Taking Risks - Part 1

Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, October 17th. Are you facing a task that feels too big or too complicated to handle? Learn to trust the promises of God and step out in faithful obedience. The series Reaching Your Full Potential continues. Is God in this whole issue of risk taking or is He not? Does He want us to play it safe in every aspect of our life or are there times when we have to take risk in our life? Well, I want us to look at a man who took risk. I want us to look at some principles here that if you will follow them carefully, if you listen intently, and if you will apply this message, God will change your life. He will enable you to reach your full potential.

You remember we said there are a number of steps. First of all, a clean heart. Secondly, a clear mind. A balanced schedule. Right relationships. A healthy body. And now taking risk.

All of these things are absolutely essential if you want to reach your potential in life. So I want you to turn, if you will, to the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, to a passage of Scripture that is familiar to many people who have read the Word of God. And what has happened for a little background in this fourteenth chapter, beginning in the twenty second verse, Jesus has just fed five thousand plus the women and children. And now He said to His disciples, beginning in verse twenty two, immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side while He sent the crowds away. Now don't you imagine they must have been asking, well now, if we're going ahead all the way across the Sea of Galilee, a long ways across there, how's He going to get there?

Somehow they figured He would. So after He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. And when it was evening, He was there alone. But the boat in which they were in was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night, which was somewhere between three and six a.m. in the morning, He came to them walking on the sea. When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and they said, It is a ghost.

And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid. Peter said to Him, Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water. And He said, Come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him and said to him, You have little faith, why did you doubt me?

When they got into the boat, the wind stopped, and those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, You are certainly God's Son. Well now, here's a man who's willing to take a risk. When we think about it, what do we mean by a risk? A risk is the possibility of suffering loss or suffering danger or suffering some ill will in some fashion. It's the possibility of that. And usually when we think of taking risk, we think of gambling or chance or whatever it might be. And so sometimes we want to just put all risk over the side of something that is not good. But the truth is, in order to understand risk, risk is very closely related to faith.

Think about it for a moment. Every single one of us who has ever obeyed God when there was some real challenge in our life, to some degree, we have taken a risk. That is, even when you knew that God told you to do a certain thing or to go a certain place or whatever it might be, you knew He said it.

No doubt in your mind about it. Even when you knew He did, you felt you were taking a bit of risk because maybe you felt like you were not capable of accomplishing it or you weren't skilled enough or something. And so, whatever, you felt like you had to take a little risk. When you take a risk, you are saying, I am willing, it's possible for me to be a loser at this point or to suffer in some fashion. Well, to take a risk means that you have the courage to do it. Well, courage is always necessary to take a risk. And where does the courage come from? The courage comes from the fact that you believe, either in yourself or in God. So you have the courage, listen, because you have the faith to believe, you have the courage, the courage to do what? To take a risk.

And that is heading a direction in your life that maybe you've never been before. And so, when you think about taking a risk, you can't really think in terms of that as a believer without thinking in terms of your faith and the courage that is involved in that. Well, it's very evident in our Scripture here that here is someone who was willing to take a risk.

And when you and I think about Peter, for example, we don't usually think of him as a person who was laid back and set back and full of fear, but really a person who had the kind of attitude to live on the edge in life. So when we think about taking a risk now, we're thinking about trusting God. But at the same time, we have those moments of fear, of failure. Maybe things won't work out exactly like we planned them to. And you see, there's nothing wrong with that. That is, God knows that some challenges He gives us in life, we're going to have those moments when we say, well, I'm not certain about this.

I'm not sure what happens. We get our focus off of the Lord, as did Peter. And what happens is he began to sink in his doubt. And the same thing happens to us.

We know that's what he said. We said, yes, I'm going to do what God tells me to do. And then we get our focus off of him. We look at all the barriers and the hindrances and the possibilities and the things that seem to be fearful. And what happens? Then we begin to doubt him.

He has to bring us back up and get our focus right again. Now, think about Peter, for example. Here he was in the boat and here's the storm. He could have said, Jesus, is that you?

