Life is Better When You Take Risks

There have been a lot of birthdays in my life the last few weeks.

My daughter had a birthday.
My brother had a birthday.
Then it was my birthday.
Then my mom’s.
Then my son’s.
Then my dad’s.

It’s like the VanCleave version of March Madness — just one celebration after another, only with less basketball and more cake.

And somewhere in the middle of all those birthdays, I started thinking about this strange thing we do — we celebrate the day we entered the world.

But we don’t really like to think about the day we’ll leave it.

Every one of us has a birth date — the day you came into this world.
Every one of us will also have a date when we’ll leave this world.

We don’t like to think about that second date, but it’s coming.

And in between those two dates — there’s a dash.

If you look at any headstone, it has two dates and one little line between them.

That line represents everything — every conversation, every laugh, every heartbreak, every prayer, every risk you took or didn’t take. That dash is your life.

So here’s the question that’s been sitting in my mind lately: What are you doing with your dash?

Because you only get one.

You don’t get to extend it, and you don’t get a redo.

Wise people have reflected on this.

The psalmist wrote in Psalm 90:

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

We don’t number our days:

We don’t live with hearts of wisdom.
We waste these precious lives we’re given on such stupid things.
We worry about things like, “What do other people think of me?”
We get mad at someone and nurse that resentment for years.
We live in fear about something that never even comes true.
We walk through life day after day with blinders on, missing all kinds of beauty and wonder around us.

So today, as we begin this new series, A Better Way, I want us to think about that little dash — that short, beautiful, unpredictable stretch of time between our first day and our last day —

And ask, “What kind of life am I really living?”

Is it a life marked by comfort and safety?
Or a life of courage, risk, and faith — a life that actually matters?

Because here’s the truth: Life is better when you take risks.

When you step out of what’s comfortable, and say yes to what God is calling you to — even if it scares you.

Life is less fulfilling, less meaningful, less purposeful when we play it safe.

I want you to think about something for a moment:

What’s the most dangerous object in your home?

Larry Lowden wrote a book about risk. He devotes a whole chapter in this book to household dangers.

460,000 people per year are injured by kitchen knives.
Manual and power saws account for around 100,000 injuries every year.
20 people in America are strangled to death by drapery cords every year.
4,000 of us seriously injure ourselves on pillows.

I want to show you what I think is the most dangerous object in your house.

This is a couch.

Why do we buy a couch like this?

For comfort.

Now I want to paint kind of a picture for us today of what comfort can do to a life, and why it can be dangerous.

And I want to ask you to think about your own life.

If your life was primarily devoted to the couch — to maximizing your level of comfort, minimizing any kind of stress or problems — if that was the primary purpose of your life, would that make your heart beat really fast?

Would that be enough to make you jump out of bed every morning with anticipation and wonder?

If we were to replace the chairs you’re sitting in now with couches like this during our Sunday morning services at Blue Oaks, do you think you would stay awake during the message?

You see, what’s so dangerous about a couch like this is not the stuff you do while you’re on the couch.

It’s the stuff you don’t do.

It’s the relationships you never deepen.
It’s the people in need you never serve because you don’t even see them.
It’s the great, desperate, needy, urgent prayers you never pray.
It’s the noble thought you never think.
It’s the races you never run.
It’s the battles you were made to fight that you never fight.
It’s the joy you never express.
It’s the tears you never weep.
It’s the great adventure of life with God that you were made for that you never go on.

I want to tell you, you were made for something more than just life on a comfortable couch.

You were made to do something more with your life than to try to arrange it to maximize the comfort and security and safety with which you live.

You were made to spend your life in a risky partnership with God.

This couch might be the most dangerous object in your house.

And it’s not because of what happens when you’re in it, but because of what doesn’t happen when you’re in it.

Scientists did a study at UC Berkeley a number of years ago that’s very interesting to me.

They took an amoeba and put it in an ideal environment.

Everything was perfect — ideal amounts of food, ideal amounts of moisture, lighting, heating and so on.

This little amoeba had no problems — no stress, no demands, no challenges.

Anyone want to guess what happened to that little amoeba?

It died.

Scientists found this strange thing for living creatures — demand and challenge and change are absolutely essential to life and growth and thriving.

It’s in the process of changing and meeting demands and overcoming challenges… that we grow and are most fully alive.

