You Can Do Hard Things

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.