Yes. Well, if that's you, come get in the boat with us. But he didn't say that. That's not like Peter. Peter is not one of those laid back, safe and secure kind of fellows.

That's not the way he operated in life. And what happened was he said, Jesus, if that's you, you tell me to come to you. And Peter must have thought I can I can feel it. He must have thought if he could walk on the water. Maybe maybe he let me walk on what if he told me to come to him, then I'm going to have to walk on the water.

Got out of the boat. You see, he took the risk of doing what appeared to be impossible because he was looking his focus. His he had fastened his eyes upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He knew this that he was on the water. He had the power to walk on the water. He had the power to walk on the water. He gave him the power to walk on the water if he called him to do so. So when you look at Peter and oftentimes people people say, well, Peter this and Peter that and Peter denied the Lord Jesus and Peter sank in the water.

Sure, he did. But let me just say something about Peter. That was his nature. That was his personality.

He liked living on the edge. You remember he was the only disciple who ever corrected Jesus quotes. Jesus said in the 16th chapter of Matthew, he said, here's what's going to happen to me. I'm going to be betrayed.

And the Pharisees, the Sadducees and so forth. And I'm going to be killed and rise third day. Peter says no such thing.

That's not going to happen to you. Can you imagine him telling God what he can't do and what he's not going to do. But that you see, that was the personality of this man. You can't be too critical of Peter, because in the Garden of Gethsemane when everybody else was running away and being afraid. And here comes the guards.

We don't have many that were could have been 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever it might have been. And so who is the one who drew the sword ready to take on the whole guard because of his love and devotion and belief in the Son of God. One disciple, Peter. He liked living on the edge. In other words, you could count on him and you couldn't count on anybody else. And when the test came, the Lord let him falter and let him fall at the most critical time in his life when Jesus needed him the most.

He said, I don't even know this man. Here's what I want you to see. You're listening. Say Amen.

It doesn't make any difference how strong you and I are. There will be moments in our life when we will suffer the weakness of faith. Those brief moments maybe something will come along and those brief moments there may be a moment or two of fear. Listen, God understands that and he doesn't hold that against us. What he wants us to do is get our focus back on who he is and let him lift us out of the muck and mire about doubt and our fear at that moment.

Back on the top of the water to head in the direction that he calls us to head in in the first place. That's who he is. And so when you think about Peter, it was not a matter of competition. That's just who he was.

That was his personality. Now everybody's not that way. And God certainly understands that. But here's what I want to say to you. If you're not willing to take risk in your life, you're not going to grow in your Christian life. There's no way to grow in your Christian life if you're not willing to take risk. That is, suffer the possibility of loss or harm or danger. Because some things that God calls us to do are going to be dangerous maybe. There's going to be the possibility of suffering and loss. And so when God calls you and challenges you to take the risk to believe him for something, move out of that job that he's called you out of, move out of that relationship he's called you out of, he's got something better for you. He's got a higher place for you to walk, a different perspective, a different relationship in your life. And you're not willing to do it for fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of, well, if I give up this, then there's nothing out there. Listen, there's no such thing as God calling you to nothing. Listen to that. There's no such thing as God calling you to nothing.

He always calls you to something or to someone or to someplace or to some work, whatever it might be. You're not willing to take risk. You'll never grow in your Christian life. You can play it safe. You can be sure you hold on to all of it.

And you know what will happen? One of these days you'll end up with a life of regret and you'll wonder, well, what did I miss in life? And you see, this is the reason we've been talking about in all these messages, this whole issue of reaching your potential. Why did God create you? He created you for a relationship with him and he wanted to pour his love into you. And listen, to give you the gifts and the talents and abilities in life that you need to accomplish what he wants you to accomplish in life.

God is on your side. God wants, listen, he wants you to accomplish and to achieve and to become. God isn't satisfied with you playing it safe. You just want to be sure that everything is just, I just want to be sure I know what the outcome is.

