Going Out on a Limb

“Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed.” Lk 19:26 TM

As an Iowa farm boy, Robert Schuller remembers how his dad needed every particle of grain from the previous year’s crop to feed his livestock. Nevertheless, there was always a little corner of the corn bin he refused to touch. When Schuller said, “Dad, you still have grain in there,” his father would reply, “That’s next year’s seed.” And when spring came he planted it. Schuller writes: “Suppose he’d studied the odds and said, ‘Let’s see, I’ve a kernel of corn. I can feed it to the cattle and I know it’ll be productive; there’s no risk. Or I can bury it in the ground, but that’s infinitely more risky. Weeds could choke it, birds could eat it, it might rot, or hail and winds could destroy it…on the other hand, it just might multiply a hundredfold.’” The Bible says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done” (Ecc 11:4 TLB). Helen Keller said, “Security is mostly a superstition. It doesn’t exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole experience it…Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” If you want “more than you ever dreamed,” you’ve got to go out on a limb. That’s where the best fruit is. Acting in faith with no “earthly” guarantee what’s on the other side, means attempting something you couldn’t possibly do unless God gave you the ability. Jon Walker says: “Faith grows when we take risks—not just any kind of risks, but ones specifically directed by God. These God-nudges push us beyond the borders of our ‘independent states’ into ‘the promised land’ of life by faith.”

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