“Courage to Begin” | Sunday AM | Sis. Gena Caruthers

Original Broadcast of Sunday Morning 10 AM Bible Class, 05/10/2026 

Speaker: Sis. Gena Caruthers

Message Title: "Courage to Begin" 

We invite you to join us in person 

Sundays at 10am & 11AM 

Wednesdays at 7:30 PM

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I'm going to begin and speak about being rooted and the courage to begin once we are rooted. Last week, Brother Tyler spoke about being rooted in our walk with God and how important it was for us to have strong roots in our walk with God. And I thank the Lord for that good lesson last week. And today, I want to talk to us about once we have been rooted, how can we step into what God has called us to do once we've been rooted? So whether you're a mom here today or not, I hope that you can find a nugget here or there that will be helpful in your life in maybe helping you grow in being rooted in God and what he wants you to do. I learned early on that beginning something is often very scary. It's because you don't, it's kind of the unknown. It's, you know, in what we're facing today, talking about today in motherhood, in starting motherhood, it's the the fear of the unknown. It's that child that you hold in your arms, and it's like, okay, they're sending me home. They're giving me responsibility. Who gave them who gave them permission to give me responsibility for this little human to keep alive? And you take them home, and it's like, okay, what do I do now? You know, now I've got to keep this child alive. And and day by day it changes and everything uh grows around you. And and I learned that courage isn't the absence of fear, it's the decision to begin anyway. So that's part of not being fearful, is just having the courage to begin anyway. So today I want to talk to you about courage to begin, doesn't start with action. It starts with identity. It starts with identity. Um we're looking at Joshua chapter one and nine. And if you have your Bibles this morning, if you would turn there, and since this is Bible class, we're gonna stay close to the word of God. And um the book of Joshua, if you haven't studied it, as I prepared for this lesson, I thought, man, I really need to go back and study Joshua even deeper because it has some really, really good points in it that we can emphasize into our lives. But God did not start Joshua with a task immediately when we enter, when we open up the book in Joshua chapter one. It starts, he started with Joshua with his identity. And he told Joshua, he said, Go lead these people into the promised land. And this was after Joshua, excuse me, this was after God had already spoken courage, strength, and presence over Joshua. So God speaks into our roots. He helps us dig those roots deeply, and that courage grows from the identity of knowing who we are. So let's look at Joshua 1 and verse 5. Let's begin with verse 5, and let's see what God's word is saying to Joshua and to him today, to us today. So verse 5 says, No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. I'm reading out of the ESV version, if uh if you're wondering. All the days of your life, just as I was with Moses, I will also be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. So from the very beginning, God told Joshua, first and foremost, he established in him the roots and the foundation that he would be with Joshua. He was telling Joshua, I will not leave you and I will not forsake you. He was saying, I'm with you in this, Joshua. I've got you. Verse 6 be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Okay, now remember, they had been wandering around out in the wilderness for how many years? Forty years. Okay. Joshua knew long before that point, and I don't want to get ahead of myself here. Joshua knew long before that point they were able to go in and take the land. He went when they sent the spies in, and they said, I'm getting ahead. I'll stop. You know what he said. Um, but he told him, verse 6, be strong and courageous. Verse 7, only be strong and very courageous. This was his second reminder. This should tell us something. Be careful to do according to all that the laws that Moses, my servant, has commanded you. Do not turn to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. So he was telling Moses the second time, be strong and very courageous. Warning, warning. If the Lord tells you more than once, you might want to pay attention to what's coming ahead. Be careful, he's about to tell us three times, and he's really gonna tell us. So he also is telling them there will be shortcuts, there will be other ways, there will be easier, but be careful, do according to all that the laws of Moses have commanded you. Stay with the word of God, stay with it, stay with it. This book, the law, shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. How will you find favor? How will you find success? Again, he reminds him it's in the law, staying close to what he has been taught. Verse number nine, have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. This is his third reminder, and it's gonna take strength and it's gonna take courage. So he knew right then don't be afraid, don't be dismayed, because the Lord is with you wherever you go. It's just a gentle reminder because God knew our humanity. Be strong and courageous. Look at your neighbor and say, be strong and courageous. Okay, that was our that was our third warning from God. So he gave Joshua his identity, he gave him courage, and he gave him a calling. Joshua didn't suddenly appear in Joshua 1 with all the courage that he needed for a monumental task, but he had already lived a long-tested, faith-shaped journey. He had been formed for this moment. He had been prepared for this moment. True confidence does not come from puffed up words or compliments, they come through experience. You can