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Taking Risks

Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. (Colossians 3:1-2).

It is so difficult for us to transfer our affections on things above, for we are in love with toyland and our “toys” have become so dear.

Things above.

Perhaps that doesn’t mean much to some of today’s chic churchmen. It calls for risking too much.

Ever hear the old saying, “nothing ventured nothing gained?"

I believe it. And, I have to confess that the moments I remember with the most avid excitement are those moments where I risked the most.

Any more, people seldom ever dream the impossible dream. Nowadays we’re so afraid of going out on a limb, we’ve stopped climbing trees.

Today we want to do what is safe, what is secure, what is popular, what is painless, what is effortless. We refuse to leave our individual comfort zone. We like to stay confined inside borders because we perceive that we are somehow safer and more secure there.

But as a man, the greater the risks I take, the greater are the rewards I may reap.

As a man, I may suffer the pangs of hell, but I may also experience the joys of heaven.

As a man, I may suffer the loss of loved ones in death, but I may also know the warming comfort of the Holy Spirit.

As a man, I may walk through dark valleys, but I may also enjoy the lofty summits of the mountaintop.

As a man, I may experience the anxiety of indecision, but I may also shout confidently with the great Apostle Paul:

I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day. (II Tim. 1:12)

The month of January is named after the Roman god Janus. It has two faces; one face looking backward in reflection upon the past. The other face looks forward toward an unknown future.

January is a good time to reflect and also to re-envision.

Taking the Risk of Failure

At this moment, I look backward in reflection upon some initiatives that, for me, were taken at great risk but which resulted in great reward.

As a fifteen-year-old-boy, nobody knew the call of God that had been upon my life to enter the ministry. Nobody knew the misgivings or the heart-stopping fears I had. God had promised that He would open the doors of opportunity. And I had promised that, as He directed, I would step through those doors.

Finally, the big moment came. An opportunity to preach in a church - a small church - but a church nonetheless, with pews and a piano and organ, and a pulpit. A church!

Nobody knew what a risk that fine lady pastor was taking by inviting me to preach three services at her church that weekend - nobody but me.

Ever since I can remember I have had a deep desire to be successful in life. And for most people, being successful means minimizing risks. The opposite has been true for me. At last, I was willing to risk failure. And for me, that action signaled a whole new beginning.

Reluctantly, I accepted the invitation to preach and only later started having second thoughts. More than once I reached for the phone to call her and tell her that I just couldn’t. I even began to hope that I’d get sick and would be unable to preach on the big weekend.

For weeks, I worried. And prayed. And studied. And worried. And prayed, And studied. In my preparation I read stacks of books and wrote voluminous notes. After those weeks of intensive study and preparation I had prepared not just three sermons to get me through that first weekend, but had succeeded in preparing six whole sermons - just in case I was invited back the next weekend.

Well, I wasn’t invited back. But I am glad, as events unfolded, that I had studied and prepared so meticulously and had taken notes so voluminously.

At last, the big night arrived and I stood up to preach my first sermon, at age 15.

Confidently, I sailed into my opening remarks, and read my text, and began to preach. But things went down hill fast. In less than 7 minutes I had finished preaching - not just one sermon, but all 6 sermons! And I had spent at least 3 of those 7 minutes weeping.

What I really wished was that I just somehow could push a button and a trap door would open and I would suddenly disappear. Today, sometimes I wonder if those who hear me preach wish they could push a button to open the trap door and I would suddenly disappear.

Lamely, I gave an invitation for those who would like to receive Christ and vaguely remember a few people coming forward for prayer that night.

I was mortified. All I really wanted to do was to get out of town. Fast.

What a miserable failure I was at stumbling through that first sermon. That night lingered in my memory as the worst failure of my life.

It took me 26 years of painful memories to discover that I was wrong.

After preaching one night at the Canton, Ohio Memorial Auditorium, I was slowly making my way trough the large crowd toward a waiting car out the side door, when a hand reached through the crowd and held my elbow. Turning around, I found myself looking into the face of a woman and a man who looked only vaguely familiar.