Too much comfort is a lethal thing, even for an amoeba, let alone for a human being made in the image of God.

Now when I say life is better when you take risks, it’s real important that you understand I’m not talking about going out and doing something stupid or impulsive.

This is not about jumping out of an airplane or investing in the stock market or doing something dumb.

And it doesn’t mean you should never rest. It’s not a call to exhaustion.

It’s really about making your ordinary life an adventure with God. It’s waking up in the morning and saying, “God, whatever you have for me to do today, I’ll do it.”

There is in the Bible a very common kind of encounter between God and human beings.

Pretty much throughout the Bible we see God calling his people, and challenging them to take on a particular assignment or task.

And what I’ve seen is that whenever God calls someone… there seems to be a consistent pattern of what that looks like.

In fact, there are five areas that seems to be present whenever God calls and challenges his people.

And I want to walk through these components together with you today… and hopefully we will see what they mean for you and for me, because I believe God still calls human beings to do his work.

The first one is:

1. God issues a call.

Each of the “call narratives,” which is what Biblical scholars call them, begin by God asking someone to do something.

Now, I want to ask you another question at this point. Those of you who know much about the Bible — when in the Bible does God interrupt someone’s life and ask them to do an easy job?

When does God interrupt someone’s life and say, “I’ve got an assignment for you, and it’s pretty quick and there’s not much demand attached to it.”

How often does that happen?

Never. It never happens. God never gives someone an easy job.

There’s a whole chapter in the Bible, the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, that summarizes the life of one person after another where God interrupts them and gives them something real hard to do.

God comes to Noah and says, “I want you to build an ark in the face of ridicule and restart the whole human race on earth.”

God comes to Abraham and says, “I want you to leave everything that’s familiar to you. Go to a far country that I’ll show you when you get there. And at the age of ninety-nine” — just think about this — “I want you to have a son. I want you to start a family.”

God comes to Joseph and says, “I want you to be faithful to me when you’re betrayed by your brothers and you’re in prison and you’re a slave.”

God comes to Moses and says, “I want you to leave a life that’s very comfortable — shepherding — and go back to Egypt, where you’re wanted for murder, and defy the Pharaoh.”

God calls all kinds of people, but he doesn’t call them to easy, comfortable lives.

Please hear me on this… this is really important — more than anything else, I want you to know that God loves you.

God is very concerned about you, and he loves you intensely.

He wants you to grow… and he wants you to be strong… and he wants you to be filled with courage and wisdom and goodness.

But God, according to the writers of Scripture, is not particularly concerned about your life being real comfortable.

And it’s real important we understand that because we live in a world where comfort is one of the things that we’re most often encouraged to pursue — to give our lives to, to buy at any cost.

And sometimes people will think about God like, “I followed God, I said yes to God, and he didn’t make my life comfortable. He didn’t give me all of the things that I wanted to feel safe and secure and wealthy.”

And people can feel kind of betrayed by God… but God never promises that stuff.

God calls people, generally, to do things that may be quite difficult.

So that’s the first thing that happens: God issues a call.

Then secondly:

2. There’s always a response.

In every case, the person God interrupts gives his or her initial reaction directly to God.

Again, for those of you who are familiar with the Bible, when God gives someone a difficult assignment, how often does the person say back to God something like this:

“What a great opportunity! Defy Pharaoh, take on the Midianites, spend the night in the lions’ den, walk into a fiery furnace, marry a woman that’s pregnant and says she’s still a virgin, face mocking, flogging, chains, prison. Fabulous! What a great challenge!”

Almost never do people respond to God like that in the Bible.

Almost always the response is fear.

Sometimes it’s fear of inadequacy.

God comes to Gideon and says, “I want you to save my people from the Midianites, from their enemy. I want you to be the guy that leads them into battle.”

Gideon replied, “Pardon me, my lord, but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” (Judges 6:15)

“I’m not adequate for this, God! You talk about dysfunctional families, my family is the most dysfunctional family in all of Manasseh, and I’m the lowest functioning person in my family.”

Sometimes it’s the fear of failure.

God asked Moses and his scouts to explore the promised land.

They come back, ten of them, and say, “The land we explored devours those who are living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We can never do it. We ought to go back home. We will fail if we go back there.”

Sometimes people’s fear is a fear of God.

