B-R-A-V-E: Five Letters That Will Change Your Life

Brave.  A little five-letter word with huge implications.  As my friend, Christa Black Gifford, pointed out in her brilliant blog this week, this little word has become somewhat of a buzz word in the church in this season.  She also made the point that this word is seeming to become a theme in the earth and I agree with her.  Brave and I have had a sweet history the past several months.  It may only contain five letters, but, let me just say, it is a word that will keep you up at night.  I've had to wrestle with this word.  It is a word that is exhilarating, intimidating, impactful, white-knuckle scary, freeing, bold, all-in, and it is a word and a way of life that demands an anchored answer.  As I have walked in this word the last several months, I've learned that there is no gray area in bravery.  It definitely demands a level of commitment that is not concerned with what people think or say.  If you commit to bravery, there is no going back because, as I've found, it has a way of defining and changing and catapulting you forward into glorious albeit scary unknowns as well as unscouted but thrilling new territory in the physical realm and in the spiritual. 

Saying yes to bravery means depending on a big, kind, exciting, mysterious, ever-close God who is only waiting to take your hand and walk every single step of the way with you.  It means learning to take Him at His word as you speak the words, "Teach me what it means to walk into exceedingly abundantly far over and above all that we dare ask or think, infinitely beyond your highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes or dreams."   See what I mean about white-knuckle scary?!  That is a dangerous prayer.  To be real though, I want to speak and pray boldly knowing full well that God will deliver.  I've spent way too much of my life allowing fear to have the last word leaving me complacent and totally aligned with mediocrity.  I want to live passion.  I want to live bold.  I want to live brave.  I want to live undaunted.  I want to live kind.  I want to live as a woman who takes my identity as more than a conqueror seriously.  I want to live and lean into every part of who I am in Jesus.  I'm not interested in living rhetoric.  I want to relentlessly go after personal experience of Daddy God, King Jesus, and Holy Spirit.  Lets make a declaration with our lives to live BRAVE.