Finding Courage to Stand Up for Jesus

Claire Black: This is True Girl, a podcast for girls and their moms. I’m Claire Black. Together, we’ll explore God’s truth for us one drive at a time.

Song:

I am a true girl.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
I am, I am, I am a true girl!

True Girl is designed for moms and daughters to listen together—it’s the perfect length for a car ride.

This season, we’re challenging you to “Stand Out and Stand Up for Jesus.” And yes, we realize that in this day and age you might look a little crazy if you follow Jesus. But we think normal is overrated. And becoming a God-crazy girl is a worthy goal.

But HOW?

How does a girl become brave enough to say “No, I don’t think I’ll watch that movie,” or “Yes, I think I’ll tell my friend who doesn’t know Jesus about Him, even if it might offend her”? The answer to finding courage like that is straight ahead.

True Girl is hosted by Dannah Gresh. This is episode 3 of season 23, and we’re calling it, “What Makes a Girl God-Crazy?” Dannah’s joined today by Lorelle Phillips, who’s on the True Girl Crazy Hair Tour right now. Let’s listen.

Dannah Gresh: Hey there, True Girl! 

Lorelle Phillips: Yeah, hi! Glad you’re with us today!

Dannah: I want to tell you about a True Girl named Ava. She’s ten years old.

She told me when we were at a True Girl event that one afternoon she was hanging out in her neighborhood when one of the kids started making jokes about his parents wanting to pray before dinner. 

Here’s the things: Ava prays before dinner . . . and she loves Jesus, her parents love Jesus. But, instead of saying anything, her heart started pounding. She thought, If I say something, they all might laugh at me. So she just stayed quiet. But, it didn’t feel good.

Have you been there, Lorelle? Where you think, I just blew that. I had an opportunity to stand out and stand up for Jesus, and I just was a coward.

Lorelle: Yeah, my conscience usually gets to me pretty quickly.

Dannah: Me, too. Well, that night, Ava told Jesus she was sorry. She said, “I wanted to stand up for You, but I was scared.” 

Have you ever faced the fear of standing up for Jesus?

Lorelle: Yeah.

Dannah: Me, too. I think we all chicken out sometimes. But there’s a good ending to this story, and it might help you if you’ve struggled with being afraid, chickening out, not saying something when you probably should have. Stay with us to hear how Ava’s story ends.

First, let’s jump into our theme verse for this season. Lorelle, can you do the honors of reading it.

Lorelle: Sure. My Bible’s already open to it, Dannah. Here’s 2 Corinthians 5:13–14.

If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. 

Dannah: Stop there a sec. We didn’t get very far, sorry. We talked about that sentence in the first two episodes. Let’s summarize.

“If it seems we are crazy . . .” If you live for Jesus, you may stand out. Things the rest of the world thinks are normal are not always God’s best . . . like being a mean girl or being boy-crazy or being fashion-crazy. And that’s going to make you look different. We want you, True Girl, to be God-crazy! That means you may look really different—crazy even.

Lorelle: Why? The next phrase answers that question. It’s “to bring glory to God.”

Being a God-crazy girl is not about being louder than the world, it’s about being faithful to Jesus so people can see how amazing He is! To bring glory or attention to Him, not ourselves.

Dannah: That’s right.

Lorelle: Let’s keep reading:

And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit.

Dannah: Let me explain what Paul—the writer of this part of the Bible—means here, “if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit”—because it connects directly to the part about looking “crazy.” Some people thought Paul was out of his mind—but not because he was loud, wild, or annoying. (To your point, Lorelle.) It was because he stood out and stood up for Jesus. And here’s the thing: he got in trouble for, not once, but over and over again. Standing up for Jesus doesn’t always result in awards and accolades. It can be costly!

I mean, Paul was in prison. He experienced the deep pain of rejection. And he was just under constant pressure because He was telling people that Jesus was the one, true God and Savior of the World and that they needed to be saved by Him. It seemed the more he did this, and the more he pressed in to standing out and standing up for Jesus, the more trouble he got into. Some people took that suffering as proof that, “Something must be wrong with you, Dude! Who wants that kind of trouble in their life? When are you going to learn your lesson and stop?” They even thought that maybe he wasn’t mentally well.

