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PROGRAM D-8055
Are you a risk taker? Jesus asks us to take risks for him. He challenges us to lose our lives for the sake of the Gospel. He warned us that our lives might incur hard times and persecutions, just as his did. But you can be sure of this: It is better to lose your life than it is to waste it!
Let me quote from John Piper’s booklet, Risk Is Right:
Therefore, it is right to risk for the cause of Christ. It is right to engage the enemy and say, “May the Lord do what seems good to him.” It is right to serve the people of God, and say, “If I perish, I perish!” It is right to stand before the fiery furnace of affliction and refuse to bow down to the gods of the world. At the end of every other road—secure and risk-free—we will put our face in our hands and say, “I’ve wasted it!” But at the end of the road of risk, taken in reliance on the blood-bought promises of God, there will be fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
The kind of risk-taking we should do for Jesus is not the impulse of being a hero, or the lust for adventure. If our motives are to heap praise and glory for ourselves, we are doing it for the wrong reasons. We also don’t take risks for Jesus in order to earn his acceptance or gain his approval. It has to be about doing it for the love of Christ—nothing more, nothing less.
Paul wrote, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
When the love of Christ compels you, then the risk is a no-brainer. You have to do it because Jesus loves you so much and has redeemed your life and given you hope and purpose. Now you have the privilege to do something risky out of love for him.
Regardless of what God is leading you to do, I can promise you it will be bigger than you are, and it will be risky. It will require you to live by faith and not by sight. It will test you and frighten you, but that’s where the blessing is, where the abundant life is. Don’t miss it. If God is for you, who can be against you?!