You can do hard things. I can’t
count how many times I heard that from my Father growing up. It’s funny to me
now because I say it to my students all the time, and this week I have taken it
up a notch. Not only can we do hard things, it is our job to do them. We must
step into the difficult situations that come up, and do the hard things.
Doing hard things then means
getting past your fear of what might happen. Most hard things are hard to do
because we are afraid of something. Put more simply, it is fear that makes
things hard. We hesitate to do hard things because we do not want the pain, the
embarrassment, the potential failure; in short we are afraid of the cost. This
is not a judgment, its just an assessment: fear makes it hard to do hard
things. This is why having courage is so important: because it takes courage to
do hard things. Courage doesn’t mean not being afraid, it means being willing
to do something even though you are afraid. This is what it means when to do
hard things. This is we can do hard things, because God has given us the gift
of courage to push through the discomfort or the fear or the pain. It’s a good
thing too, because it’s our job to do hard things.
Let me explain why it’s our job to
do hard things in a story. In the Old Testament story of David and Goliath,
David is a young boy from a small village that has been left at home while his
older brothers went to fight and invading army led by the giant Goliath. In the
story, David is sent by his Father to bring food to his brothers at the Front.
When he finds that the giant Goliath has been challenging anyone on the
Israelite side to a duel and that everyone on the Israelite side has been
hiding from Goliath in fear. David goes to the king and declares that he will
fight Goliath. Of course the king laughs at the idea of David, who is a boy,
fighting the giant Goliath who has been fighting for longer than David has been
alive. But when he sees that David is determined, the King decides it is worth
a shot. He dresses David in his own armor and gives him his own sword to make
him more battle-ready. But David, who is a boy, is too small for the armor and
not accustomed to fighting with the sword. He claims he cannot fight with them
and instead goes out to meet Goliath with just his sling.
This is one of the most amazing
things to have been recorded in history (you can read the rest in 1 Samuel, chapter
17) but, of course, there’s more going on under the surface. Earlier in the
book of Samuel, before Goliath brings his army to Israel, we meet David.
Samuel, writer of the book, prophet of God, is sent to anoint a new king
because God has rejected King Saul. Samuel ends up at the house of David’s
father and sees all of David’s well-built older Brothers. Samuel expects to
anoint one of them but God rejects them all. David is finally sent for from
where he was taking care of his father’s animals and Samuel anoints him as
God’s chosen king of Israel.
Think about David’s moment with
the King now. King Saul, the one David has been chosen to replace (though Saul
doesn’t know it yet), is supposed to be the one facing the threat of Goliath
and leading his men into battle. Instead it is David, who is a boy, doing what
the King should be doing and making the hard decision to not be held back by
his fear. David the anointed King was leading the nation of Israel the way that
Saul the real king was supposed to be doing. David recognized it was the King’s
job to do the hard thing and he stepped into it.
We are called to be different. To
have value and make decisions that fly in the face of what our world says makes
sense. This is hard; and it’s hard because it is scary. What will people think
of you? What will they say? What if you do it and you’re wrong? But Jesus says
he will never leave us and that he loves us. And because he loves us we can
trust him when he says that he has made his plan in our best interest, we
simply need to follow where he is calling us. And that takes courage.
