Let’s play a game…
Close your eyes and think for a moment about the experiences in your life that you would describe as the most exciting, the biggest rush, the most memorable, the ones that changed you…
If you’re like me, many of these experiences had a common thread to them… they involved a certain degree of risk.
Leaning in to kiss the girl for the first time, the poker table in Vegas, the climactic scene in the action movie, flying through the air on a zip-line or with a parachute, proposing to your spouse – these are the playgrounds where risk hangs out. And the excitement, rush, memories and change always follows meeting that risk head on, and living to tell about it.
What about following Jesus?
Risk? Usually, not so much. At least in the American culture. Many of us grew up in a home where going to church, reading the Bible, praying and being baptized were just kinda the thing you did. It was normal. To say you were a Christian or that you followed Jesus might have felt uncomfortable in certain circles – but there was no real risk involved. Maybe your story took a little different road, and you found Christ later in life – maybe high school, college, or well into adult-hood – but for most, still not a terribly risky path.
This is a shame, and has had profound debilitating effects on the Body of Christ.
I don’t want to make a direct correlation to real or perceived risk, and the fruit or depth of a person’s walk with Jesus – but I lament that overall, many Christians do not connect the 2 much at all. A faith that is not risky is a shallow faith. To believe in something that does not present risk to you is not a strong belief. The lack of risk promotes stagnate, routine, and empty responses.
Jesus came to bring more than shallow and weak and stagnate. He came to give Life – and inherent in that Life… is Risk.
Maybe for those of you who have not followed Christ to this point – it’s because what you see in the life of those who profess to have it is… boring??…
I get it, I really do. Most of human nature is hard wired to be risk-averse. Fundamentally, we are opposed to risk. We do everything we can to be conservative, to hold back, to plan, to minimize loss, to take the safe path. We’ve even invented a multi-trillion dollar industry around the idea of “Risk Management.” We just by and large don’t like to go all in.
Meanwhile, Jesus wants to grab our chips, throw them in the middle of the table and say, “Let it Ride!”
Our perversion toward a perceived safety is rooted in our nature to control. Our nature to control is rooted in pride. It’s the same seed planted in the Garden that says, “You don’t need God. You can be like God. You can do this on your own.” It is the great lie of the world. But, even in a Christian context we feel safer controlling and managing our lives, our time, our world… even our sin – rather than risking it with Jesus.
But wasn’t He the one who said count the cost? Didn’t He say that it was actually safer to lose our lives for His sake, because to try to save our lives was really to lose?
So what is the real risk? Where is the true reward?
In the upside-down Kingdom of God, risking it is the safest thing we can do. What’s more, God never asks us to take a “blind-faith.” There is no such thing. We walk by faith, not by sight, yes, but faith literally is seeing with the eyes of our heart – as God sees. He calls us to walk by perfect sight, not faulty, physical sight. Seeing as God sees and responding out of knowing His Love is faith. When we have faith and spiritual sight, we walk in the understanding that God is good, and we can do all things through Him.
That makes a follower of Jesus, Living by His Divine Life and according to His design – dangerous, and risky.
I am simultaneously rejoiceful and envious as I hear testimony from the Body of Christ in many far-off places in the world. The work of the Lord in power and wonder is very much alive today, and dare I say, even greater than what Jesus or the Apostles did or saw. The most glorious and magnificent of these accounts come from places in the world where following Jesus will literally get you killed. This is no coincidence.
There’s something about knowing that gathering with the Body to assemble the Lord Jesus, worship Him and proclaim His Kingdom – might result with you in jail, or your head on the floor – and still wanting to… that is so beautiful. Sometimes I wonder what my faith would look like if I had to sneak out in the middle of the night and go underground to cultivate it. If literally, my life depended on it.
Oh, wait…
There’s just not enough risk in what we usually do in American Christianity.
And perhaps that is the issue right there. Showing up once a week to a building to drink coffee and eat donuts and sing a few songs and listen to a sermon is safe. It’s comfortable. It’s conservative. It won’t cost us much, if anything. There is no risk – and there is no Jesus.
But God is moving in America. He is restoring His Church. This restoration includes a remnant of His people that are being called to live out what it means to bear the cross of Christ in their lives. They are being called to take Christ into places where there are people God has put His finger of Love on – that would never darken the doors of a church building. They are being compelled to go underground. They are being called to die. They are being called to risk.
This process of death is reversing the wiring we have in our flesh to control, to stay safe, to protect, to be comfortable. Out of death, His Life is being resurrected – and is bringing glorious risk with it. His Life knows nothing of control – but submission. His Life knows nothing of safe – but contentment. His Life knows nothing of protect – but Protector. His Life knows nothing of comfortable – but Comforter.
His Life is risk – loving not our own lives, even to death. This is our testimony, because it is the Testimony of He who has called us to It – and dwells within.
He risked everything, after all. We are called to do the same.
Go all in. Risk it. He is worth it.
{Image credit: “Risk” by avyfain on Flickr Creative Commons}