Paul says, “Listen, hey, I’m in my right mind, for your benefit.” In other words, “I’m not crazy. I know the cost. I’ve decided Jesus is worth it. And, it’s for your benefit, so you can know He’s worth it, too!”

Lorelle: Wow! That’s a courageous man! I want to be like that. But how? It can be scary to stand up for Jesus—especially hearing about all he went through.

Dannah: Keep reading! The answer is in there.

Lorelle: “Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life.”

Dannah: Do you see the answer to your question of where we get the courage to stand out and stand up for Jesus?

Lorelle: I do . . . Christ’s love controls us!

Dannah: That’s it! Christ’s love.

When we go to Him, we experience His love. And that love is what compels us or almost controls us, because it’s just such powerful love. You’re so satisfied by it and so drawn to it. It’s like standing up for your best friend because you love her. You experience the love of Jesus so you stand up for Him.

So, experiencing His love is what makes us bold.

In fact, there’s a girl in the Old Testament—and we don’t even know her name. All we know is this: she was a young Hebrew girl who had been taken from her mom and dad and made a slave.

Lorelle: That’s awful.

Dannah: Yeah, there are a lot of sad pieces to this story, but she was actually brought into the home of a man named Naaman. Naaman wasn’t just anyone; he was a powerful army commander. He led battles. He conquered people groups. In fact, he would have been in charge of attacking families and villages just like hers and capturing slaves like her.

Naaman made this young girl his wife’s servant. So, she must have been special. He must have thought, This girl’s really special. I would like to take her home to my wife. And then the Bible tells us something important. Naaman was sick. He had leprosy—a terrible disease with no cure at that time. If you had leprosy, you literally had to be away from everybody else. Your life changed because you had to be sure you wouldn’t affect anybody.

So here’s the moment in the story that stops me every time.

This little slave girl noticed that he was sick. And instead of feeling the way I might have felt, which is, I might have thought, Good. He deserves it, or Maybe now he won’t hurt anyone else. Maybe she felt those things, but she didn’t act on them. She may have been tempted, she did something very crazy and very shocking.

She spoke up. Second Kings 5:3 says:

One day the girl said to her mistress, “I wish my master would go to see the prophet in Samaria. He would heal him of his leprosy.’”

Did you hear those words of how she felt? 

Lorelle: “I wish.”

Dannah: I wish. I want. I desire. I hope for. She wished for healing—for the man who really was responsible for destroying her life.

Lorelle: Why would she do that? 

Dannah: Yeah, why would she do that? Why didn’t she say, “Good. Let him suffer?”

Lorelle: I might have been tempted to say, “Let him suffer.”

Dannah: Yeah, but what we see in her is something supernatural. It’s love.

Not human love.
Not easy love.
Not fair love.

It’s the kind of love that only comes from God. What ends up happening is Namaan does go see the prophet. Namaan has to do something really sort of humbling. He has to take a bath in a river, which would have been extremely humbling for him. And God supernaturally healed him. And God is glorified—just like our verse says! We do crazy stuff and God gets glorified.

Part of that is because she loved an enemy. And, we cannot love our enemies without His help.

And that unnamed girl? Her love pointed everyone to the God she believed in.

That only happens when we go to God with our fear, and when we go to God with our hurt, and when we go to God with our disappointment and He forms all of those icky-feeling things back into love.

Which brings us back to Ava. You remember her?

Lorelle: Oh yeah, didn’t you say that she is the True Girl who told you that she felt afraid to say something when kids in her neighborhood were making fun of prayer.

Dannah: Well, that night in bed, Ava asked Jesus for courage, “Help me to be brave next time!”

Lorelle: What did He do?

Dannah: Well, she was brave the next time.

