courage on Captives

God of mercy, deliver us from our fear in which we judge others. We pray for all who are oppressed, imprisoned, persecuted or rejected. To you who have delivered us from slavery we pray for the faith ...

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothi...

Sisters Corrie and Betsie ten Boom were ultimately sent to the Ravensbrück after being arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 for hiding Jewish people and members of the Dutch resistance from the Nazis. In ...

Gracious God, You have called us out of darkness and into the light of Your love. You have redeemed us and made us whole in order to set us free from bondage. The challenge You place before us is to d...

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

These disciples turned the world upside down because they saw a dead man come back to life by the power of God. And whatever that “knowing” and “seeing” did in them, it did it at a deep level because ...

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. Af...

Like a scene straight out of Gladiator, Polycarp was dragged into the Roman Colosseum. Discipled by the apostle John himself, the aged bishop faithfully and selflessly led the church at Smyrna through...

In the second century, a priest from Antioch named Sulpicius had steadfastly refused to sacrifice to the gods, even under torture, and was being led away to be beheaded. As he walked, a Christian name...

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Corrie ten Boom tried to enlist a pastor to help hide Jews. Showing him a Jewish baby in need of rescue, the pastor said “No. Definitely not. We could lo...

Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls. We have served this god of self-preservation. But y...

Father, we confess to boasting in success and security. We have denied you rather that desire you. We have cowered when we needed to be courageous. Jesus, we long to be people who follow you, no matte...

Loving God**, we reflect on the times when we took too long to obey you. Give us courage next time.(silent reflection)** Merciful God**, we reflect on the instances where we failed to see your leadin...

Out of the depths of darkness and despair we have cried out for your mercy, O God. Instead of marking our iniquities with the just weight of our condemnation, you have forgiven us, breathed new life i...

We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

I’m convinced that if we have a God-sized, God-given courage, then we will be freed up to be the people of God, living out the mission of God, marked by the joy of God.

Despair gives courage to a coward.

Leader: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? People: One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after...

Two thousand years ago, Christians were often hunted down and killed. Amid this darkness, the church began a radical practice. When a brother or sister was martyred for faith in Jesus, the Christian c...

Leader: The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? People: The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Leader: One thing I have asked of the Lord, that I will se...

A truly remarkable example of sacrificial courage took place in Folsom, New Mexico, in 1908. When a flood was racing toward the valley, a resident from the hills warned a local woman, S. J. Brooks, th...

Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

The disciples are tossed on the waves again. They are in a storm, fully as bad as the previous one. Gently and by degrees he excites and urges the disciples on toward greater responsiveness, even to t...

Facing imminent death, Thomas Cranmer—the Archbishop of Canterbury who crafted the foundational Book of Common Prayer for Anglican worship—succumbed to terror and signed a document renouncing hi...

The church before Christendom was made up of individuals who had a courage that could not be quenched by the fires nor torn apart by the lions. It was made up of ordinary people who together unleashed...

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.

Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to li...

Lord God, forgive us for how we have let our faith atrophy. We grow complacent, stagnant, and we fail to strive to follow you. Give us passion, give us courage, and give us motivation to excel for you...