Are you a risk taker?

I had a situation happen to me yesterday that prompted me to record this episode. I was contacted yesterday by a potential client to see if I would be available to do some voiceover work, but they wanted to know if I would be comfortable with swearing. I thanked them for contacting me, but that I would not be comfortable with using that type of language. I was willing to let this job go because I didn’t want to compromise my beliefs and go against Col 3:8.

I was thoroughly prepared to lose this job, but something else happened instead. The person asked me if I would still be interested in looking at the script and reading the lines that did NOT have swear words in them. I’m glad I did because out of the whole script there were only three lines that I would not read. They hired me and were so pleased with the work that I did for them that they will be using me for another project.

This experience got me thinking about how God tests us in life. You have to be willing to let something go in order to gain something better. The degree to which your willingness to do so lies in how much faith you possess.

I’ll be honest. I’m a bit of a control freak, so needless to say, I’m not a big risk taker. It’s something that I’ve been working very hard to get rid of in my life. I conditioned myself to rely on what I see instead of relying on God. I was focused on the resource and not the Source which is God. Even though I never saw myself as a risk taker, living life purely based on what you see is a gamble.

Looks can be extremely deceiving. You can’t see all the obstacles that lie in your path, but God does. As a Christian, you have to be willing to take risks. Many times the things that God will ask you to do may not make sense. For example:

God blessed Abraham with a son. Then asked Abraham to sacrifice his son only to stop Abraham from doing so at the last minute. You can read more about this in Genesis 22.

Daniel got thrown into a Lion’s Den. The jealous men he worked with created a law which made it illegal to worship and pray to anyone other than King Darius. They knew Daniel would never worship anyone other than God. Therefore, Daniel was thrown into the Lion’s Den but did not die. God protected him. The next morning, King Darius discovered that Daniel was alive and that God protected him, King Darius had those that thought of this law thrown into the Lion’s Den. However, they did not make it because God was NOT with them.

Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego found themselves in a similar situation because they refused to bow to King Nebuchadnezzer. King Nebuchadnezzer had them thrown into a furnace. He looked into the furnace and saw 4 people walking in the fire instead of three. The fourth person was the Son of God. King Darius later had the 3 men brought out of the fire and they were unharmed.

The one thing that all of these people had in common is that they were not willing to compromise their beliefs. They were willing to take the risk and obey God. They were literally leaving all the consequences in His hands.

These men could have easily allowed doubt to talk them out of their decision, but they had faith that God would never forsake His children (Heb 13: 5-6). This is something that Christians constantly have to remind themselves of because our world is accurately described in Is 5:20 as good being called bad…bitter for sweet and vice versa.

We can save ourselves the headache of experiencing unnecessary confusion by always taking the risk and betting on God to give us the desires of our heart (Ps 37: 4) provided we put Him first (Matt 6:33).

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