught us. That’s what courage really looks like.
Which kind of leads to the fourth thing. It’s asking, “What voice will you listen to?” When he says “meditate on the law day and night,” that means that that is the voice you need to listen to. As we live our lives and especially with our modern technology and social media, and 24 hour news, we are bombarded by voices. Bombarded by voices! “Do this! Do that! Live this way! Live that way! This is right! This is wrong!” What voice will you listen to?
One of the songs I love the most is a contemporary Christian song by the group Casting Crowns. It’s called the “Voice of Truth.” I want you to hear the lyrics, because they mean a lot to me:
“Oh, what I would do to have
The kind of faith it takes to climb out of this boat I’m in onto the crashing waves
To step out of my comfort zone to the realm of the unknown Where Jesus is holding out his hand”
The picture is of Peter in the boat, and Jesus is calling him to step out in faith, “Come out to me, come out to me, walk on the water with me.” “Oh what I would do to step out in faith.”
Here are the words that mean the most to me: “But the waves are calling out my name, and they laugh at me, reminding me of all the times I’ve tried and failed. The waves they keep telling me time and time again, “Boy, you’ll never win! You’ll never win!” But the voice of truth tells me a different story. The voice of truth says, do not be afraid! And the voice of truth says this is for my glory. Out of all these voices calling out to me I will choose to listen to and believe in the voice of truth. The voice that says, I am with you.”
That’s the last thing this Scripture says to me. I want you to note how the Lord ties together two specific concepts right together. This is verse five: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous.” Then the key verse for this week: “Therefore I thereby command you. Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Do you hear that? I’ll say it again. “The Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
I think I told you I’ve been in conversation with my daughter Caroline who’s 21. She’s graduating in May from the University of Texas and is trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life. It’s a fun time, right? So she’s wondering. She’d really like to go to New York City and make her fortune there. She’d really like to be some sort of producer on Broadway. She doesn’t want to be an actress, she wants to make things happen. She got an offer from Teach for America, so should she go be a teacher? That speaks to her heart, too. What should she do? Should she go to graduate school? Should she go work for a corporation?
And here’s what I said, “Yes. Yes, you should do one of those things or something else.” Because there’s no wrong answer. “Don’t be afraid, do not be dismayed, be strong and be courageous, because I will be with you wherever you go. If you go this way or go that way, if you make this decision or that one, I’ll be with you. So don’t be afraid. Because I’m not going to abandon you. You’re not going to make the choice that leads you out of the will of God, because you choose to go to this city or that city or take this job or that job. But step out in faith. Be bold, be courageous. Live your life!”
Today you will be faced with a decision that’s like that. It will be a small one, I suspect. It won’t be a big one about what you’ll do with the rest of your life but a small one about whether you will choose to go for it or just hang back. I just want you to put your feet in the water and take that small step of courage, because the Lord will be with you wherever you go.
Let’s pray. Lord, we ask that you would speak to us and help us to be courageous. We confess that too often we want to go back to Egypt. We’ll just claim where we are rather than take that step of faith and courage. Forgive us, God, and enable us, fill us with your Spirit that we might be strong and very courageous. In the name of Christ. Amen.