Risk Worth Taking

I saw this on JR Vassar’s blog and it resonated with me:

God rewards faith-fueled risk. No one has ever left a legacy playing it safe and no one has ever heard “Well done…” whose goal in life was to avoid pain and cost. If you pamper your life, you will lose it.

I am reminded daily of the subtle seduction this world offers. The tension between “staying the course” or choosing to “risk it all” is one that can leave us paralyzed in moments where these thoughts seem to run in opposite directions.

I am learning that trusting Jesus completely involves risking it all.  Only through faith can we learn to embrace the struggle and pain life brings. And only faith can bring us to the place where risk is our only option because control has been given to Him who knows our struggle and has overcome this world.

Amen.

truth.

“Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty.” -John Piper

party like its my birthday…

Today is my quarter of a century mark. Or…25 years…300 months…9131 days…1304 weeks…219,144 hours…13,148,640 minutes…788,918,400 seconds mark.

Birthdays are bittersweet for me. They are the markers along the road that quantify our lives. They suggest a certain prescribed level of success and maturity yet somehow they always fail to tell the story behind the story. They fail to capture the pain and the progress that has both perplexed you and surprised you. They fail to describe the myriad of experiences that make up your story or the depth of feeling that has branded your soul at certain moments and led you down a different road than most.

Days like today remind me that life is but a vapor. Make sure that you invest it well.

Alive.

Sometimes life allows for periods of time where we are acutely aware of our purpose and direction. Other times we wonder whether our grand plans and huge vision that we often dream about will ever come to pass. Much of this internal struggle for significance is rooted in fears that we have become bound by and notions about ourselves that we believe far more readily than what God tells us is true about our standing with Him. The truth is that we are alive in Christ. Being alive in Christ allows us to lean into the love of Christ and be released to love like Christ. No period of life regardless of its potential trials or joys is beyond this call to embrace and embody His love. This life will come alive only as we live as one who has been made alive.