“You don’t remember us,” she said, smiling broadly.

“But we were saved from sin that night you preached your first sermon and we’ve called your name in prayer every single day since that moment. It was the most wonderful night of our lives!” she exclaimed.

Her husband went on to explain that since they received Jesus on that night that he had served as the Superintendent of Sunday School for more than 24 years and that his wife had served as the clerk-treasurer of the church for over 24 years.

That married couple would never know how they changed my feelings about failure and success. Since that night, I’ve tried my best to leave the bookkeeping to God.

Remember Christopher Columbus? He believed the world was round, not flat. And he risked his life and reputation on his conviction. The rest is history.

Several years ago, I served as a consultant to a client who was an eminently successful leader of a vast ministry of global influence. He honored me by referencing me as his coach. He told me that he was struggling with a major decision in his life and that he had always held to the idea of living with “no regrets.” Then I asked him “When in your life did you feel most alive?” He thought for a moment and then related to me excitedly about a decision he had made in the very early days of his ministry where he simply subjugated his inordinate fear of failure and just launched out by faith and risked everything. After he related that story to me he was grinning ear-to-ear.

Faith sometimes steps blindly into the empty void, but always finds the Solid Rock, Christ Jesus, underneath its feet.

At other times it is as Ray Bradbury said, “Taking risks is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”

Mark Twain once advised, “Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Taking risks may also be viewed as a gift. The gift of risk-taking doesn’t lie, necessarily, in what you achieve by risking. It lies in who you become as a result of the process. Confident. Engaged. Alive. Re-ignited. Furthermore, it isn’t something you do only once in a while. It is an ongoing approach to life. Open. Daring. Courageous.

You know it when you let it slip out of your life. You feel stagnant, lethargic, stale, bored. Risks have no shelf life. Yesterday’s risks become only fading memories.

Today is new. Re-engage. Re-ignite. Re-risk.

The writer, T.S. Eliot, remarked, “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”

One of my favorite books is “The Road Less Traveled,” In it, poet Robert Frost introduces this thought: “Two roads diverged in a woods, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Taking the Risk for Freedom

There is a word - one single word - for which men have suffered and bled and died.

This word is you walking out your door unafraid. This word is you writing a letter without fear of reprisal. Choosing your own friends. Thinking your own thoughts. Stating your own convictions. Serving God as He has called you, honestly, and not as random others may prescribe for you or expect from you.

This word allows every man to pick himself up. It is children playing in a park safely. It is a woman sewing, or cooking, or teaching, or creating a work of art.

This word fans the flame of hope in every human heart, yet causes tyrants to tremble.

All men everywhere thirst for it, yearn for it, long for it. Some men die for it. This word is freedom!

Fifty-six men gathered in a small room in Philadelphia and boldly signed their names to the parchment. It was both the birth certificate of a nation and the death warrant for all who signed. They risked everything for freedom. Everything.

Robert Morris, a wealthy man, owner of 200 ships, lost everything in the war, was imprisoned for debt and died in poverty.

Robert Stockton had donated the land for Princeton University. Imprisoned, he was made to live on a thief’s diet of bread and water. He died shortly after his release from prison.

Nine of these original fifty-six died of wounds or wartime hardships. Five were captured and subjected to brutal and inhuman treatment. The homes of twelve were burned and seventeen others lost everything they had - everything. All but two men were offered immunity and restoration of their property and the lives of their loved ones if they would break their pledge.

But they were all committed to take the ultimate risk.

Freedom. Everybody wants it. Not everybody is willing to risk something for it.

Freedom!
Love it with all your heart.
Defend it with all your might.
Cherish it with all your strength.

Taking the Risk of Faith

How much do we believe what we say we believe?

In these days when men doubt their beliefs and believe their doubts, faith does at times seem risky.

But how I love the daring of Joshua who succeeded Moses as leader on the wilderness journey of the children of Israel.

