What do you think of when you think of ‘risk’? Risk of losing a job; risk of losing a friendship; risk of losing your life.
What do you fear? Fear of losing money; fear of losing respect; fear of losing control.
What about…risk despite losing a job; risk despite losing a friendship; risk DESPITE losing your life.
‘Despite’, though seemingly a common enough word, has two synonyms not commonly associated: ‘against’ or ‘in defiance of’. Once ‘risk’ becomes a command, its meaning changes entirely from a noun connoting ominous prospects to a verb augmenting the view of such prospects, though they be unknown. ‘Losing a job’ or ‘losing a friendship’ or ‘losing your life’ are all things that understandably induce fear. Each could be interchanged in a sentence:
Risk despite [losing a job]. Risk despite [fear]. OR, risk against [fear]. Risk in defiance of [fear].
Do you see what I’m getting at? Fear is not from God. So what do we stand against when we risk against fear? Yes, you’ve guessed it: the devil, evil, the enemy.
Fear is everywhere. I’ve seen how it convolutes reality into some one dimensional shape to the point where you’re seeing in black and white, and somehow you’re believing in a flat Earth. You start thinking, ‘God forbid I ever get on a boat for India, I’ll fall right off of this planet’s crust into abyss.’ But if you gather up your nautical nerve, you may end up in ‘America’. When I say fear, I’m not saying the Holy Spirit sense of warning for protection or cautiousness. This is the kind of fear that makes people irrational, and it makes me angry because of how it distorts one’s understanding of life and life’s interactions. Specifically if they are followers of Christ.
When you take a risk, you’ve first and foremost made a big decision. But risk unfolds consequtive decisions of unknown results, each contingent on the last, and often growing more momentous than the first. But you face fear. You choose fear or you begin the process of choosing against it, and moving toward the Lord; who is not the source of fear. Fear always chooses you and will continue trying. Maybe chooses your friends, your job, your words, your thoughts, your appetite, and each time its given permission through omission. It’s a nail hammered into an early spiritual grave instead of into your spiritual flesh.
Knowing you’re obeying the Lord brings peace and joy because obedience is loving Him. His love returned is far greater and more powerful than imagined from the ‘saved’ sidelines. Who wants to be the ‘starter’ on this team? Are we afraid the ball will be passed to us? Don’t choose fear by sitting on the sidelines. Society is driven by fear. It is a fear-induced society where no one trusts their neighbor, and that neighbor doesn’t find it too hard to return the same sentiments.
Fear’s principal agitator is pride. Pride inflames through fear’s deceptive lies of the unknown. Unknown. I think God must hang out there. The abyss, right? No sir. The ‘unknown’ is what hasn’t been revealed yet. However, the revelation of Truth and grace came through Jesus Christ. Let’s not be confused by the characteristic of mystery that we KNOW is embodied in His deity, which leaves us to wonder at His glory. I have faith in what I know, not in what I’ve deducted from what I don’t know about Him. So let’s not be mistaken. He was made known and can be known, if we understand that we too can be known by Him. But we must also trust Him. We must know Him, be known by Him, love Who we know, and trust Who we know. Then express such love to others without fear that we’ll lose something even if it’s unrequitted — pride will take its greasy hands and smear itself all over the place here if you let it.
When we trust our Savior and God as reality and the One who fulfills His promises, then what can this world rob us of? You may be naming a few things off in your head right now. More poignantly, what should we fear? In the Name above all names, we have the greatest, holiest authority in all divinity and humanity. And yet, He thought of us. How remarkable is that?! The Cambodian AIDS orphan that I held; He thought of her. The Malawian moslem who had a dream of a dove flying to his shoulder; He thought of him. It’s something to awe and revere in how it’s said, to fear the Lord. The latter ‘fear’ carries an entirely different word meaning than the ‘fear’ I have been contending with. Unfortunately, contention between the two has dulled and with some time amalgamated a perspective of God which charts a map for unexplored waters while on land. This evades interaction with our neighbor and ultimately with God. But to have awe, reverence and a firm understanding that He thought of YOU!
This is our strength because it’s here we find our incapability to know or save ourselves without Him, and therefore we find our need for something so intimate with our Creator. We’re drawn in by His light. Seeing the consequences of ourselves being independent from that gives some a contrite heart and leads to repentence. For these people, they can’t help but fall to their knees and in time humility results. Another strength against fear: humility through a contrite heart. Fear can’t hold onto a person who is choosing the nails in the spiritual flesh which leads to humility. Pride can’t stick because its being actively eroded and redressed with the fruits of the Spirit; all which hold far more authority than pride. Hate, gossip, slander, or any other manifestation of pride will be considered undesirable and avoided at the cost of one’s fullness in the Lord, witness, and expression of our love for Him to the world. When you boast in Him, you’ve already resolved in seeing yourself for who you are, a sinner just like the next person, but then choosing to recognize who you are in Him. You give no authority to the enemy or its fear in your life, because you are functioning instead in the authority of the Lord.
This is called freedom. No fear. No condemnation. No pretence. No hate.
Relinguishing control of the illusions in our lives to God will bring forth what He has offered and still offers. FREEDOM. Freedom to His children of faith and eternal life for everyone who believes. Freedom my friend has a lot more to do with risking than you may think. As small as baking cookies for neighbor who you haven’t talked to in four years, or as large as leaving your career, the question is: is what He’s saying worth the risk?
