Your life has meaning. Your life is a great mystery. And those are held together in Christ. Jesus is the plotline, and the story is good. You can have courage for the future because the future has a name, a face, and a blood type. Dr. Russell Moore, Location: 3,311
The Courage to Stand by Dr. Russell Moore was a great encouragement to me in many ways. Dr. Moore lost his own father shortly after the release of this book and it has been remarkable to watch him live out the principles of this book even as he walked through this season of grief and had the honor of preaching his father’s memorial.
One of my favorite things about this book is the way that Dr. Moore wove in the story of Elijah throughout. Elijah is one of my favorite biblical characters and a constant source of encouragement for me to remember that God is working and He is faithful.
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- Courage is needed not to do radically important things, but to live out a quiet, ordinary life, with integrity and with love. Location: 572
- Your courage will not be found in your triumphant Mount Carmel moments, when you scatter your enemies, real and imagined, from in front of you, and when you can see clearly how protected and accepted you are. Your courage will be forged instead, like that of Elijah and everyone else who has followed this path, when you cannot stand on your own at all, when you are collapsed in the wild places, maybe even begging for death. Like Elijah, you will hear the words, “What are you doing here?” Elijah thought he was walking to Mount Sinai, but he was really walking toward Mount Calvary. And so are you. Only the crucifiable self can find the courage to stand. Do not be afraid. There is no map here. But you know the Way. Location: 593
- Courage begins with an actual cry for help. Location: 884
- Elijah was courageous because he learned how to be afraid in the right way. And so must you. You, like he, will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and the only way you can learn to fear no evil is to conclude that someone is walking with you, someone is, in fact, shepherding you (Ps. 23), even when you cannot see him. We walk not around that valley but straight through it. That’s how we learn that we can trust him. That’s how we learn to be brave. The demons are there in the dark, that’s true, but they are not the only things chasing you. Goodness and mercy are too. Location: 972
- When the breach between who we pretend to be and who we really are becomes exposed, the result is shame. Location: 1,007
- Almost everyone has had the dream of walking through one’s high school, and looking down, in shock and horror, to see that one is naked, having forgotten to dress that morning. Another common dream many people have is that there is a final examination coming up, and one forgot to study, or maybe even forgot to attend the classes altogether. My wife often dreams that she inadvertently has committed a crime, and is now being hauled off to the penitentiary by the police. The theme in dreams like these is exposure, of being found out by others. Location: 1,010
- We hide our brokenness from each other, and even from ourselves. That’s why Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Even when people appear to be happy and confident and self-assured, they are churning with resentment, fear, and shame, even if they can’t articulate why that is. Location: 1,130
- We are hidden in him. He knows all about us, and came looking for us anyway. Location: 1,201
- Courage means not fearing those who will seek to intimidate you from following Christ toward those who are sick and in need of a physician. Location: 1,228
- Conformity leads, ultimately, to cynicism because the pull of the crowd is not governed by truth but by fear. As philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, “The majority of people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion as they are of holding an opinion alone.” Location: 1,285
- Life is short; don’t be ashamed.
- The Scripture confronts the kingdoms we set up in our own lives, redirecting those kingdoms to its purposes. And yet, the temptation is always to shape the Word of God into a court prophet, saying to us exactly what we want to hear. Location: 1,502
- “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16–17). Location: 1,522
- When looking at the vast cosmic sweep of creation, Paul said that the mystery of God’s purposes is summed up “in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9–10). No matter how chaotic or random the universe seems, it really is an ordered cosmos because it is ordered around and through and in the person of Jesus Christ. The revealed Word of God points us to him, and then, by the Spirit, “re-integrates” our lives around him. Location: 1,525
- The novelist Marilynne Robinson wrote, “A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest.” Location: 1,594
- In evangelicalism—a church reform movement supposedly committed to Scripture as the sole ultimate norming authority—biblical illiteracy abounds, with slogans and memes replacing the narrative and teaching of the Bible, often even by those who say they are committed to biblical inerrancy and exposition. In a populist movement based on crowd support, it is much easier to find out what one’s “base” already believes and add Bible verses to that than it is to shape and form consciences over decades with the Word of God. The world can see this for what it is. Location: 1,618
- An entire generation is watching what goes on under the name of American religion, wondering if there is something real to it, or if it is just another useful tool to herd people, to elect allies, to make money. Is Christianity really about the crucified Christ, they ask, or is it about ethnic superiority claims or wacky televised conspiracy theories or political sloganeering? Location: 1,626
- Our integrity can only come through a breaking down of who we thought we were, a shaking up of what we thought we knew. We are the patients, not the doctors. And the chart in our hands is our own. God help us. Location: 1,760
- Our cultural and moral and policy debates are important. Offering one’s opinion is good, sometimes even necessary. But if our passions demonstrate that these things are most important to us, are central to our identity, then we have veered into a place we should not go. That’s why North American Christianity is sick and weak, and doesn’t even know it. We are bored by what the Bible reveals as mysterious and glorious, and red-in-the-face about what hardly matters in the broad sweep of eternity. And why? We clamor for the kind of power the world can recognize, while ignoring the very power of God that comes through Christ and him crucified. We trade away the Sermon on the Mount for influence and access because the Sermon on the Mount seems weak and surrendering. And through it all we demonstrate what we really care about—the same power and self-leverage this age already values. We think if only we were more aggressive and dominant and powerful then we might not be victimized. We might win, like Thor, instead of lose, like Jesus. Location: 2,098
- In Christ, God has joined together the personal and the communal. In the gospel, we see that we cannot hide in our tribe or bloodline or ethnicity or family or religion, but we must come into the family of God one-by-one, through the newness of new birth (John 3:3). We are not birthed into a vacuum but into a kingdom, into a family. Like a body the church functions together, serving one another and worshipping the same Lord (1 Cor. 12:12–31). Location: 2,547
- Finding courage will sometimes mean finding the courage to stand alone, to stand with communities one would never have chosen for oneself. And courage will also mean that genuine community comes often through deep loneliness—often solitude in the short-run is the means to belonging. That’s why we will often encounter Jesus the most intensely when we feel the most alone, but we will learn there that he has been with us all along, and is leading us toward others who have been lonely too. We need to know how to sing with a number that no man can number, with a church that is stretched out across the millennia, bridging heaven and earth. But along the way we will learn that, between here and there, are moments of profound loneliness, when we learn that our only ultimate audience is the one before Whom we will stand in the end. Location: 2,564
- The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Jesus. Location: 2,948
- Your life has meaning. Your life is a great mystery. And those are held together in Christ. Jesus is the plotline, and the story is good. You can have courage for the future because the future has a name, a face, and a blood type. Location: 3,311
- The lampposts that have helped us along this far can only point us beyond themselves to a greater Lampstand still. As I knelt there on the floor, what came to mind was a passage that I would recite every week at the church where I preached, as a word of benediction. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1–5, 14). I read that passage every week because I believe it sums up the whole of the Bible. But, more than that, I read it because I needed to hear those words, out loud, every single week. My life depended on them. And still does. Location: 3,327