Have you ever met someone who is just fully themselves?

It might sound like a strange thing to say out loud — but when you encounter it, you know. There’s something quietly compelling about a person who isn’t performing, posturing, or trying to prove anything. They’ve found, perhaps through fire or grace (or both), the courage to live as they were made. And whether they know it or not, that istheir greatest gift to the world.

Most of us, myself included, spend years contending with quiet battles. The internal monologue of inadequacy. The ache of not-enoughness. The fear that we’re not ready yet. That we need more preparation, more credentials, more permission.

But I’m learning that the act of creating, whether a piece of writing, a business, a home, a meal, a movement, requires a kind of vulnerability that often feels exposing and is a journey in itself. Because it doesn’t just demand skill or output. It invites us to bring ourselves.

And maybe that’s the real journey: to learn that courage doesn’t begin with mastery. It begins with honesty and courage, and the willingness to show up anyway.

I love what Karl Martin says:

“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I become what I ought to be - the man who was the fool.”

For most of us, showing up like that doesn’t happen overnight. There are three common fears that hold us back from bringing our truest, most creative selves to the table...

Fear of man: What will they think?
Fear of failure: What if it doesn’t work?
Lack of faith: What if God doesn’t show up?

That combination is enough to keep even the most visionary among us stuck… ideas paused mid-thought, dreams never spoken aloud, invitations never RSVP’d to. And yet, it’s precisely in this moment of fear, fatigue, and hesitation that we need courage most.

Fear of man: *Nobody is thinking about you*

Sahil Bloom recently wrote:
“The older I get, the more I realize some people waste their entire lives fearing the judgement of people who were never even thinking about them. Nobody is thinking about you. Everybody is too busy thinking about themselves. That thing you’ve always wanted to do? Go do it.”
It’s blunt. But it’s true.
Fear of judgment is one of the most paralysing forces in our culture. But those who learn to move beyond it often discover a kind of freedom, the kind that makes courage not just possible, but unstoppable.
Like crabs that spar with their own shadows (yes, they actually do this), we often waste our strength on illusions — projections of our own insecurity, not real opposition. We battle fears that never materialise, criticism that never comes, or rejection that isn’t actually there.
When fear of opinion loosens its grip, we operate out of a place of freedom rather than limitation.

Fear of failure: It’s not all on you

If you’ve ever carried a holy discontent for something broken in the world you long to help make whole, then you know the tension. You want to respond but it feels big and risky.

The good news? It was never meant to rest on your shoulders alone and you don’t have to figure it out all at once.

In Galatians 3:3, Paul rebukes the Galatians for forgetting the source of their strength:

“Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”

I don’t know about you, but even though this passage is more than clear, I find myself needing to return to it often, to let it shape not just my thinking, but the way I walk through the world.

God doesn’t ask for polished perfection. He invites faithful participation, even with trembling hands.

He welcomes us into the work of co-creation, not in spite of our limitations, but often through them.

And that means we need to show compassion to the parts of ourselves that still feel inadequate, hesitant, or unfinished. I’ll come back to that soon.

Lack of faith: A mustard seed is enough

Let’s be honest, courage sounds good on paper. It’s far harder to live out when the path ahead is foggy and outcomes are unclear.

But biblical courage is not bravado. It’s not recklessness.

It’s trust, the kind that says yes before all the pieces are in place.

Hebrews 11 isn’t a list of perfect leaders who had the right university degrees or work experience. It’s a roll call of risk-takers whose faith moved them:

“By faith Noah built an ark…By faith Abraham left everything he knew…By faith Rahab welcomed strangers…By faith they conquered kingdoms…”

Their faith was not theoretical. It was active. Embodied. Risky. Imperfect.

And here’s the line we often miss:

“Whose weakness was turned to strength.”

The starting point wasn’t confidence, it was trust.
The outcome wasn’t guaranteed, but they acted anyway.

If you’re waiting for the fear to vanish, it might not. But the Spirit offers courage anyway.

History shows us something important

Courageous action doesn’t wait for safe conditions. It rises in uncertainty.

In 1493, the Nuremberg Chronicle, a printed world history, described Europe as weary and hopeless. The publishers even left blank pages for readers to record “the rest of the events until the end of the world.”

It was an age of collapse: plague, political disorder, religious corruption.

And yet, that very moment gave birth to the Renaissance.

As Friedman writes in A Failure of Nerve:

“It worked because the all-encompassing emotional atmosphere was conducive to excitement and adventure rather than the failure of nerve that always accompanied anxiety and a quest for certainty.”

No one has lived through this exact moment in history before. Our leaders, institutions, and communities are navigating challenges we’ve never faced — from accelerating AI developments (that even the creators of ChatGPT can’t fully predict five years into the future) to wars and political conflicts with global ripple effects far beyond national borders.

It’s disorienting. Uncertain. And yet...

We’re not called to fix everything. But we are called to do our part, to use what’s in our hands to shape and create the world we long to see.

Maybe that looks like:

Writing words that call people to life
Capturing beauty through brushstroke or lens
Teaching students how to think and flourish in the world they’re inheriting
Designing spaces that foster belonging and imagination
Leading churches that help people encounter their Creator

Many of us want to be brave. But we’ve learned to cloak our anxiety in caution, critique, or chronic overthinking.

Courage doesn’t demand certainty. It simply asks for faith in action.