Screw your courage...

I have wanted to make this post since earlier in the week but have been held up by one thing or another... so, lets see if it is still as fresh in my mind...

Last Sunday I went to church to hear Robert Greene finish his series on what would happen if we stopped going to church and started being the church. While Robert is not much of a sermon-title-giver, I would say that the title was "Screw your courage to the sticking point." A little more palatable than my entry title (which I assume might not go over well on a sunday morning). Anyway, the reference to screwing your courage to the sticking point is from Macbeth. In a critical moment in the story Lady Macbeth is laying into her accomplice who is starting to chicken out when she challenged him to "screw his courage to the sticking point." The sticking point is a reference to screwing the tension on your cross bow to the perfect point where you have optimum control and power to kill your target. The concept is that when your courage is locked in to that point where it is supposed to be, then you will find success.

The application to the Christian life is that Christ is our sticking point. When we are in the midst of chaos, confusion, doubt, ect... it is that moment that we must screw our courage to the sticking point. We must fix our eyes upon Jesus "look full in his wonderful face. And the things of this world, they'll grow strangely dim, in the light of his glorious face."

This was the case for Peter when, in the midst of a great and perilous storm, he see Jesus walking on the water... As all hope was lost he screws his courage to the sticking point (he fixes his eyes and hope on Christ) and walks on the water to his king. However, we know that Peter began to look away from Jesus and pay a little more attention to the waves than Jesus and instantly found himself swimming in the sea.

I think that Robert said it best when he said that we must screw our courage to the sticking point that we might take gospel risks. I think this is true. Believers, with eyes and hope set on Jesus, are willing to do and undergo anything for the sake of their King because their security is not in the moment but fixed wholly on Jesus...