“As you look back over your life, with all its twists and turns and highs and lows, you can be sure of one thing: you never could have written your own story.” –Paul Tripp, email April 2, 2025

Looking back on my 62 years this is certainly true! Never ever ever ever ever did I see this life for me. Nor do I have any regrets.

More Paul Tripp:  “But something else is equally true. You have not been passive. You have made countless mundane and dramatic decisions along the way, each one contributing to who you are, where you are, who you are with, and what you do.

“You would not be where you are today if you had made different decisions. Each choice was formative. Every decision contributed to the shape, content, and direction of your life. You were desiring, thinking, meditating, choosing, conversing, and acting all along the way. Nothing about your journey has been robotic.”

This describes what a brave faith looks like. No wonder too many people opt for a smaller safer faith.

Faith always asks more of us than what feels comfortable. This is the way of Jesus. His teachings were intentionally uncomfortable.

We are asked to love that person we’d rather other. To listen longer than we’d like. To notice those who are suffering. To advocate for those on the margins. To forgive actual people who actually hurt you. To feel your emotions because all emotions lead you to God. (Feelings are not trauma. They are a guide for you.)

Someone (maybe you) can lead a numbed life or a distracted life and still love Jesus. Still have your name written down in the Book of Life and I’ll meet you in heaven one day. But a life of faith while still here on earth can be so much more. This is why I live. This is why I write.

Yes, I have experienced some smashed heart seasons, the kind you can’t get out of bed from. This I have also learned. At the end of Job’s disaster, he said, I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. Job 42:5. Pain does have a way of showing us God in all truth. This is why pain is our beginning. I will never be able to unsee God’s faithfulness to me each daring time I put myself out there. I know God is beautiful.

I have a beautiful life deeply full of joy because I have made some brave and uncomfortable decisions.

I’ve been taken out of my comfort zone time and time again. But what I’ve grown to learn (and am passing on to you) is that I am not being harmed. I am just being made uncomfortable. I can survive uncomfortable.

There are no hard things. There are only new things. When I am facing a daunting task because I made the brave decision that was before me, it’s not that this thing is really hard to do. It’s just that I didn’t know how to do it yet and I decided to not let the fear of the possibility of failure take over. I saw the possibility from that brave decision as too important.

I believe in the possibilities that happen when God is at work in something.

I have learned from years of God’s faithfulness that I do not need to fear feeling vulnerable or uncomfortable but that I can brave up and walk into it because God always carries me through. When you live such a daring faith, you grow to have no doubt about this.

I make these brave decisions when I go with my gut after I have made other decisions that exposed myself to heartbreaking situations. What did Paul Tripp say about those decisions made along the way? Rainn Wilson says this about the making of our decisions:

“Many studies are finding that a great deal of our decisions and feelings are actually based in our intestines, our guts, and the bazillions of bacteria and the two hundred million neurons that line our digestive tract. In fact, many scientists are now referring to our guts as our second brains! Talk about the advice to ‘go with your gut’ or the question ‘What does your gut tell you?’ taking on new meaning!” –Rainn Wilson, Soul Boom:  Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, p. 52

You feel these decisions. They feel uncomfortable in the gut. I can survive uncomfortable.

Sometimes those brave decisions involve who to not keep in my life. Abusive relationships, self-harm, brokenness, dysfunction and pathologies of all kind can be avoided by making braver decisions. You feel these decisions in your gut too, and they break your heart. I still needed to make those brave decisions.

My reward for making these uncomfortable decisions from my gut? Wonder and awe. And joy that words cannot describe. I share so many of these stories here at Bravester.

My hope is that true stories like mine will inspire you. Inspire you to make braver decisions about your life. Inspiration is a beginning. But inspiration is still safe. Application is the change, and that is not safe.

So may this be your invitation—to make the braver, more uncomfortable decisions that your gut (and the Holy Spirit) is already stirring in you. Don’t let the possibility of failure or the risk of vulnerability keep you from the larger, wonder-filled life that Jesus is leading you toward. You just might discover a life more beautiful than you ever imagined.

I close with a blessing for you, not written by me.

A Blessing for When Caring Costs You

“Blessed are you who want your life to count, you who do the right thing, who hope it will all add up to something. This is some good math.

“But blessed are you who do terrible, terrible math. You who care about strangers. What a waste—that wasn’t going to get you a nicer apartment. You who give your health in service of people who might not even deserve it and who never say thank you. You could have been protecting yourself or, God forbid, sleeping through the night. But you are here instead.

“Blessed are you who listen to long, winding stories from lonely hearts instead of rushing off to more interesting friends. You picked boredom or loving strangers instead of the warmth of being known. That was your time and you’re never going to get it back.

“Blessed are you who love people who aren’t grateful, the sick who endanger your health, the deeply boring who know you have things to do. Loving people can be the most meaningful thing in the world, but it can also be hard and scary and boring and disgusting or sad or anxiety-inducing with zero overtime.

“So bless you, dear one. You who made these bad investments, those acts of love that are not going to add up to success in the way the world sees it. You are the definition of love.” –Kate Bowler, Good Enough, p. 192

Bravo to you, brave one, with the bad math who is the definition of love. There is a larger, wonder-filled life waiting for you.