God requires risky obedience

“Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of.” (Luke 19:26 MSG)

If God tells you to take a step of faith but you hesitate to take it until he shows you what the second step will be, you’re not waiting on God. He’s waiting on you.

God uses risks, large and small, to push us into a deeper faith. And so he wants us to step forward in faith, even if we don’t know where the second step will take us. The not knowing is what requires faith, and the not knowing compels us to rely on God to guide us forward.

Regardless of what we see on the other side of a God-directed risk, the reality is God is there. What seems to be a no-guarantee situation actually comes with the greatest guarantee of all — a God-guarantee — that he’s working in your life.

With this guarantee from God, you can enter into the risky obedience of attempting things that are impossible unless God gives you his strength to do them.

With this guarantee from God, you can enter into the risky obedience of loving other believers so deeply and so richly that you prove to the world that God’s love is flowing through you.

With this guarantee from God, you can enter into the risky obedience of loving your unlovable neighbors just as God loved you, even when you seemed unlovable.

With this guarantee from God, you can enter into the risky obedience of changing your priorities to match God’s priorities, sacrificing, in faith, what you cannot keep for the things that can never be taken away.

With this guarantee from God, you can engage in the risky obedience of making disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them that the risky obedience of following Jesus comes with a God-guarantee (Matthew 28:19-20).

• What task is before you that seems impossible?

• How would your approach to that task change if you believe it comes from God?

 

Jon Walker’s new book, “Breakfast with Bonhoeffer,” is a message of hope for anyone longing for another chance at life as God created it to be. It is a story of God’s faithfulness, even through job loss, home loss, economic uncertainty, divorce and an incurable disease. Structured like a novel, it reveals how God works through our often messy and inconsistent faith.

This devotional © Copyright 2012 Jon Walker. All rights reserved. Used by permission.