Last night, my son Paul pulled another tooth. He didn’t want to. However, his gums were bleeding, and hurting, and this loose tooth was inhibiting his ability to eat his PB & J sandwich! Dad needed to step in. I told him the tooth simply had to go. Some Orajel would help. However. at the end of the day, I stole a line from the movie: “We bought a zoo.” Remember this?
In my conversation with Paul, I refernced the movie and told him that with many things in life that we’re scared to do, all we really need is 20 seconds of courage. 20 seconds of courage to help us do what we know we need to do, but scared to do it. Along with some motherly love, I think this idea really helped Paul. He puled it and profited financially from his decision!
I wish I could say that we only needed courage when pulling teeth. However, there are countless situations and decisions every day that scare all of us to death. What do we need? 20 seconds of insane courage: courage for a conversation, a phone call, and email, or simply a private decision. Countless times in my own ministry, there are decisions and conversations that I am absolutely scared to death to act on! The longer I procrastinate the more it costs me and the more it hurts. Often, it just requires 20 seconds of courage for me just to say out loud what I know needs to be done; what I know to be true. It always profits me to get to the other side of that twenty seconds of courage. What profit awaits you today, just on the other side of 20 seconds of courage?