Last week we looked at the parable of the Talents where a master, who stands for God, gives a great gift, entrusted to three servants, and two of them use that gift in bold, risky ways.

But one of them goes and buries it in a field, plays it safe.

And when the master comes back to hold these men accountable for what he has given them, for these great gifts, the man who buried it in a field says, “I knew that you were a hard man. I knew that you were severe and harsh, and I was afraid. So I went out and hid your talent — I hid what you gave me — in the ground. I just buried it and played it safe.”

Maybe the classic case in this regard is the whole story of Moses.

God calls Moses to confront Pharaoh to free the Israelites.

Moses is so scared he says no to God five times. Five times in a row he comes up with an excuse.

I mention this because sometimes people say things like, “God would never ask me to do something I’m scared to do.”

Or, “God would never ask me to do something that I can’t handle.”

To the contrary, in the Bible God almost always asks people to do something they can’t handle — on their own.

In the Bible, when God calls someone to do something, their initial response is almost always that they’re scared to death.

So, if there’s a challenge in front of you, a course of action, a road that if you walked down… it would cause you to grow and would be a blessing to people around you, but you’re scared to do it, be real careful about saying no.

Be real careful about saying no, because there’s a real good chance that God is in that challenge.

I’ll go a step farther.

If you’re not facing any challenges too big for you in your life right now, if it’s been a long time since you’ve been scared, it’s real possible that you’ve been on the couch a little too long.

I have never known anyone who had a deep, risky, bold faith in God that led an easy, comfortable, challenge-avoiding life. Never.

And no one gets to the end of their life and looks back at time on the couch and says, “Man, those were great memories, those were great days.”

Alright, so God issues a call.

Almost always, people are scared, they feel inadequate.

Then the next component in these stories is:

3. God gives a promise.

God offers reassurance.

A striking thing about these stories is that even though people almost always have an initial response of resistance, God never reacts by saying, “Oh, I can see where this would be pretty scary. Okay, never mind. I’ll get someone else.”

God knows people get scared, and he makes a promise.

So God says to Gideon, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

God says to Joshua these magnificent words:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Some of you need to write those words down and carry them with you all week… wherever you go.

And again, it’s very important we understand what these promises mean. They don’t mean that if you follow God, nothing bad will ever happen to you.

God never promises that if you follow him, your life will be easy.

You might suffer.
You might hurt.
You might die.

All of us who follow Christ follow in a way of faith for which countless people have given their lives.

And eventually, the reality is we’re all going to die anyway. Those last two numbers are coming for all of us.

The promise that gets made over and over is: Nothing can separate you from God and from God’s love.

In Romans 8 the apostle Paul wrote to a young church saying:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38)

He doesn’t say, “Nothing is able to harm me.”

What he says is, “Nothing is able to separate me from the love of God.”

One writer I read this week put it like this:

Jesus promised those who would follow him only three things: that they would be absurdly happy, entirely fearless and always in trouble.

Absurdly happy, entirely fearless, always in trouble. That’s pretty much the case. That’s pretty much the way it went.

Alright…

1. God calls someone.
That person is scared and feels inadequate.
God gives a promise, he reassures them, “I’ll be with you.”

And that leads to the fourth component, which is the decision component.

4. A decision is made.

What really matters when God calls you to do something is not whether or not you feel inadequate. Of course you’ll feel scared, of course you’ll feel inadequate.

You’ve measured the cost… you’ve considered how much time on the couch you’ll have to give up in order to do it.

And even with God’s promises, you still wonder if you could ever pull it off.

In spite of what I’m sharing here, you may challenge that nudging inside and say, “God, why would you interrupt my life like this… it was challenging enough just living life without you putting this burden in my heart.”

But still… you’ll need to give an answer… you’ll need to respond.

And as much as God truly does care about how you’re feeling about that challenge he’s been laying before you…

What matters is your decision — whether you say yes or no to God.

What matters is whether we say yes to the challenges — say “yes” to a life of adventure with God…

Or just remain on the couch… focused on building a life that simply maximizes comfort & security.

And remember as you think about this, only people who say yes to the challenge… and demand… and risk an adventure of life with God — only people who say yes to the challenge ever feel fully alive.

Comfort never made anyone feel alive. It never did. It never does.

So let me ask you.

What has God been putting on your heart?

What has he been challenging you with in your life right now?