tell someone, and and I I'm sorry, I'm just old and um uh and try trying to weigh my words carefully. I I know that there we have learned a lot through the generations in how to raise our children, and and it's good, most of it. But I'm afraid that sometimes we have taken on the world's philosophy of puffed up encouragement when without giving our children the substance of really having that courage. And what I mean by that is I'm all for children telling children, you did great. You did great. But if they didn't do great, you're just giving them puffed up courage that they really didn't achieve. And it if they do great, if they do things that are hard, if they do things that are difficult, then it's earned. And they know, honestly, they know they've done great, and you don't really even have to tell them, right? We all do. We know when we've done a job well on our job. When we've done something well, we know if we've done it well. And honestly, nobody has to tell us we've done well or not. It's nice sometimes if they do, but we have, I'm concerned that we have maybe raised a generation that they've been told you can do anything you want to do. You can be anything you want to be. And they have this puffed up idea of I can be anything I want to be, and I can do anything I want to do. Well, yes, I'm thankful that we do live in a land and a day and a time that you have the ability to achieve, to uh strive to become what you want to become. But that doesn't mean I can become. Okay? So just because I maybe want to become a CPA doesn't mean that I have the propensity to do so. I'm lucky that he allows me to keep our checkbook. And as you know, most CPAs don't keep their own checkbook. Um, but he is the executive officer over the accounting process in our home. He does audit my books every once in a while. But you know, God gave him the ability to really love numbers and really understand numbers and really understand how they work together. And and then those spreadsheets, he gave them the ability to love. I mean, I think he loves those spreadsheets almost as he loves our marriage vows or something. He just, it's like he just opens up that Excel spreadsheet on his on his computer and it's like he just loves it. And he spends a lot of hours with it. I could get jealous of it because he loves that spreadsheet stuff. And I look at that spreadsheet for about 10 minutes and I'm like, I'm out of here. So, you know, you can tell me all day, Sister Shepard, Gina, you can be a CPA. I believe in you, I know you can do it, but you can puff me up all day. But if I haven't gone to college and I haven't sat in those dull, boring UT classes and got that piece of paper and sat for that CPA exam and passed it the first time, thank you very much. No, I can't do that. He's embarrassed. He's gonna say, Gina, why did you say all that? But it's true, you can tell me, you can puff me up all day long. But if I don't have the the experiences to go with it, I can't do it. So I'm not saying we shouldn't tell our children you can do anything because yes, they can. But if you see that they're not being able to add numbers well, you probably should, if they want to be a CPA and you see that they aren't really getting fractions or or spreadsheets or whatever, you probably should encourage them to be a veterinarian or something else. I mean, really? I'm serious because that's just how nonsense it is that we're living. I okay, I better get back onto where I'm going here. I'm much better when I say reading this paper. But it's true, but that's not where Joshua was. Somebody didn't just come up to say Joshua and say, Joshua, you are awesome. Awesome. You are so great, Joshua. I know you can lead those children of Israel. They've been wandering around out in the desert for 40 years, and you knew that they could have gone and taken that desert over many, many years ago when you went in as a spy, and and you know Joshua, you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Y'all, talk is fluff. I am so tired of people with potential that do nothing that I could puke. I forgot. I'm sorry, I'll get back on my notes, honey. Seriously, there are so many that have so much potential, but if you're sitting on your potential doing nothing, you need to get off your potential and do something. I told I'm sorry. I really did tell my husband. I told Ashley too. I said, I have never struggled over a lesson so much. I scrapped three lessons before I got to this one, and it looks like this one maybe should have been scrapped too. Oh goodness. We all have potential, and you have potential, and you are great, and you can do great things, but you've got to go through some things to get there. I have to go through some things to get there, and I typically don't like the growing that it takes to get where God wants me to go. It's not it's not as much fun. I'd much rather enjoy and bask in compliments of wonder than to go through life's experiences and the journey. But I have learned that going through life's experiences and the journey produce a much more valuable person than it does someone that is just puffed up. So, since my lesson is not about being puffed up today, let's move on to point number two. Courage to begin. And it grows with these experiences. So many times, Brother Cruthers and I, we will look at each other and we will say, How did we learn how to do that? Have you ever thought that to yourself? Some of you that are over 50. Have you ever thought, how did we learn how to do that? Nobody told us. Nobody told us how to do that. How did we learn how to do that? And I've learned that life has taken us on a journey, all of us. And there's been many chapters in life's journey that I didn't really understand where I was going, what was the purpose of being there, and what was I gonna get out of this journey? Because at the time, at