Brave Faith

How Do We Endure?

A dear friend recently shared with me the heartache of watching her daughter undergo treatment for breast cancer. As we talked, I was reminded that sometimes it is even more difficult to witness the suffering of someone we love than to endure suffering ourselves. Helplessly watching a child battle like my friend is, can bring a unique kind of pain.

During our conversation, she told me she was striving to have "brave faith." Those two simple words stayed with me long after our conversation ended. They caused me to wonder: What does brave faith look like? Who in the Bible lived it out? As I searched the Scriptures, I found men and women who trusted God even when the path before them was uncertain, painful, or frightening. Their lives remind us that brave faith is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to trust God in the midst of fear.

Faith over Fear

To better understand “brave faith”, we must first understand what it is up against.

Fear and faith both influence how we see our circumstances, but they lead us in very different directions. Fear tells us to focus on the problem. It rehearses every detail of what could go wrong until the obstacle appears larger than God's promises. It whispers that the situation is beyond hope and subtly convinces us that the problem is greater than God's power. At its core, fear clings to control rather than surrendering in trust. Faith, however, fixes its eyes on God. It declares that we are rooted and grounded in His promises and sustained by His hope. Faith does not deny the reality of the problem; it simply refuses to give the problem the final word. Instead, faith chooses to be in alignment with God’s Word, even when circumstances seem to say otherwise. That is “brave faith”, not a life without fear, but a heart that trusts God more than it trusts what fear is saying.

David and Goliath

One of the clearest examples of brave faith in Scripture is found in the story of David and Goliath. Before David became king, he was a young shepherd dutifully tending his father's sheep. He was not a seasoned soldier or part of Israel's army. Yet, God used this unlikely shepherd to accomplish what an entire army was unwilling and unable to do.

In 1 Samuel 17, we read that for forty days Goliath, the Philistine giant, stood before the armies of Israel and challenged them to choose a man to fight him (1 Samuel 17:8). It was a winner-take-all battle. Scripture tells us that King Saul and all the Israelites were "dismayed and greatly afraid" (1 Samuel 17:11). Fear had paralyzed them.

When David arrived at the battlefield to deliver food to his brothers, he heard Goliath issue the same challenge. He saw the very same giant everyone else saw, but he viewed him through a completely different lens. While the soldiers focused on the size of the obstacle, David focused on the greatness of God. They magnified the giant; David magnified God. Goliath possessed impressive physical strength, but David relied on spiritual strength and faithfulness of the Lord.

Before facing Goliath, David boldly declared, “the battle is the Lord's, and He will give you into our hands" (1 Samuel 17:47). With a single stone from his sling, David brought down the giant. David's victory wasn’t about his skill with a sling, instead it was about where he placed his trust. David exemplified brave faith because he believed God's promises were greater than the problem standing before him.

Choose Faith

Like David, we too can choose to live with brave faith. Faith is always a response to who God is and what He has promised. Instead of asking, "What if everything goes wrong?" brave faith asks, "What has God said?" Fear magnifies the problem, but faith magnifies God.

When we bring our hearts into agreement with God's Word and align our lives with His will, we discover the courage to trust Him, even when the outcome is uncertain. Brave faith does not deny the reality of hardship, instead it confidently declares that God's presence, power, and promises are greater than anything we face. Like David, let us choose to see every giant from the perspective of God's greatness and walk forward in the confidence that the battle is the Lord's.

In Christ's love,

Tracey