🪂 Risky Faith
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone for God
Are you willing to take risks for God? Risky faith isn’t easy or safe. It challenges us to the core. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. If the risk is scary, we open the door for a miracle. There’s nothing like stepping out in faith with no safety net, trusting God to do what only He can do. When you experience the thrill of seeing God work in this extraordinary way, you never want to go back to an ordinary life.
The size of the risk determines the size of your reward. Different people, though, have different perceptions and responses to risk. Let’s look at three types of people.
1. Undertakers
Some people live in the past. About ten percent of us focus on “the good old days.” When our memories become more significant than our dreams, we’re in trouble. Memories can be helpful because they remind us of what God has done.
With faith-filled hindsight, our memories can stimulate us to trust Him even more today. But some people don’t make this connection. They live in the past without using it as a springboard to trust God for more incredible things today.
I don’t dwell that much on memories, I spend most of my time dreaming, trusting God to stimulate my faith, and taking risks. Our dreams for the future have to be bigger than our memories of the past.
When we live in the past, we strangle our faith and choke the life out of our walks with God. Gradually, we live like we’re already dead. We’re ready for the undertaker instead of being an overcomer.
2. Caretakers
Many people, perhaps forty percent of believers, are in maintenance mode. They’re preoccupied with what needs to happen right now with their kids, their homes, their businesses, their health, and every other aspect of life. They don’t spend much time, if any, dreaming about the possibilities of the future.
These people manage most families and organizations, and they do a good job making things work. They think often and deeply about meeting today’s needs. They plan and organize resources to meet the demands of the moment.
Their goal is to minimize risk at all costs. They run calculations every minute of every day to be sure they feel completely safe and secure. Are they living on the edge? That’s not their goal at all.
When they read the Bible, they seem to miss the fact that Jesus often talked about the future: His death, resurrection, and future glory. All they see in the Scriptures are management principles to apply today.
3. Risk-takers
Every leader, every entrepreneur, every inventor, every church planter, and every person who makes a big difference in the lives of others is a risk-taker. Some are wild and crazy, and some are more calculated, but about half the population is in this category. America has become a great nation, and the church is reaching millions because these people are willing to lay it all on the line.
Risk-takers squeeze all they can out of today so they can be all God wants them to be tomorrow. They learn to face both success and failure. They learn to be comfortable with failure. Instead of being defensive and angry, they learn from their setbacks.
They apply hard-won lessons to their next steps forward. To them, failure is the backdoor to success. Theodore Roosevelt remarked, “No one is worth their salt who is not ready at all times to risk their well-being, to risk their body and their life for a better cause.”
What type of person are you: undertaker, caretaker, or risk taker? Do you live in the past or the present, or do you have a sense that God has a glorious future waiting for you?
Reflect on your thoughts, prayers, and conversations over the past week. How many focused on pleasant memories and painful “should have beens?” How many were concerned about the day’s events and relationships? How many dreams and plans were there to see God do beautiful things in the future?
No one is a pure dreamer. Even visionaries have to reflect on the past and make choices about the present, but they keep their eye on the glorious future God has for them. I often ask myself, Am I doing anything that is big enough to attract God’s attention? Am I willing to lay everything on the line for a God nudge?
And how about you? When was the last time you colored outside the lines? When was the last time that you took a risk of faith? Many of us try to avoid risks at all costs. Of course, risk doesn’t have value in itself. It’s the object of the risk that has value—or not. And there are many different factors that determine if the risk is worth taking. But if our answer is always "no, wait,” or “you’ve got to be kidding!” we need to reassess our risk tolerance.
Does everything have to be a guaranteed success? Is failure too much of a threat? Can you handle every situation without God’s intervention and resources? That’s not the way I want to live.
I’m willing to accept the possibility of failure because taking risks is the only way to see God do incredible things. There are no guarantees. Sometimes, I’ve fallen flat on my face, but I’m convinced God is far more pleased with me being willing to take a risk than always playing it safe. And there are, in fact, guarantees.
God promises to use every circumstance, even our failures, for good if we trust Him (Romans 8:28). I can live with that, and in fact, I can take risks based on His promise.
Takeaways:
Taking risks for God can lead to extraordinary experiences and a deeper faith, even if it means facing the possibility of failure.
People can be categorized as undertakers (living in the past), caretakers (focusing on the present), or risk takers (dreaming about the future and taking chances).
God promises to use every circumstance, including failures, for good if we trust Him, which can serve as a foundation for taking faith-filled risks.
Thank you for reading!
[[Excerpted from my book, The God Nudge: Learning To Flow In The Supernatural.]]