Camped outside Jericho, the people surveyed the walls which seemed almost insurmountable. They appeared impenetrable. Helmeted soldiers were poised at strategic points along the top of the wall attending huge caldrons of hot, molten lead, ready to be poured down upon the heads of any would-be attackers.

Written over this situation in box-car-sized letters was one word:

I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y

Faith isn’t blind. And Joshua wasn’t blind.

He saw those huge walls. He saw the soldiers poised at the top of the walls which were wide enough at the top for three chariots to run a race side-by-side.

And he heard the murmuring of his own people.

He knew that more than the walls of Jericho had to be conquered. People were confronted by “other” walls as well. Huge walls of doubt confronted them.

Faced with the risk of losing the battle of Jericho, the people wanted a safe, fallback position. Some toyed with the idea of returning to Egyptian captivity, Egyptian bondage.

On the verge of their greatest victory some of the people were willing to again become Egyptian slaves.

Joshua saw the walls - all of them, visible and invisible.

But he also saw above the walls. He was not only willing to take the risk of faith, he was eager! By faith, he led the people marching silently around those walls.

Not a sound was uttered - not a whisper, not a sigh, not the crying of a baby nor the sound of a mother’s lullaby.

Everything was absolutely silent but for the sound of the ram’s horn and the marching of trampling feet.

After seven days of marching by faith, the walls were still there. The soldiers defending Jericho were still in plain view. Not a single crack had appeared anywhere in the mortar of the walls. Failure seemed imminent. But they refused to give up.

Suddenly, the silence was broken. It was Joshua:

You men of Israel - thus saith the Lord - shout! For God hath given you this city!

Then, like the voices of a million rippling waters, the people raised their voices in a thunderous anthem of faith and praise to God (although the walls were still standing).

But as they shouted triumphantly, suddenly the mortar began to crack. The stones began to crumble. The walls tumbled into the dust! Jericho had fallen! The walls had been conquered!

“But,” some may say, “what a great risk that was.”

“But,” Joshua would say, “what a great victory was won!”

The greater the risk, the greater the reward!

And that’s the kind of faith that conquers all the walls in our lives. It is a faith that risks everything! Accepting the promise of His Word before we can actually see the victory in view is real faith. Anybody can rejoice after the walls have fallen. But it takes authentic faith to rejoice before the walls fall.

Faith.

Can we afford not to risk it?

You may be at a point in your life where you are not sure you can make it another step. You may have failed many times. I don’t know of any more shattering disappointment than being disappointed in yourself - in not achieving your personal goals. But we all know that there is no disappointment in Jesus. If we keep our eyes on people and look to people (even great people) as our source, we are going to be disappointed - and badly.

You may have set some lofty goals for yourself and may have, for some reason, fallen short of those goals. The devil has been lashing you with the whip of failure. But to fail does not mean that you are a failure. If we will allow him, Satan will blow our failures all out of proportion and have us believe that, by failing, we have become a failure. I say again, to fail does not mean that you are a failure.

On the heels of every failure you can look for Satan. Chiding. Sneering. Jeering. Blaming. Shaming. Condemning. Mocking. Accusing. Lying. Pretending to be your friend, he tries to convince you that because you have failed, you are a failure and that you should just give up. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I confess that I have learned much more from my failures than I have ever learned from the few successes I have enjoyed.

The gift of risk-taking doesn’t lie in what you achieve by risking. It lies in who you become as a result of that process.

So, now is the time to re-engage, re-ignite, re-risk!

On a personal level, I am practicing what I preach. God has given me a global vision of evangelism, discipleship, and benevolence ministries that will impact a multitude of souls in more than 40 nations on 6 continents in the coming months.

I am launching the biggest initiatives of my life and ministry. The risks are huge. But the promise of the spiritual rewards are even greater. The first phase of this global vision is already underway.

It is a vision that is too important to ignore and too vast to achieve alone.

You can learn more about this global vision and of the possibility of your personal participation in this vision
by clicking here.

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