Courageous For Christ Series

the story of John Simpson Kirkpatrick in his book The Man With

The Donkey.

John was a plain private in the Australian Army in World War

I. The allied forces suffered heavy casualties landing on Gollipoli.

Wounded men were left to die because there was no means for

transporting them. Kirkpatrick found a donkey and got the idea

this animal could be an ambulance. For 24 days and nights he went

up and down the shrapnel-swept gully putting wounded men on the

donkey. He saved hundred lives. The Indians called him Bahadur,

which means the bravest of the brave. It was inevitable that he

would get killed, for he was in dangerous territory, and he did. In

Melbourne, Australia you will find a statue of John and his donkey

with a wounded soldier on the donkey's back. He was a man of

great courage, and a hero.

The problem with this kind of courageous hero is, he makes the

rest of us feel so inadequate. We cannot do what he did, for we will

never have the chance, and so it is with hundreds of such heroic

stories. But we are mistaken if we think that is the only way to be a

courageous person. There is more than one kind of battlefield, and

the warfare with evil is just as real as the physical battle. Paul was

not wielding a sword, and cutting down Roman soldiers, and freeing

captives. Paul was showing courage by taking a stand for Christ,

and making every situation in his life a chance to witness for Christ.

This is the kind of hero the kingdom of God needs.

It is the awareness that we are in warfare that will bring out the

courage of the Christian. It is because we sense no urgency, as those

in battle, that we get complacent and indifferent, and feel no call to

be bold for Christ. We lose the sense of living in crisis, and so we

feel no need for courage. Two of the greatest men the world has

ever known were born in our country in the same month. The key

to the greatness of Washington and Lincoln was that they were both

engaged in warfare. They fought the Revoluntionary War, and the

Civil War. Warfare is a setting that produces heroes. They were

very different men, just as Paul was very different from most men,

but they had this in common, that in their warfare they were

determined to be courageous for Christ.