Be Courageous
– From The Confident Woman Devotional by Joyce Meyer
Numbers 27:1-4
Then came the daughters of Zelophehad the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, from the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph; and these were the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. And they stood before Moses, before Eleazar the priest, and before the leaders and all the congregation, by the doorway of the tabernacle of meeting, saying: “Our father died in the wilderness; but he was not in the company of those who gathered together against the Lord, in company with Korah, but he died in his own sin; and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be removed from among his family because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father’s brothers.”
Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was the unknown seamstress who started the modern American Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955, in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, she refused to move to the back of the bus after a white man got on board and wanted to sit in a front seat. Rosa’s mother believed “you should take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were.” Rosa said that her lifelong acquaintance with fear made her determined and gave her the courage to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott that followed her arrest and conviction. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. Parks was the first woman to receive the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize.
Rosa refused to live in fear; she was determined to have what was rightfully hers, and her determination sparked government reform for all.
From Rosa’s life, we see that if one person is courageous enough to step out and attempt to do something about a problem, other people with the same desire will also come forward.
Pray: Lord, help me to always have the courage to not allow others to take what is rightfully mine. Help me to confront what is wrong with the truth of Your Word. Amen.
From the book The Confident Woman Devotional by Joyce Meyer. Copyright 2011 by Joyce Meyer. Published by FaithWords. All rights reserved.