Flex Your Brave

“Brave, Showing Courage, Fearless, Bold, Audacious, Recklessly Daring, Valiant, Lionhearted, and GRACE is the greatest brave.” - Hosanna Poetry

Brave...it's the one thing we all strive to be. When I heard the above descriptions of different forms of ways to be brave I can only compare myself to a few of them. I'm defiantly not recklessly daring, or fearless. I'm afraid of heights which is why you'll never see me bungee jumping or skydiving. I'm not that recklessly daring or fearless. :)

When I first heard the spoken poetry called “Flex Your Brave” by Hosanna Poetry it made me look at grace and how we can be brave very differently. We can be brave in the smallest things in our lives. We are brave in every decision in our lives. We are brave when we go to work, we are brave when we drive our cars, we are brave to fall in love or want to fall in love. Every point in our day to day lives there are ways for us to be brave. When we are to show grace to others it is the greatest brave. (Disclaimer...I am quoting a number of points from Hosanna's 'Flex Your Brave' poetry and I've added the link to the video for your viewing pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OSRiVMh1g0)

Everyday the choices we make we are in some way being brave. There are battles that rage in our lives whether it's with your job, family, health and singleness where we can choose to be brave. In my season of waiting for God to bring me my future husband I've encountered many battles. I've encountered battles with online dating, my own insecurities and most of all the opinions of those around me. Now if you're single and have been single for quite some time, I'm sure you've encountered those who think they know best on how you can meet people and what you need to do. I've had family members suggest online dating, bars and clubs, and I've even had someone suggest I need to loose some weight. When I was in my 20s and these battles were raging against me, I kept quiet and allowed them to convince me that I'm failing. I'm failing because I'm not doing enough to meet someone, not successful enough, etc. Back then I never had the right words to say to show grace and be the person I knew God wanted me to be. So I just kept quiet and let the battles rage.

In the 5-10 years since the worst of the opinions happened, I have grown more in my own strength as a woman of God. Here's the thing, in the season of waiting that you're in it's very hard to show grace. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's hard. 'The battles that come against us look like gossip, they look like rumors. The battles look like enemies and accusers, but they also look like family, friends, church, co-workers, the ones we love so much.' We want to be brave, we want to show courage, be fearless, bold, audacious, recklessly daring, valiant, and lionhearted. We want to show grace. Giving grace doesn't come easily. It takes every gut and muscle out of us to show grace to those who have wronged us.

We are able to show grace because Jesus did it. He showed grace when we are battling for him, living in the world and taking everything from Him and giving nothing back. For me when I felt battled against it was hard for me to show grace. I wanted Jesus to deal with those who wronged me. I wanted Him to fix the solutions to my problems. We want everything to be done when we want it. We take when we want it but He still gives us grace. “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may restore me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV.

“We don’t get the luxury of looking like Jesus and holding on to our hurts and our hate. We don’t get to say that ‘We follow Jesus’ and then horde to ourselves what he so freely gave. We don’t get to condemn a world that Jesus died to save. He says ‘Come, be Brave. I did not come to save you of all your sins so that you could just stay the same.’” – Hosanna Poetry

I encourage you to show grace. It will be hard, but grace restores, changes, rebuilds. We have to be brave enough to give it.

#flexyourbrave #gracetobeloved