Faith Requires Risk

Faith requires risk. Risk creates an uncomfortable situation inside of you because you are entrusting your fate, your circumstance to someone who has mystery encased around Him. You desire to search and discover just how trustworthy God can really be and He is wanting the exact same thing. But what happens when your faith is tested? Your resolve can become weary when your preconceived notions of how your life should go when you put that very life into God’s hands and that notions are shattered. How can you trust God when He is the one nailing you to a cross? It’s almost an oxymoron. You sought to be safe in His hands yet those very hands are actively searching for your demise. The death of your old self, that is. The self that sees things in such simplistic ways. The self doesn’t truly speak God’s language. We are but toddlers in a vast universe. Born into such a temporary flash of a life. Our instincts tell us to run away from danger, to hide when death is at our doorstep. God comes to us in His own time, reaches out His hand as though a fiery flame, and asks us to sit in the burning bush to the detriment of all that we once held dear. The longer we reside in this place, the less we seem to care about the things of this world. Yet this takes its toll on our soul. The enemy wages war, resisting us, scattering wounds across our bodies. As if a battered desert monk, awaiting a meal. We are fed crumbs to keep us on the path. It is as if God himself makes it so we do not fall. If the totality of all this were in our power alone, we would have run away long ago. God, as they say, is an all-consuming fire. Where could one even go to escape? Yet, they say He is good. But make no mistake, he is dangerous. Dangerous to all the archaic beliefs you cling to, deadly to your fear of death, he will allow you to become uncomfortable and even suffer along with Him. It was C.S. Lewis who so eloquently wrote about the lion: Safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.

If you want a comfortable life, following Christ is not for you. But if you want to live for something far greater than yourself, to feel the thrill of risking it all just to find out how good He really is, then what are you waiting for? Perhaps you will not find out all that your faith accomplished with Him on this side of heaven, but what have you really got to lose?

Some are holding back in their hearts. You see the corruption on this earth, you seek temporary pleasures and idealistic locations yet gnawing emptiness remains. I cannot promise you that you will be comfortable following Christ. But you just may find out the very reason you were born. Your soul is drawn to God for a reason, to that unquenchable flame. Release your fear and let God do something only He could possibly do. They said that to go up onto the mountain of Moses to speak with God would cause their deaths. And, in many ways, they were right. You must risk your very life to find out who God really is.

In exchange, there are many turmoils and troubles, but your soul is enlivened. You understand that your life is worth exchanging just in the feint hope that you might become God’s friend and warrior here on earth. That decision is something that comes deep inside of you and it is a treasure you tend to all the days of your life. What could possibly be more valuable than the eternal? Oh weary heart, keep risking it all until the very end.

There will come a time when we look back and think of all this suffering as if it were a dream. The suffering will feel inconsequential, other than becoming like a crown of honor, that it won't affect us negatively in the slightest. An overwhelming sense of joy. Pure bliss in our heavenly reward.

Thank you for reading and the continued support of my musings and digs.