the moment, it didn't seem like God was doing what was necessary for success on this journey. I remember when we were pastoring in the Rio Grande Valley, wonderful church, people that we love still to this day. And um we left the valley. We left um Raymondville. I remember before my husband resigned the church that night, that um no one, well, very few people knew that we were resigning. Uh my folks, his folks, our presbyter, one board member in the church. No one really knew. I mean, it was very close-knit. This was back in the day before social media. So, you know, where you where if a pastor resigned and went somewhere else, it was like you you found out a week later. And uh we got a phone call that night before we went to bed. Well, no, actually, we had already gone to bed. It was we were asleep. And the phone rang, and this is how long ago it was. It was before caller ID. That was a long time ago. And uh my husband reached over and he picked up the phone and he said, Hello. And I heard him say, Yes, this is David Cruthers. And the person on the other end of the line, he said, I don't know you, I've never met you, but God told me to call and tell you he has everything in control. Happened, didn't it? And my husband said, Now remember, now pause button here. Remember, we were resigning our church the next morning. He was, he did not have his CPA at that time. We were going, we we really didn't know where we were going. And I don't know if you all realize this, but when you resign a church, you have a uh a big goose egg as your paycheck. Okay, so it's no, you have, we were going from eating to zero. And he said, You don't know me. He said, We've never met, but God told me to call you and tell you he has everything under control. And my husband said, I'm sorry, what did you say your name was? And he said, We've never met. I don't know, we've never met, maybe someday we will, but God just wants you to know he has everything in control. And he hung up to this day. I hope someday God lets us know who that person was, but still to this day we do not know. And I want you all to know this morning that that promise, that person, that promise from God held us for many, many years. It held me for many years. I'm like, God, I don't know where we're at on this journey, but I know you've got us in your hand, and I'm just trusting you. And looking back, I realized God, every step we took, every every step we took, God was preparing us for where we are today. Where we are, when where we are when we came to San Antonio. We didn't have connections to get this church in San Antonio that we got, but God was preparing us just as he prepared Joshua in Joshua chapter 1. Motion sometimes is scary, it's uncomfortable. That day it was scary. When my husband stepped to the pulpit and he said, I feel like God has told us that it's time to go somewhere else and to resign. But in that moment, God gave us confidence that he was in control and he was going to guide our path. So Joshua's courage began long before that day in Joshua chapter 1. Joshua lived, let's look at your notes. Joshua lived through slavery in Egypt. He was born into generations that experienced years of Egyptian oppression, forced labors, the cry for deliverance. And he saw firsthand what it meant to depend upon God. Number two, Joshua witnessed the exodus miracles. Joshua was Moses' faithful assistant. He was Moses' right-hand man. He wasn't just a soldier, but he was learning. He was under Moses' leadership, intercession, and obedience up close. He stayed, he even stayed at the tent of meeting even after Moses had left, which was a deep sign of devotion to God. Joshua led Israel's first battle in Exodus 17. Joshua went up to Mount Sinai with Moses in Exodus 24. He wasn't at the very top, but he went farther than anyone else. He saw the cloud, he saw the glory and the holiness of God, and this shaped his reverence for God's presence. Joshua was one of the 12 spies and one of the only two that believed God. Joshua and Caleb stood against the fear of the other ten spies, and they said, We can certainly take the land while the others stood in fear. Israel's disbelief led to 40 years of wandering. But Joshua remained faithful. What I find so challenging about that situation is Joshua had to stay the course for 40 years, even when he knew 40 years ago they could have gone in and taken the land. But he was still on the journey. And sometimes we're going to be on the journey, even though we might know where we're going, and the person beside us is maybe having to make part of the journey with us, and we're on the journey with them. So, what does that journey look like? Looks different for each one of us. Joshua endured 40 years in the wilderness because of others disbelief. He watched an entire generation die, and he waited on God's timing. He learned patience, he learned endurance, and he learned trust. And I want to tell you all, there is no shortcut for any of those three things. There is no shortcut. I wish there was a shortcut for, you know, that like that commercial for staples. I don't know if they even still have it anymore. The easy button. I wish that they could just have it. Patience, easy button. Endurance, easy button. Leadership, easy button. No, it's not there. They don't have one of those. But it comes through experience. Joshua was publicly commissioned by Moses in Numbers 27. God told Moses to lay his hands on Joshua, and the people were commanded to follow him. He was prepared, he was affirm, and he was anointed for leadership. But it didn't come overnight, and it didn't come at a snap of a finger. It was a process, and he had to begin a long time ago, and it was just a process of going. So for him to have confidence to take the children of Israel children of Israel into the process. Promised land, it was a constant life in