Fear, courage, success and faith

Religion Zone
To fear is to have a feeling of being afraid. It is to dread the consequences of an action. Fear stops us from doing certain things.

To fear is to have a feeling of being afraid. It is to dread the consequences of an action. Fear stops us from doing certain things. BY PROSPER TINGINI

It is the doubt to act and conquer. Courage reverses fear and replaces it with bravery. It is the ability to face your obstacles, adversaries, overcome failure and the need to succeed.

Success comes as a result of one’s ability to erase fear, and the courage to act and to face any challenges head-on. It comes as a result of faith. Faith breeds success.

Fear often paralyses people. It is like a disease that incapacitates action. It disables the mind and chains people to the ground.

Overcoming fear is the first step that gets us going. Those bound by fear will remain rooted in one spot. In the scriptures, we have a good example of what fear can do to people.

The Israeli people were rescued from slavery by God and promised a land full of milk and honey (full of riches).

When they were about to cross into the Promised Land, Moses sent 12 men to go and spy on the land of Canaan to make sure it was safe. They reported back that indeed the land was very rich as per God’s words but, however, the occupants of the land were “men of great stature”, so huge that “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers and so we seemed to them,” (Numbers 13: 32-33).

Fear gripped the people of Israel so much that they lost their faith in God’s promise.

They lost the direction to their destiny. They stopped proceeding to the Promised Land and became directionless wanderers, like vagrants, devoid of a solution.

Instead of believing in God’s promise to a rich destiny, they chose to live in fear and remained glued in despair. Some even considered going back to Egypt to continue living in captivity.

They became captives of their own fear. For 40 years, fear made the people of Israel fail to reach their destined rich land on time, a journey that could have taken them a few years at the most.

It took a whole generation of fearful people to die first, before a new breed of courageous people gained the courage to advance into the Promised Land.

Of the 12 who were sent on the spying mission, only two, Caleb and Joshua, had tried to motivate the people to face the giants, but their arguments were thwarted and nullified.

Only these two lived long enough to reach Canaan, because they had the will and the courage to execute God’s plan. They had faith.

Courage carries people to new levels. It breaks down barriers. It is the tool for success. People with courage act on things whether they are just ideas or obstacles.

Courage gives us strength and the will to get to our destination, to fulfil our visions. God normally comes to the aid of people with the courage to achieve or change things.

There is a divine element attached to courageousness. God instructed and anointed Joshua, “Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed: for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1: 9).

The divinity of courage is also exemplified by the David and Goliath story. Holding only a sling and a stone in his hand, David courageously proclaimed to Goliath (1 Samuel 17: 45-47); “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand”. The rest is history. Courage knows no bounds.

Nothing is too big for it to conquer. It is the gateway to success, and attracts the will of God. We cannot realise our own personal visions if we lack the courage to act and face all the obstacles along the way — head-on.

No situation or problem is too big where there is the courage to act. Not even the problems we the “povo” of Zimbabwe are facing are too big to solve, on our own, if we acquire within ourselves the courage to confront our challenges without fear and the courage to change things.

We need to emulate David to restore our pride, to restore our dignity, to bring back success and prosperity to our beloved rich country.

Success in everything we do often comes at a price. It does not just happen. You have to work and sweat to achieve success. A chain of events often leads to our success. A number of obstacles have to be removed on our way to success.

Our ability to face the challenges ahead ultimately determines our success. Fear is the biggest obstacle to the success of humankind.

Elimination of fear levels the playing field by removing real or imagined hindrances, and putting on the courage to clear all obstructions.

Sometimes failure is an option because we either haven’t tried to act at all because of fear of the unknown, or we just lack the will to succeed. An absence of the will to succeed is often accompanied by a lack of faith in the accomplishment of the thing at hand.

Faith is the gown we should put on to graduate to our intended destination. It caps our will to succeed. Once you lack the faith within yourself and moreso in the Lord our God, you are doomed.

In a letter to the Hebrews, Paul describes faith as follows; “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11 verse 1).

Once you make a statement of faith in whatever you do or that which you try to achieve, you have empowered yourself. You will have given yourself an additional weapon to fulfil your dreams. More often than not, success will be guaranteed, as you will be operating in God’s zone.

This is the comfort or safe zone into which we should tune our minds to in order to achieve good results and success.

To then trust in the Lord our God gives us full protection in whatever we intend to achieve. The Lord is our shepherd.

The children of God are so blessed that they are protected on every side. Isaiah 54: 17 tells us; “No weapon that is fashioned against you shall prosper, and you shall prove wrong every tongue that rises against you in judgement. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, say the Lord”.

l I would like to invite those who wish to train and be certified as ministers of religion through an internationally recognised training institute.

to contact me on 0771 260 195 or Dr. Oneas Mufandaedza on 0783 687 395. There is an added option to also train and be certified in agricultural skills.