By Daniel Garner
"This is my command-be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go" - Joshua 1: 9
"Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less" - General Robert E. Lee
"There's no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole" - Murphy's Law
Whenever I was 20 I received Orders to report to active duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
A few months later, after extensive mobilization training, we graduated and we each boarded our planes to begin the literally day-long trek to Iraq. On the way there, I turned 21 in an airport in Germany, discovered that when you're in a plane for more than 21 hours with 80 other dirty Soldiers you learn how to ask the stewardess for random things just to smell her perfume, and became a connoisseur at cloud spotting.
We eventually landed in Kuwait; a foreign desert in a foreign land a world away from anyone we loved. While sitting on a bench at midnight staring up at the night sky wondering how many other Soldiers were doing the same thing, a friend came over to me. He had a satellite phone, a comparative luxury I didn't have. He said "someone wants you to hear something". I took it, put it to my ear and listened; and heard someone singing to me "Happy Birthday" in the most wonderfully operatic voice I've ever heard. Her name was Sarah and that small brilliant act meant (and still means) the world to me. Here I was in literally the middle of a desert in the middle of nowhere and here I was listening to a voice that cared for me enough to figure out not only how to call me but who and when.
It really and truly is the little things in life that make the biggest difference. Years later I still remember her doing that, and I imagine that you can recall someone doing something similar to you that you can look back on and draw strength from.
Joshua 1: 9 says "Be strong and courageous!". God, the Creator of the Universe, is telling us to be courageous! Not everyone is called to be a Soldier but everyone is called to be courageous. Anyone, no matter how small or young or old, is called to make a difference. Not only that, but we're called, ordered, to be courageous.
And we can do that because God's got our back.
Today, be the story that someone tells when they speak of someone encouraging them. Someone being there for them; needing someone and at just the right time you were there. And if that's you today, you needing someone, then remember also that God said in the same chapter in Joshua "For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go".
Push for your next breath, believing that you can do more with it than your last. Have faith that you can help light others' hearts through the fire of your own. Remember that faith is the absence of fear in the presence of omnipotent Christ and that sometimes the true test of valor is not always how we die, but how we live.
Live today for the courage that God Himself calls you to and know that no matter what you're never alone.
The Takeaway: We never know when we will have a huge impact on people's lives or how. However, we do know that the same God who created the universe calls us to be mighty in all that we do to help others when we do. And that no matter what He will always be with us, calling us to be "strong and courageous!"