July 4, 2026

Courage

Joshua 1:9 – Most people know July 4th as a day of fireworks and cookouts, a holiday that arrives every summer with a familiar rhythm. But there is something worth slowing down long enough to consider about what actually happened on that day in 1776. Fifty-six men picked up a pen and signed their names to a document that was, by any reasonable measure, a declaration of war against the most powerful military force on earth at the time.

They knew that. Every one of them knew that.

What is easy to miss from this distance is what that signature actually meant for each of them personally. These were not anonymous men casting a secret ballot. Their names were on the document. Their identities were known. If the Revolution failed, and there was every reason to believe it might, capture meant death. Not imprisonment. Not negotiation. Death. Benjamin Franklin reportedly said as they prepared to sign that they must all hang together, or they would most assuredly all hang separately. The room understood exactly what he meant.

And they signed anyway.

They signed because there are moments in history when the cost of silence is greater than the cost of courage. When standing still becomes its own kind of surrender. When the thing being asked of you is enormous, but the alternative is something you cannot live with.

God has always called His people to that kind of boldness. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before Nebuchadnezzar knowing the furnace was already heated, and they did not flinch. Daniel 3:17 records their answer: our God is able to deliver us, but even if He does not, we will not bow.

That is not recklessness. That is faith with its eyes open.

Today’s Prayer: Lord, remind me that You have never called Your people to safety; You have called them to faithfulness. I choose to trust You with the outcome. Amen.

Reflection Question: What is the thing God has been calling you toward that fear has kept you from doing?