The very next day, a friend in the neighborhood was having a bad day. Picture the neighborhood. This is a neighborhood where kids are hanging out and playing, and they are all around. And her friend said, “I’m having a bad day.”

And Ava said, “Well, can I pray for you?” And she did! Right then and there, where anybody could have seen. She did it.

Lorelle: That was brave.

Dannah: Do you know why she was able to do it? It wasn’t because she was not afraid. 

Lorelle: Why?

Dannah: She told me that she did it because she asked for help and Jesus helped her because He loves her. So she went to Him and felt His love and that overflowed into love for her friend, which controlled her and compelled her to pray!

Lorelle: Let me read a Bible verse that gives me courage to stand out and stand up for Jesus. And, it also explains why some people don’t get it.

See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. (1 John 3:1)

If you have given your heart to Jesus, you are His child! And even if you haven’t, He still loves you so much!

People who don’t know Jesus, they aren’t going to recognize the power of that. They can’t because they don’t know Him, but I hope you do! And out of that love will come the power to stand up and stand out for Jesus!

Dannah: Take a moment to ask yourself, “Do I know I am loved by God? Do you know it. Deep inside of you, are you sure of it?” That’s where the courage comes from. 

How do you know you are loved by Him? It’s just the same way that you are loved by a friend or by your mom. You spend time with Him. You talk to Him. You read the Bible and listen to HIm. Even ask Him for courage to stand out and stand up for Him when you feel scared.

He will be there, because He loves you!

Claire: True Girl, do you know that Jesus loves you? He sure does.

What makes you see His love? How can you experience His love more so that you can pass it on to others? Are there times you aren’t sure that He loves you? Maybe discuss those questions with your mom.

At True Girl we really want you to know that He loves you! It’s out of that love that you’ll find the courage to stand out and stand up for Him. 

To experience a night with a whole room full of girls who want to do that, join us at the True Girl Crazy Hair Tour! There are different speakers at each event, but some of them are the ones you’ve been hearing from in this season. It’s a fun night, but more than that, it’s full of truth—truth about God and about you. We’d love for you and your mom or grandma to come.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, ask your mom to learn more or sign up at MyTrueGirl.com.

Next week, Dannah will call Yancy for advice on how to grow closer to Jesus through worship! Yancy is a worship artist for kids! If you aren’t familiar with her music, you need to be. Join us next time on the True Girl Podcast as we talk about King Jesus.

Okay, here’s a worship song from the True Girl Crazy Hair Tour. It declares clearly that “we don’t want to blend in with the crowd!” Why? Because we want people to see Jesus. Here’s the song “Bring Heaven Down” from the True Girl Original Album.

Not gonna build houses in the sand 
On Your promises we will always stand.
Don’t wanna just blend in the crowd.
We don’t wanna go around picking fights.
Don’t wanna gossip, our words will speak life.
We just wanna live our life out loud.
You are worth all our praise, all our praise;
And as one we lift Your name, lift Your name. 

We (hey!) are stronger together;
We (hey!) are Your greatest treasure.
We (hey!) won’t settle no matter what.
We are children of a King.
You (hey!) gave Your life for us, 
And You (hey!) say we are beloved, 
So we (hey!) just wanna rise up,
And we will bring heaven down.
We’ll bring heaven down.

Where You lead us all we will follow You.
We’ll stand up, and radiate Your truth.
Gonna be a soldier for Your love.
Won’t compare each other when we’re down.
Lift up one another, we’ll start now,
To show the whole world what You’ve done for us.
You are worth all our praise, all our praise; 
As one we’ll lift Your name, lift Your name. 

We (hey!) are stronger together;
We (hey!) are Your greatest treasure.
We (hey!) won’t settle no matter what.
We are children of a King.
You (hey!) gave Your life for us, 
And You (hey!) say we are beloved, 
So we (hey!) just wanna rise up,
And we will bring heaven down.
We’ll bring heaven down.¹

The True Girl podcast is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women of all ages to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹“Bring Heaven Down,” True Girl, ℗ 2020 True Girl.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.