motion. It wasn't a perfect one, but he was moving towards the living, learning, and growing God. And so it was just a continual process. God blesses movement, not perfection. Okay. So whatever direction you're going in with God, trust his movement. Trust it. And understand, don't let it paralyze you. That day that that uh we were resigning our church in Raymondville. That could have well, it did paralyze me. It was it was scary. It was so scary. But I knew that we couldn't be paralyzed in fear sitting still right there. Because if that was the case, God would never have been able to accomplish his plan in my life. Were there hard times? Were there difficult times? Yes, absolutely. But that courage to begin, that courage to begin is what gives us the direction and the leading that God will follow within our life. So let's look at the at some of the women in the Bible that I'm gonna look at your notes real quick, that have gone through some things in life that prepared them when they didn't realize that maybe they were even being prepared. He begins slowly, God begins slowly in our life. And he's so kind and so good to us. That doesn't mean that we don't have situations that feel like a dump sometimes. But he's always, it seems like even in those moments when it feels like it's dumped on us, that he's prepared us, equipped us to deal with it. Before he asks you to stay up night after night with a sleepless baby, amen, brother Alex. Can you get a you're not a mother, but you're a father and you're a great father. He gives you those sleepless nights and those last weeks of pregnancy, reminding you that you really can function with less sleep than you ever realized. Think of Hannah. Before God ever placed a baby in her arms, he walked through her with long seasons of tears and prayers and sleepless nights of a different kind. But when your heart aches deeply, you can't rest. And those years weren't wasted, they were preparation. Preparation, as I just said, is motion and doing something, right? But what about those times that you're waiting for God? And it feels like, well, I need to be doing something, and God has you in that wait cycle, like he did Hannah. He's still preparing you. Before God asks us to nurture a child's heart, he nurtures our heart through seasons where we've had to cling to him for comfort and for wisdom. Think about Jacobed, Moses' mother. Before she ever nurtured Moses' heart, God was nurturing her heart. Don't ever think that Jacobed just woke up one day and said, Hey, I'm gonna take my baby down to the river Nile and I'm gonna uh just put him in a little ark, a little boat, and uh hope that something good happens to him. Mothers, do you think that would ever happen to you? No. I can't even imagine how Jacobed must have felt. The trust that she must have had. She loved Moses. As mothers, we want to do everything we can to control the trajectory of our children's lives for success. And yet, she knew that she would nurture him to the point that she could, and then she had to release her nurturing into God's care. Release it. That was hard. But her preparation of years, of years, getting up to that moment took time for her heart to become to the place that she was ready to release Moses into that river. And with her obedience came blessings and protection and great things over Moses' life. Before he asked you to carry the emotional load of a family, of teenagers making shaky choices, young adults struggling to find their own way, he strengthens you through the emotional load of waiting, hoping, praying, swatting off the buzzards of life in those unknown moments of your teenagers. Think about Rispa. Before God ever asked Rispa to carry the emotional weight of her family's tragedy, he had already strengthened her through years of waiting, hoping, praying, and trusting him for the unknown. Risba. I don't know if you remember the story of Rispa, but her two sons were executed, hung in what seemed to be an unfair time. And she went and she stayed with their bodies for months and beat off the birds that came to eat upon their flesh. Y'all, these aren't just stories, these aren't fables. This really happened. And so, mom, when the time comes for your teenager and the world is fighting for their soul and wanting to pick them out like a bird pecks on a dead soul's eyes that's been deceased. I can just see Rispa in my mind's eye, getting a rock and throwing it at the buzzard, saying, Stay away from my son, beating it away, getting a broom, getting whatever she could. She stayed at the Word of God, I studied it. The Word of God said she stayed for months until the harvest season. It wasn't just one day. She didn't just stay there one day. She didn't stay there two days. She didn't stay there one week or two weeks. She stayed months. Don't give up. Don't give up praying for your children. Those I I told someone just this past week, I said the hardest times for your children will be those years between 17, 18, and 25-ish. Those are hard. Those are hard years because they're transitioning. They're they're making it from your household to their household. They're making it from your decisions to their decisions. And and you know, I realize that as parents, we want to, when they're younger, we want to make as many decisions as we can for them. Because we want them to make the right decisions, and their brains are not developed enough to make those right decisions sometimes. And so you have to help guide them to do that. But can I tell you this morning, if you have a child that's in those ages or nearing those ages, or you anywhere anywhere about, let them make those decisions at home. Even when they're not right. Let them make some wrong decisions at home. Because when they do it at home, you have the opportunity to lead them and guide them and say, you know, that that probably