Risk is ironic. We need it, but rarely choose it voluntarily. Sure, there are the occasional few who thrive on risk. You know, living on the edge is part of their personality. But for most of us, risk-avoidance is baked into our biology. We don’t want a life couch-surfing while we binge-watch Netflix. But we also don’t want the pain and complexity of risks-gone-wrong. So we work to make risks manageable. Empty them of all exposure so there is no emotional strain. We vote for outcome-controlled initiatives that masquerade as risk.
Yet progress in mission, leadership or sanctification requires risk. When foresight and outcomes are beyond our grasp, we turn to the only One who sees and controls all things. By revealing our limitations, risk drives us to dependence upon the Savior. God resuscitates our faith by inviting us into risk.
Risk Requires Trust
All the biblical big guns had moments like this. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house”, God says to Abram, “to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh,” says God to Moses, “that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10) “Arise, go over this Jordan, God says to Joshue, “you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them” (Joshua 1:2). The thread is sown through Scripture. The occasion for faith is trusting God with things not yet seen (Heb.11:). This means trusting God and stepping forward despite all we do not know. To follow God means to trust him while exposing yourself to vulnerability and uncertainty.
God calls his people to risk because he wants us to know him. When God calls us to do something for his glory, he doesn’t often fill in all the blanks. More often he withholds the particulars of what will happen. We are invited to trust him, just like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Peter Paul, and others trusted him. Risk resuscitates by pressing us deeper into God.
Risk Invites Deeper Fellowship
Why does risk lead to better knowing God? Risk happens because we’re not omniscient. We’re human, we’re finite, we’re fallible, our reach has limits. We don’t have the power to sway the future. Just think about it: God doesn’t take risks. He is all-powerful and all-knowing. God is right now spinning the entire universe like a basketball on his big finger and at the same time controlling the amount of times you blink as you’re reading this paragraph. Even Einstein could not comprehend that kind of control and power.
Risk exists because we can’t control events and we don’t know what’s going to happen. We imagine we have a measure of control over things like time, finances, and health. But it’s an illusion. Life is far more fragile.
When God calls us to risk, he’s calling us to come to terms with the vast difference between God and us. He’s calling us to be strong and courageous as we renounce our self-confidence and relocate our trust in the staying, steadfast presence of the Almighty.
Risk Introduces Deeper Desperation
God calls us to take risks because he intends for us to experience him in a deeper way. Do you feel called in a direction but are uncertain about what will happen? It inspires a deepened for God; a type of desperation. Have you noticed how your desperation for God increases with the uncertainty in your life? The new job, the new child, the new ministry—suddenly we’re desperate for God. We’re starved, needy, ravished by a hunger to hear.
Here’s the thing: God delights to put us in this position. It presses us to depend upon him and to exercise faith toward him.
This is the kind of faith that leads to steadfastness in the hard work of ministry. Anchored in the eternal, we are freed to swim out into unknown depths, assured that the same God who displayed his steadfast love to our forebears is still with us today. Trusting in God, Abraham ventured into the unknowns of Canaan, leaving behind the established security of his country, kindred, and father’s house. Trusting in God, Moses, a man wanted for murder, stepped boldly into the court of Pharaoh and demanded a transformation of an entire culture and economic system. Trusting in God, Joshua stepped foot into the Jordan River.
When Christians or leaders step forward into prayerful risks, God uses it to kickstart their faith in what God can do. In the hands of God, risk resuscitates us by inciting the desperation we need to encounter God’s faithful power in a new way.
May our ministries be resuscitated by such boldness in the face of great risk as we also rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
Tenacious Question
When was the last time you ventured forth on a big risk? How did it impact your relationship with the Lord? What risks might he be calling you to take today? Who can you turn to help as they consider their next steps?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, I want to trust you with my whole life. Teach me what it means not to rest in my own self-assured security. Lead me instead into a place of complete dependence on you, that I might find the secure footing I so desperately need. Please give me such risk-filled grace. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.
