Not Playing It Safe

It’s fascinating to see how God calls our attention to what is important through what is happening in our lives and through the conversations that we have. Don’t get me wrong–I think that God speaks pre-eminently through his Word, the Scriptures, and he desires to communicate personally with everyone who has come to experience life in Jesus. But sometimes, when I am not giving much attention to the Scriptures and when I am a little neglectful of my conversational life with him, God gets my attention through other means.

I was talking with a friend and he was sharing about how, many years ago, he visited a race track with a few other couples. They thought it would be fun, placing small bets, learning the race-track lingo, experience the thrill of the race. When it came to the final race, these four couples decided to pool their monies together and bet on the final race. But what they ended up doing was “playing it safe.” They bet on a variety of horses and on a whole range of race results.

And the result? They didn’t lose much at all. But then they didn’t make any either. Playing it safe was . . . well, safe . . . and hardly life-changing or memorable or thrilling or . . . worth doing again.

And as my friend and I were talking about this, it really came home to me how safe I tend to play things when it comes to life with Jesus.

I’m not one for risks. I am reluctant to step out into some grand adventure. I want to know what the outcome is going to be before I begin . . . and I want some assurance that the outcome will be acceptable to me before I begin. But as I thought more about that very kind of thinking, I realized how far it was from the kind of life Jesus welcomes us into.

Jesus says things like (and here I am paraphrasing):

If something gets in the way of your experience of life with me–even down to your own hand or leg–cut it off so that you don’t lose life! (Matthew 18:8)

If you try to keep and preserve your life you’ll lose real life, but if you will give up your life for me you will find real life! (Mark 8:35)

And to a rich man, Jesus announces:

Sell everything you have, indiscriminately give it away to the poor, and then you will be free to follow me wherever I go and experience life! (Mark 10:21)

All these thoughts and more have been running through my mind and heart and I realize how very “not safe” this kind of life is.

Jesus is not promising that life will turn out the way I want. He is just promising me real life. Jesus is not saying that life will return a profit to me the way I think it should. He is just inviting me to experience real life with him. He is not arguing that following him will be the “safe” thing to do. He is just explaining that the only way to really find life with him is to abandon all other options and risk everything on him, risk everything with him, risk everything for him.

And I think that life lived that way would be memorable and worth living . . . even if it wasn’t entirely “safe.”