Take courage

Dan came upon me carrying a box out to the garage. “What’s all that?” 

“I’m starting to reorganize the school room and this stuff is in the way.”

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” Dan took the box out of my hands. “Yesterday you wanted to throw out everything in the pantry.”

“We need to change things. Our environment is too cluttered, our diet is crap. We need routines and order.” I tugged on the box. 

Dan held on. “You can’t fix our crisis like this, you know. You’re just going make the rest of us go off the deep end.” He wisely carried the box back upstairs.

Our family was in a crisis, and I was afraid, and I was trying to fix it.

Just before Jesus prays for the disciples on His last night with them, He concludes His final teaching with these words:

“These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) 

“Take Courage!” Jesus tells us. In other translations, the verse says, “Take Heart!”, “Be Brave!” or, “Be of Good Cheer!” Our oldest English translation, the Wyclif Bible from the 14th century, says “Trust ye!”

Tharseo

So what is this hard-to-translate Greek word John uses to convey the ideas of courage, cheer, bravery, heart, trust? Tharseo. This word is related to Thero or therme, which means heat, and Theros, which is harvest-time, summer. Tharseo means to be bolstered from being warmed up, a radiant warm confidence, or as the Greeks might have visualized it, a heart heated to readiness.

the Firepit

During dark days do you, like me, sometimes feel a deep chill of anxiety?

So where do we get the heat?

How do we make the firepit of our souls do what it is supposed to do so that we feel the warmth of God’s peace?

Think back to elementary school science. What do we need for fire?

We need fuel.

We need oxygen.

We need heat.

the Fuel

The logs, the wood, the fuel, are the promises of God.

We need to put our hands on Jesus’s promises and pull them close to our hearts. The promises of God are the fuel of the fire of courage. 

The logs, when they are burning, heat our hearts to readiness. And we have courage.

the Oxygen

But fuel never just sits stacked in the firepit giving off heat. It needs to be positioned so oxygen can flow around it. 

Our courage oxygen is the breath of the Holy Spirit. When we look to the Scriptures to find what God has promised us, we are absorbing the words that were breathed out by God. He breathes on His promises where we have brought them into our being to give life to them in our everyday. Sometimes, we can know the promises, but we also need to position them our lives so that the air can get to them.

the Heat

The fire still lacks one ingredient. Heat. What is going to spark the mix of fuel and oxygen to light the flame of courage? What do we need to supply to the promises of God that the Holy Spirit is enlivening?

We might think what we need to supply is extra effort, more trying. But God’s way is different.  

Surrender. He asks us to surrender all that worry, all that trying. Surrender to the reality of the circumstances. When we recognize and admit that we are freezing next to a firepit that is empty or unlit, we press into our need. And that surrender, enlivened by the breath of Holy Spirit, lights the fuel of God’s promises.

Can you trace fear and anxiety back to an empty or unlit firepit? 

When we need to be brave, we discover what we really believe.  Fuel the fire of courage with those promises.  Open heart and soul to the breath of the Spirit. Spark them to life with surrender. Keep courage burning to do what God has for each step. 

“These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) 

Tharseo — take courage! Let your heart be warmed to readiness! The heat of God’s peace banishes the arctic blast of fear. Jesus has overcome. It is enough.