courage on Conversion

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

Christianity first reached Japan in 1549, due to the heroic missionary work of the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier and his companions. In the next sixty years, over three hundred thousand Japanese citize...

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

The things we say yes to and the things we say no to determine the terrain of our future. My convoluted journey is posted with invitations, and my RSVPs account for the twists and turns. Sometimes, ha...

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...

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; ...

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...

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...

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...

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

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...

St. Columba was an Irish monk and abbot, who is largely responsible for the evangelization of Scotland. He founded the monastery at Iona, which became a training ground and launching point for further...

Almost all heroic individuals face grave crises while they are still on the road to reaching the ultimate decision that they will remain faithful to their selves, whatever the cost.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

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.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond al...

Courage is putting one foot in front of the other when all you can see is a faint outline of the future.

Pastor: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (Jn 3:17) All: His love endures forever Pastor: "...

A blessing for the courage to try Blessed are you, faced with the impossible.  You who do not take your eyes away  from what threatens to swallow you whole.  You who stare down reality,  tho...

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...

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

May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ go with you wherever he may send you.  May the Spirit ground you in the truth that you were created with divine purpose.  May you take up your God-given vocati...

We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

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...

Many, many great things have begun with a single act of courage, throughout history and today. A person steps out and makes one courageous decision and that one domino starts many other dominoes falli...

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

The English word “courage” is derived from the French coeur, which literally means “heart.” And since “heart” has traditionally (and metaphorically) been regarded as the seat of emotion, spirit, and s...

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.

The British romantic poet Lord Byron (George Gordon) grew up with the disability of clubfoot, which kept him from engaging in many of the activities and joys of childhood. He was nevertheless, a perso...