Maybe it involves a relational risk, telling the truth to someone, and you’ve been scared.

Maybe God is calling you in a different vocational direction, but you’ve been holding back because you’re afraid.

Maybe you’re holding on to your money right now even though you know inside that God’s wanting you to be more generous with what you have.

Maybe you’ve been talking about or thinking about the need to invest more in your marriage — to take things up a notch, but giving up one evening each week to join a small group just seems like too much.

Maybe God is asking you to explore some area where he’s gifted you to be able to serve other people, but you’ve been holding back because you don’t feel qualified.

For some of you, maybe there’s a secret sin or struggle no one knows about, maybe an addiction or some kind of pattern that’s quite destructive. And you’ve been scared to death someone would find out, so you’ve never gotten help.

And the challenge for you is: Will you lay down that mask that tries to say everything is okay…

Will you come out of hiding in order to begin that journey of healing?

You see, even in this broken world, still, as followers of Jesus, we’re not intended to arrive at the end of our lives having carried the burden of shame and guilt and junk the whole way through.

For some of you, maybe you’re just at the beginning of exploring a relationship with God, and you need to say, “I’m going to do whatever I have to. I’m going to get information, read books, join a small group, start serving. I’m going to do whatever I can to move forward on my spiritual journey.”

It may take a real act of courage for you to say yes to the things God is putting on your heart… but will you say, “Yes?”

Maybe you’re wanting to do something noble for the Kingdom of God… but God isn’t opening that door.

And yet, maybe God is calling you to something else… something less attractive… something that will earn far fewer “pats on the back.”

Will you still say, “Yes”?

So… what is it for you?

In what area is God asking you to get off the couch? To say yes?

I’ll tell you why this matters so much. It’s because the fifth and final component of these stories is that:

5. Lives are changed.

Both in the Bible and in history, every time someone says yes to God, their world changes in a significant way.

There is a tremendous story in Acts 4.

The Book of Acts is the story of the early church, and in this chapter, two of Jesus’ disciples, Peter and John, just courageously keep telling people about Jesus and this amazing way of life that he offers.

And the authorities don’t like this. They try everything they can to get John and Peter to shut up.

They try to intimidate them… but John and Peter just won’t stop talking.

So there’s this great statement in Acts 4 — speaking of the people that hold all the power:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men,

They had no status, no position, no impressive education, no degrees after their name. They were ordinary guys.

they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

The authorities were astonished because Jesus had just rubbed off on them.

Every time you say yes to God, especially in a difficult situation, you change a little bit.

Your faith gets a little deeper.
Your courage gets a little stronger.
Your light shines a little brighter.

But sometimes in the Bible, people say no to God.

One time a rich young ruler came to Jesus.

He was sincerely interested in what Jesus taught.
He was exploring faith.

So this is a call story — Jesus issued a call to him.

He said:

“I want you to go, sell everything you’ve got, and give it to the poor. It’s going to be an amazing thing.

“There are people who went to bed hungry last night, but they won’t be hungry tonight because of you.

“There are mothers who are in anguish right now because they’re afraid that their babies are going to starve. But their babies aren’t going to starve because of you.

“All that stuff you’ve got, I want you to just go and give it away. Come back to me with empty hands, and you and I are going to live an adventure of trusting God together that will be the adventure of your life.

“This is going to be unbelievable. It’s going to bless people who desperately need blessing, and your growth is going to go through the roof. So let’s do it. Come on.”

And the rich young ruler stood there in Jesus’ presence for I don’t know how long.

And he thought about what Jesus asked him to do.

But he had a lot of money.
He had a lot of power.
He had a really nice couch, and he didn’t want to leave it.

So he said no. He walked away.

I wonder sometimes what happened to that guy.

It may be that he lived to be a real old man.

And I’ll bet everyone thought he was a terrific success and was very respected, very wealthy, had a lot of strength, was quite religious.

No one knew that when his great chance had come — when Jesus offered him the chance of a lifetime, he wouldn’t get out off the couch.

See? Either way… when you get called by God, you’re never quite the same.

And it’s real important that you know this. When you say no — when God asks you to do something and you say no…

Your heart gets a little colder.
And it becomes more difficult to hear God the next time.
And your faith gets a little weaker.
And you get a little more addicted to the couch.
And it gets a little less likely that you’ll ever get off of it.
And your spirit dies a little bit.