was uh not the best approach to that. And let's see how could we have done it better. But if the first decisions that they get to make are when they leave your house or they have to break away and leave your house to make those decisions, then you have very, very little influence over the choices and decisions they make at that time. So let them make those decisions while they're there. Fight for their souls. Fight for their souls. Before he asks you to juggle schedules and needs and endless to-dos, he teaches you flexibility through the unexpected twists and turns of your own story. Think about Sarah. Before God ever asked her to judge the needs of a growing family, he taught her flexibility through the unexpected twists and turns of her own story. Nothing in Sarah's life went according to what Sarah thought would be her timeline. You know, poor Sarah, I try not to get too hard on her because I have a feeling that if I would have been in her shoes, I'd probably have been looking for a Hagar too. Because God, you're not answering it quite quickly enough. But God gave her grace, and He was shaping her without bending or breaking her. She bent, but she didn't break. A woman that learned to adjust, she learned to trust, and she learned to release her own plans to keep walking, even when things beneath her shifted, even when sometimes those were of her own choices and her own wrongs, but God was still with her and he gave her grace during those times. Before he asked you to pour out your love, a love that feels even bigger than you, he pours out his love in you in ways that reshape you from the inside out. I think about Mary, the mother of Jesus. And before God ever asked her to pour out the love that was bigger than anything she could ever hold, he was already pouring his love into her in ways that prepared her and reshaped her from the inside out. Think of Mary today. Her entire life. So she was just a young, young woman when the promise came to her that she would carry the Christ child, that she would be a virgin and carry a child that God manifest in the flesh. And all that came with that, and then she raised Jesus, and then she went with him to the cross, watched him crucified. Love. The love that she had, but God prepared her for what she would experience. He's always preparing us for the assignment ahead. As women, God's promises are not, we won't face battles. We all know that. We realize that. We realize that life won't be easy and that we will face battles and we will face challenges. But just like in Joshua 1, he's prepared us. Just like he prepared Joshua, he's prepared us along the way. And he's told you, be strong and courageous, for the Lord God is with you. Only be strong and very courageous. Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. So today, as I come to a close, um I have out in the foyer, we have a um a stand with some little succulent plants on them. And I want each one of you ladies to take one home today. And they're small little plants, but they thrive in harsh conditions. They can go long stretches without water. They can store what they need deep inside, they don't wither easily, and they grow quietly, slowly and steadily, often in places where nothing else seems to survive. A few years ago, we bought a planter of succulents. And you know, you you buy things. I'm not one of those people that have a green thumb. Pastor Carruthers can make almost anything grow, but he's been really busy, and so if he doesn't give it attention, it's gonna be pretty hopeless at my house. And so I'd bought this, it was bigger than this table, plant of succulents at Home Depot one day. I thought, oh, it looks so pretty. Surely I can get this thing of succulents to grow because you know you don't have to pay any attention to them. They kind of take care of their self and and they'll grow. And it's been so amazing because they have grown and they have survived, but only because they've been outside and got the sun and the water from the rain, not because I've taken care of them. But these succulents, they are they're sturdy. And it's kind of the same kind of thing that these women in the Bible that I've talked to you about today have had. Like the courage of Rahab beginning a new story, the courage of Ruth walking into the unknown, the courage of Rispa standing firm, fighting away the buzzards in her grief. All of these, Mary of loving, of giving, of releasing, the courage of every woman in this room who has walked through seasons that has stretched you, it has shaped you, and it has prepared you and will continue to prepare you for things that you had no idea or will have no idea what will hold in the future. I am conf I am confident that I know God goes through with us through difficult circumstances and situations. But I'm also confident, without a doubt, that he prepares us for them as well. He is with us, but he prepares us. So the little plant that we give you today, we want it to be a reminder that God has placed you within the courage to begin whatever he's calling you to do next. What is he calling you to do next? Each of us in this room have a different calling upon our life. And finding that calling is sometimes the greatest challenge. The greatest calling that we could have is within the four walls of our home. The peace that we give our home, the joy that we give our home, the comfort that we give our home. Those are the greatest things that God can call us to do. But whatever he's calling you to do next, he is giving you the courage. He's giving you the confidence, not puffed up confidence that is artificial, but he's giving you the confidence to succeed in what you do. Would you stand, please? So today I want to encourage you to begin for what God has prepared you to do and to embrace it and let God's work grow inside of you. Thank you. God bless you today.