ARE YOU WILLING TO BE BRAVE?

What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘Brave’? Here’s the definition I got from the dictionary: ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.

Not so far back I watched the animation movie ‘Brave’, a story about a princess, Merida, who refuses to conform to customs (the path laid out by her parents/society), in order to follow her own. She ends up throwing the entire kingdom into chaos after seeking the counsel of a witch, who gives her a spell that turns her mother, the queen, into a black bear.

Merida’s story is somewhat common to many if not all of us. Not the mother turning into a bear part, but the part where we are forced to conform to custom. We were born and brought up in a society that upholds certain customs that we are supposed to follow. One of which includes going to school to get an education, so that one can get a good job, that is, a marketable well-paying job. Then one is expected to settle down, have a family and pass on the same to his/her children. And a majority die without realizing that they lived someone else’s idea of them the entire time they were alive.

        

Half if not three quarter of the time, we are so hang up on pleasing our parents, remaining politically correct and on fitting in, that we don’t realize that life is just passing us by. We are so scared of stepping out of the norm, as if when we do, it will rain fireballs or something. Stepping out of the norm has been translated to mean rebellion, madness or stupidity. I will explain in a bit what I mean when I say ‘stepping out of the norm’, so we’re all on the same page.

So what has bravery got to do with anything? Well let me define bravery for you. Bravery is finding out exactly what God placed you on earth for and following it through to the end no matter how hard that process gets. Refusing to conform to what society expects of you, to become all that God created you to be - that’s what I mean when I say ‘stepping out of the norm’.

I must warn you though, that being all that God made you to be is not a walk in the park, and hence one must be ready to pay the price. For Jesus, he had to go through rejection to the point of death, so he could fulfill his purpose here on earth. For Paul, it was persecution and imprisonment and do I need to mention the price that David and Joseph paid?

I’m not trying to scare you into believing that it has to involve some kind of torture for it to be real, all I’m saying is that it’s not easy. Different people have different experiences based on what their purpose is. For me, I’ve had to go through periods of being financially broke, as well as periods of waiting, crying myself to sleep, alienation and being misunderstood. I know of a guy who the girlfriend’s parents are not his biggest fan, reason being he has a degree in actuarial science (which he was forced to do by his parents), but is now pursuing his call in music.

One of the problems is that many of us want to do and be all that God says we are, but few to none, are willing to do all it takes to get there. We want shortcuts and the easiest route possible and when life threatens to be hard, we abandon the call for the familiar and for comfort.

I once heard Robert Madu put it this way in a sermon: “There’s a place that God has prepared for you, but getting there is a process. No matter how hard and painful the process gets, you can’t go back, you have to keep walking. Sometimes it’s easier to go back to the familiar than to walk into the unknown by faith”

The other problem is that, some people want to do God’s purpose for their lives, without God. Like Princess Merida, we seek the counsel of everyone but God, and then find ourselves in a quagmire, yet God has freely given us His Spirit to indwell us, so we don’t do this alone.

The truth is we have so much to lose if we don’t choose to follow through with the process of becoming who we truly are, and so much to gain if we choose to.

My question to you is: are you willing to pay the price of being all that God wants you to be? are you willing to endure the process of becoming? Are you willing to be Brave?