Truth Tool - Good Courage

When Moses left the Children of Israel and Joshua became the new leader, the Lord gave Joshua a charge:

“Have not I commanded thee? 

Be strong and of a good courage; 

be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: 

for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest” 

(Joshua 1:9). 

I love this charge, which the Lord later gave to all the House of Israel, and since I am part of the House of Israel, I consider it my charge also.

But one day while I was contemplating this verse some things jumped out at me and hitting me over the head as if saying, “Look!” The first of thing that struck me was that this is not simply good advice, it is a commandment from the Lord. It is a command to not fear, and to not get discouraged. But even the command not to be fearful seemed strange. To me having courage meant to be brave and so did not being afraid. Why the redundancy? And why did the Lord find it necessary to define courage with the adjective good? Is there such a thing as bad courage?

It took me awhile, but I finally discovered that at the time the King James translators were translating the Bible the word courage meant “feelings and passions of the heart” and not bravery. Thus any emotion was courage, and so the Lord is charging Joshua (and us) to only have good feelings in our hearts.

But that presents a big problem. How can we go through our days with the media, other people saying and doing things and only let the good feelings into our hearts? Don’t bad feelings sometimes overpower us? The answer to that is in the last sentence. The reason we can do it is because the Lord is with us where ever we go or whatever we do. Despite the bad and evil in the world, we can cast it all away because we know there is a Savior who will eventually heal this world and all the righteous in it.

Understanding this charge to only let good feelings into your heart is a powerful Truth Tool. It can be used in time of vexation by simply repeating the words, or as a preventative Tool to recite every day in order to avoid vexation. I have rewritten the charge in modern English and put my own name in it. I have it laminated and carry it around in my wallet where I can refer to it any time vexation starts to overwhelm me. I also have it on a mirror that I see every morning. I have found that there is a power I can literally feel envelop me every time I simply recite the words out loud.

Be a Poet

In George MacDonald’s book On the Back of the North Wind, the North Wind explains to the boy Diamond that a poet is someone who sees something good in the world and then helps other people to see it also. I love that definition of a poet, but I also love the implication that anyone who helps others to see the good in the world is a poet.

I love to read poetry. I love to write poetry. I love language. But a lot of modern poetry is not about seeing the good or helping others see the good. Somehow the literary world has lost its avocation of good and has become an advocate of reality as if reality is a given that can't be disputed—but reality is something we all create. We each have our own reality that we create for ourselves.

So I’m proposing that we all be poets using George MacDonald’s definition. As you walk through your day, see the good, and be a poet--share the good in whatever words you have. Then watch the magic happen as your own reality grows more beautiful.

Encouragement

The word courage didn’t always mean bravery. At the time the King James translator’s were doing their work on the Bible, the word courage meant “feelings or passions of the heart.” Thus when the word is used in the scriptures we often find it preceded by the adjective good. God wants us to have “good courage” or “only good feelings and passions of the heart.”

This is especially interesting when we look at the word encouragement. The suffix –ment means “process of.” The prefix en- means to “put into.” So if we use the original definition encouragement is “the process of putting good feelings or passions of the heart into.”

As we surround ourselves with all that is good we can overcome much of the despair and disappointment that exist in the world. When we are confronted with the negative things of life we can counter the negative by clinging to the positive good things around us. Good music. Good friends. Good books. Good thoughts. These are just some of the things that can encourage and lift us.