Russell Moore's New Book Helps Us Develop Christ-Centered Courage

By Jubileecast News Oct 08, 2020 12:27 AM EDT

Fear, anxiety, panic and paranoia could be used to describe most people's experience of 2020. A global pandemic-and all the ways it has turned "normal life" upside down-has taken its toll on our mental health and our sense of safety and belonging.

"The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul," (B&H Publishing, Oct. 6, 2020), the latest book from bestselling and award-winning author Russell Moore, offers a bold and relevant message for those who struggle to face the unknown, fight fear that can be paralyzing and find courage when they need it most.

President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore is the author of several books, including "The Storm-Tossed Family," "Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches," and the bestselling "Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel."

Moore writes that the root of our fear is that we might lose our belonging to whatever tribe in which we seek safety, the fear that we might have to stand alone. He calls readers to a Christ-centered courage that equips us to face our fear and keep walking toward the voice that calls us homeward.

"The way of courage, as defined by the gospel, is not the pagan virtue of steeliness and fearlessness, much less our ambient culture's picture of winning and displaying, or strength and swagger. The call to courage is terrifying because the call to courage is a call to be crucified," Moore says.

Moore uses the model of Elijah to explain that the way of the cross is the way to real freedom from fear: finding integrity through brokenness, community through loneliness, power through weakness, and a future through irrelevance.

"We do not see in Elijah a picture of courage-through-triumph but of courage-through- crucifixion," Moore says. "Elijah is not, then, a 'role-model' or example for us of courage. His life was a dramatic enactment, ahead of time, of the cross, just as your life is a dramatic enactment, after the fact, of that same cross. At the moment of crisis and collapse, that's when he encountered God. And that's where he, and we, can find the courage to stand. The courage to stand is found in the courage to be crucified."

"These days, in our new global discourse, are so fraught and so fragmented by forms of cowardice parading as courage (mainly online)," said Devin Maddox, B&H Publisher. "Russell Moore has given such a gift to the Church in his new book, one that unmasks fake courage with a frame assembled with biblical truth."

Find out more online at russellmoore.com/courage-to-stand/.