But, you see, the Apostle Paul never lived a day of his life, from the time of his conversion to the time that they cut his head off, he never lived a day, that I can find in Scripture, when he wasn't going somewhere to do something that was so consuming that he would die for it. He just traded one of those things in for another one. You see, it was a question of conviction, which precedes the acts of courage. And you can't just say to Christians, "Be courageous." They can run around saying, "I'm going to be courageous." Courageous about what? If you don't have an objective you never get into a situation where you have to be courageous. Nobody ever got courageous sitting on the bench in football. You don't get courageous there; you only get courageous when you get in the game. And a lot of Christians sitting on the bench wonder why they don't have any courage. Don't have any reason to be courageous; you're not doing anything. So there needs to be a goal orientation, an object orientation, you're going somewhere, you're accomplishing something.
via gty.org