“Have notI commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Josh. 1:5-7, 9). Christ is the perfect example of being courageous. He was the most courageous person that has every lived on the face of the earth. Courage is the ability to do something that scares you. In the Bible index it says that courage is also faith, fear, valiant, and strength. Nephi had courage to stand up to his older brothers when they murmured against God. He had enough courage to willingly and whole heartedly followed God’s commandments. Lehi had courage to take all of his family into the wildemess after God had told him to. Zeezrom had the courage to send a letter to Alma and Amulek when he was in his wicked state (Alma 15:4). When you have courage, you feel as if you can do anything. Alma 58:12 says that they took courage because they had a small force and that gave them the determination to conquer their enemies and protect the people that were most important to them. I have learned that you don’t have to do extraordinarily big things to be courageous, they can be small simple things. I have also learned that when you do have courage, it mostly comes from the spirit and the spirit will always be with you if you are doing the right thing. Fear will make you feel as if you cannot do things and it belittles your feelings. It can keep you from having that courage, but if you pray to God for courage or for the strength to have courage, he will give it to you. You also have to act on that courage because it will not help if you have it and you don’t do anything with it.
I prayed and asked which one I needed to work on out of a few that I had and he gave me the answer back: courage. The one thing I lack is courage. It scares me to talk to people that II do not know. I know what is right and I know what I have to do and that I will never be led in the xwrong direction if I do what is right, but it is still very hard to act on that courage. I make a few goals that I thought could help me. I made the goal to pray to God to have courage for that day. I also wanted to talk to someone new every day, whether it be in my class or someone that I walk past on the way to or from class. I do not get along with people my age all that well, so I wanted to talk to people my age along with other people. I also wanted to have the courage to talk to my parents about certain things, because I have a hard time talking to my parents. I made all of these goals in hope that I would have courage.
I spend a lot of time worrying about this project. Finally, last week I decided that I needed to actually do the project. Monday I started talking to people in my first class, butI did not talk to my parents and I forgot to ask God for courage. Tuesday I talked to someone my first, second and third class. All to people that I normally wouldn’t talk to. I talked to my mom on Tuesday, but I never brought up what I wanted to. I also got a call from my dad and I didn’t tell him what I wanted to say either. I have a fear of confrontation, so just to make the conversation end sooner I went along with what they said. I did pray for courage that day and I followed most of the promptings. Wednesday went the same as Monday, but this time I went to the temple to ask for it.
Thursday I talked to my mom and got out most of what I had to say, but then I got some shocking news which made me stop in my tracks, for the rest of the day I did not talk to anyone else. Friday I did something for the first time, it was not one of my goals, but I still had to have courage to go to a place that I had never gone to. I also got lost so I had to ask for directions from someone that I did not know. Saturday I went to the temple as well and asked for courage, and I had not talked to anyone that day either. Sunday I had to talk to a lot of people that I had never talked to before, but I also gave my first lesson which I did not plan for so I had to have a lot of courage to do that. I learned as the week went on that it was easier to do things then I had expected. When you have the goals in mind to do certain things it makes everything easier to actually do the goals. It still takes courage, but it gets easier. I still need to pray for courage on some occasions, but it gets easier.