So will you say yes?

I want to introduce to you one of the great risk-takers of the last century.

Her name was Henrietta Mears.

She devoted most of her life to teaching young people at her church in southern California.

She was a woman.
She was single.
She had severe myopia.
She had been told as a child that she’d be blind by the time she was thirty.
She had horrible, horrible vision her whole life.

She said one time that her bad vision was one of the greatest gifts that she had ever been given… because it made her depend on God so much.

She was just an amazing person.

She functioned as a teacher and a leader at a time when that was very rare for a woman.

In the first two years of her work at the church where she served, the number of students under her ministry went from 400 to over 4,000. That was unheard of in those days.

She was frustrated at not being able to find good materials to help her students learn about the Bible in a way that wasn’t boring. So she started writing and printing her own stuff.

And it was so helpful, people said, “You’ve got to make this available to other people, other churches around the country.”

And what became a huge publishing company, one of the first of its kind, Gospel Light Publications, got started in a garage of a friend of Henrietta’s, with just a prayer and what God was calling her to do.

It grew into something no one would have guessed.

She wanted a retreat area where people, especially young people, could get out of the congested city and go listen to God, to go be close to God.

In the 1930s, she found an area that would be perfect, in the San Bernardino Mountains.

The price was way too high. It had been valued at $350,000. This was in the middle of the Depression.

The owner didn’t particularly want to sell.

So Henrietta just started to pray, “God, give us that mountain. This would be a good thing. This would bless people. God give us the mountain.”

And she gathered a group of people and asked them to start praying.

And she said to them, “You have to dream big where God is involved.”

And they prayed together for a long time, “God give us this mountain.”

They ended up getting that property for $30,000.

And it became what’s now known as Forest Home Christian Camp.

For over 85 years, it’s been changing the lives of thousands of people.

In fact, a whole generation of Christian leaders were developed and mentored by this middle-aged woman.

Dick Halverson, who would go on to become chaplain of the United States Senate, was one of her students.

Bill Bright, who began a huge ministry all around the world called Campus Crusade for Christ and reached millions and millions of people — he was one of her students.

Billy Graham said of her, “Henrietta Mears was certainly one of the greatest Christians I have ever known.”

He said that apart from his mom and his wife, no woman ever had a stronger impact on his life than Henrietta Mears.

If you go to Forest Home today, you can find around the lake a place where 75 years ago, at a great crisis point in his life, after prolonged conversations with Henrietta Mears and prayers, Billy Graham knelt down and prayed to God, “For the rest of my life, I will preach the Bible with simple faith.”

No one had produced leaders in the 20th century that shaped the church like this ordinary woman.

Christianity Today named her as one of the most influential Christians in the world of the whole 20th century. She was an incredible human being.

And I tell you all this information because I want you to know one thing.

This just kills me.

When she was on her deathbed in the hospital, when she was facing her last day, someone asked her if she had her whole life to do over again, if she had it all to run one more time, would she do anything differently?

Henrietta Meers looked back at her whole life.

She looked at all that she had done.
She looked at all the lives that she’d changed.
She looked at all the things that she had taught.
She looked at all the risks that she had taken.
She looked at all the bold prayers that she had dared to pray.
She looked at all the things for God that she had amazingly ventured to do.
She looked at it all, and on her deathbed, in her last days, she said, “I wish I’d trusted Christ for more.

“If I had it all to do over again, the one thing I’d do different is, I would have trusted Christ for more. This amazing Christ who did such unbelievable things, I wish I’d trusted him for more.

“I wish I’d prayed riskier prayers.
“I wish I’d asked for bigger mountains.
“I wish I’d taken scarier risks.
“I wish I’d trusted him for more.”

It was unbelievable.

Is there an area of your life today where God is calling you to get off the couch?

Are you willing to take the risk?

Are you willing to say “yes” to God… To life on His terms and not your own?

There’s no more important time to consider this question than today.

One day, you entered this world. It was a good day. One day, you will leave the world. I don’t know when. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe not for a long time.

In between the first day and the last day is the only life you will ever have.

So what are you going to do with your dash?

Next week we’re going to look at how life is too short for people to just throw it away by carrying around bitterness and resentment sometimes for years.

It’s a very, very important subject, so I want to invite you to be back here for that.

Let’s pray as the worship team comes to lead us in one more song.