Living Courageously: You Can Face Anything, Just Do It Afraid by Joyce Meyer Page A

right now? Today—and every day moving forward—pray that you will be the kind of person who always finishes what they start.
Obstacles
    God doesn’t remove every obstacle that could possibly prevent us from finishing our race and obtaining our prize; as a matter of fact, there are times when He places obstacles in our path in order to test and strengthen our faith. We are strengthened as we deal with difficulties, but if we run from all of them, we will never grow and become stronger in our faith and abilities.
    A Butterfly
    A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly.
    He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment that the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent therest of its short life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.
    What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the small opening of the cocoon are God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives.
    If God allowed us to go through all of life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been. Many times our obstacles are what God uses to give us the strength to fly, as long as we refuse to quit when there seems to be no way to go on. You can face your fears and overcome them, and when you do, you’ll often find them turning into a blessing.
    God’s Word says in Romans 8:37 that we are more than conquerors. To me that means we choose to believe we can overcome anything that stands in our way with God’s help. It is amazingly freeing and good to trust that you can overcome problems before you even get them.
    Are you dreading things that have not even taken place yet? If you are, you don’t have to because you can adopt the attitude of an overcomer. You can replace those dreads with a confident attitude that says, “No matter what comes my way in life, I can face it and overcome it with God’s help.” Will you decide today to have the attitude of an overcomer? If you have this confidence you can live without allowing fear to rule your decisions in life. This confident attitude eliminates dread in our lives, and that in turn sets us free from fear. Fear always begins with a feeling of dread andshrinking back from difficulty instead of boldly going forward. Dread is “baby fear.” It is not fully grown yet, but it will develop into full-grown fear if we feed it with wrong thinking and attitudes. Resist the devil at his onset by refusing even a minor dread and replacing it with an attitude that declares, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (see Philippians 4:13).
    Always remember: Don’t look to the right or the left, don’t look back, don’t look down in discouragement or despair, but look up and ahead at the prize that is waiting for those who go all the way through to the end fulfillment of their dreams.

CHAPTER 8
The Creative Power of Fear and Faith
    “… It shall be done for you as you have believed…”
    Matthew 8:13
    Both fear and faith contain creative power. By faith God created the world that we live in. By faith Sarah conceived and gave birth to a child even though she