The Risk of Having Faith In God
Have you figured out yet that faith
means taking risks? Having faith in God
means there will always be risk associated with that faith. When you can’t see,
touch or feel Him, faith is based on the unknown. You don’t know the outcome when you step out
in faith. It’s literally letting go and
letting Him take care of the outcome.
I can remember when I was a child we were
in Austin and we went to Bastrop to the public pool and they had low and high
diving boards. I could swim, but I was
no Olympic caliber diver. I was more of a belly flopper. So for several weeks we went every day to the
pool. I would look up at that high
diving board and try to get my courage up to go jump off of it. Of course when you are young and you have
cousins around you, it’s kind of mandatory that you take up their challenge of
“I’ll jump if you will”.
So I finally got up the courage to walk
over to it and climb the ladder. When I
cleared the top of the board I wanted to turn around and go back down. I was trying to talk myself out of
jumping. Wow, that water sure is
deep. Man that’s a long way down. Everyone is watching me. After I had my little pep talk with myself I
turned around to go back down and there was my cousin looking at me waiting for
me to jump. So I nonchalantly walked
over to her, turned back around to face the end of the board and took off
running, not looking down and then jumped.
It was like free falling. In fact, it was free falling. Once I was in
midair it was like the feeling you get when the roller coaster gets to the top
of the incline and your stomach drops out on the decent. After that first jump I couldn’t wait to get
back to the ladder and do it again.
Faith in God is that very same feeling.
When Jesus told Peter to launch out into the deep, Peter had to have faith in
Jesus. He didn’t tell Peter to wade in
the shallow waters on the shore. He told
him to launch into the deep. You aren’t
going to find big fish in the shallow water along the shore; they will be in
the deep water where you can’t see the bottom.
God also wants us to anticipate His
promises. When one of my sisters prays
she will often thank God for answering her prayer before it is answered. Faith means letting go of our fear of failure
and grabbing hold of God’s promises. We
will never see God’s potential in our life if we are too afraid to believe that
He can make it happen.
The Bible is filled with God’s
promises. If you are struggling with
something in your life go to the Bible and read His promises. God has a plan for you and me. The first step is to get into God’s
presence. Step out in faith and
cooperate with His plan even if it doesn’t make sense and then anticipate that
He will do what He says. God wants to
bless you. He wants to bless you so much
that you have nowhere to put the extra blessing except to give it away. That is what it means to risk having faith in
God. Live life abundantly and anticipate
His blessing.
Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I want
to be a risk taker when it comes to You and Your purpose in my life. Please give me the strength to let go and
jump off into the deep end. Give me the
faith to know that You are there to catch me.