Strong and Courageous | I WAS Afraid | Pastor Joel Sims

Joshua 1 is the premise: you will not enter the destiny God has for you without being strong and very courageous. Strength is the capacity to seize and hold. Courage is the willingness to fight—to leave the comfort zone and take a risk. God did not lead Israel the easy way because He was more interested in who they were becoming than in what they were obtaining. The wilderness develops patience, peace, and faith. Hebrews 11:6 then makes the cost of sitting still unmistakable: without faith it is impossible to please the Father. Morality is not enough. If your faith is not on something, you are not pleasing Him.

“Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

1. Faith Pleases God Even When Outcomes Differ

Hebrews 11 lists people who conquered kingdoms, shut lions’ mouths, quenched fire, and received their dead back—and then lists people who were tortured, stoned, sawn in two, and wandered in deserts. Both groups gained approval. Faith is not first about obtaining outcomes. Faith is about refusing to live without God. Leave the results with Him. Lay hands on the sick. Pray for the broken. Move as His hands and feet. Some will see the miracle. Some will suffer. The common thread is that they lived as if He is real. Sarah counted God faithful for nearly two decades before Isaac came. That kind of courage changes more than a personal dream. It moves something in the earth.

2. Stop Treating Faith Like a Spectator Sport

We have turned the heroes of faith into Marvel characters—people on a pedestal doing the work while everyone else watches. That is not the gospel. God has a destiny for the person in the pew, not only the person on the platform. There are two things God will never do for you: your resisting and your receiving. If you want the devil to flee, you resist him. If you want what God has given, you get in faith and receive it. He will not force either one. Matthew 25 is how heaven works. The Master entrusted His possessions—five, two, and one—each according to ability. The point is not that the amounts were unfair. The point is that nobody was given nothing. Whatever you have, take it as far as it will go.

3. “I Was Afraid” Is How a Talent Gets Buried

The five-talent and two-talent servants moved immediately. Immediately is belief plus aggression. They did not fear loss. They used what the Father put in their hands and came back with more. The one-talent servant said, “I knew you were a hard man… I was afraid… I hid your talent in the ground.” He did not lose the life God gave him. He also did not do anything with it. He handed it back unused. That is what fear does. It makes you a victim—“it’s easy for them, hard for me”—and it keeps you in a pattern so familiar that God calls it laziness: same clothes, same words, same routes, same level. Playing it safe is acting like you do not have a God.

4. God Wants to Give You a God Story

Gideon was hiding in a winepress when the Lord called him a mighty man of valor. You do not receive according to how God sees you. You receive according to how you see yourself. God reduced the army so the victory could never be explained as human strength. He wanted Gideon to tell his grandchildren, “Where there was no way, God did what only God could do.” The regrets that last are not the times you tried and it did not work. They are the times you never moved. As a teenager in Peru, Pastor Joel and a friend prayed for a lame man with all zeal and no language—and the man did not walk. That is still the posture: act like He is real. Challenge the pattern. Go from faith to faith and glory to glory.

He is not looking for perfection. He is looking for aggression.
Use what He gave you. Don’t bury it because you were afraid.

“Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master.”