The Virtues: Lesson 1 - Courage

 Last Christmas my daughter gave me three books that were all classics of Western Literature (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and East of Eden).

After finishing those, I have continued to read several others. When you read books like these back to back, you begin to see just how far we have drifted in our Culture when it comes to ideas like virtue and morality. In these books, when the main characters wrestle with the trials of life their first impulse is always to do what is right, even if it means more difficulty and pain as a result. Virtuous character and moral living were considered the foundation of what it means to be a good person and to have a successful life. Self-sacrifice and discipline were considered essential for those who wanted to live a good life before God. But that is not the case today. Ideas like virtue and objective moral good no longer hold a primary place in the lives of many people. They have been replaced by things like ease, comfort, and safety. This means that when we think of the good life we tend to think of what we possess, not the type of person we have become.

It is this shift in thinking that we will address with this series on the virtues. Through this seven week study we will look at what the Bible says about what moral characteristics we should be pursuing as believers. How can we shift the focus away from our culture's obsession with accumulating worldly possessions and back toward a desire to become more like Christ in how we live. It is our prayer that we can recapture some of the beauty of what it looks like when believers prioritize the type of person they are becoming more than looking for ease and comfort in life!

In His Service,

Pastor Steve