Listen, you follow Jesus Christ and you're not going to know what the outcome is until ultimately you and I get to heaven. Because the impact and the influence that goes on and on and on and on after you and I have passed on from this life. So when you look at Peter and you ask the question, well, why do people, why do people take risk? They take risk for all different reasons. Why should you not take a risk with God?

Because he is God. And because of whatever risk he requires of us to take. Listen, beneath that risk is the living, omnipotent God who can handle anything and everything you and I experience in life, no matter what it is. So when somebody says, well, is it really taking a risk with God? The risk is not with him, what he may or may not do.

The risk is with us. That is, is my faith strong enough? Am I willing to persevere? Am I willing to hang in there until God corrects or brings me through this valley or whatever it might be in life? So when you think about all the reasons that people do it, then you say, well, but that's just not my personality.

And then what you have to decide is this. Do you want to become the person God wants you to be? Do you want to achieve the things God wants you to achieve in life? And it's interesting that some people have achieved the most in their life, the latest years of their life. They've gone on and on and on through the years. And then it seems like all those years and years and years and years of laboring and work and serving or whatever it might be. Then the latter years of their life become the most fruitful.

Why? Because they didn't quit and give up because they were afraid. They weren't fearful of criticism.

They weren't fearful of failure. Everybody fails at something sometimes in life, but that doesn't make you a failure. What makes you a failure is that you're too afraid to try when you're too afraid to fail.

Then you are a failure. That just that's not what God wants for us. He wants us to walk in obedience to him and trust him, test him if necessary, when he calls us to take a risk. It is a risk on our part. But from his perspective, it's no risk at all.

Now, think about it for a moment. We just mentioned Peter. But go back in the scriptures and think about how God challenged to these people to take risk. For example, let's begin with Abraham. What was the risk with Abraham?

The risk with Abraham was this. God called him to leave his family, go into a land that he would show him. He didn't know how to get there necessarily or what it was going to be all about. And so he had to take the risk of leaving all of his security safe and secure, leaving all that behind and just following God's leadership. He had no compass and no map.

Nobody planned it all out for him. And sometimes God will challenge you and me to do the same thing. There's no, there's no map and there's no guidance except the guidance of the living God through the Holy Spirit, giving you instructions and guidance as what to do next. It takes a risk sometimes to be obedient to God. So Abraham is a good example.

What's the reward? The reward was he became the father of a whole nation of people through whom the Messiah came. And so what greater reward could he have had? Then there's Moses, for example. And you say, well, what risk did Moses take?

Well, risk was simply this. He was a renegade from Egypt to begin with because he killed an Egyptian soldier living on the backside of the desert as a shepherd for 40 years. God confronts him at the burning bush and says to him, it was long speech between him and Moses. And they have this conversation about him going back to Egypt and commanding and telling Pharaoh that God told him to tell Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, who now had become slaves for all these hundreds of years. So what did he have with him? He had his brother with him.

And secondly, a shepherd's stick. That's not very much of a weapon against all the Egyptian charioteers and soldiers and all the rest that they had. What was the risk? Losing his life. All Pharaoh had to say was, and he'd have been gone. He took the risk of losing his life for the Hebrew children.

What was the reward? He became the savior of the Hebrew children. They became a nation, Israel, through whom the Messiah came, the greatest statesman in the Old Testament. Then, for example, there was a man like Gideon.

When the Lord came to Gideon and spoke to him because the Midianites had been in control and absolutely ravishing their crops and destroying everything about them, they were hiding out in caves and everywhere else. And so God came to him and said, Gideon, oh, valiant warrior. You know what his response was?

What do you mean, oh, valiant warrior? He said, I'm the least of my father's household. And who am I?

And I have no bills and talents and gifts and skills. He started giving God all these excuses. Anyway, here's what God did.

He said, here's the risk. I want you to set Israel free of these Midianites and the Malachites and all the rest. And so what did God do? And you know the story.

Some of you at least know the story. He gathered the people of Israel together, the soldiers, had about 22,000, somewhere thereabouts. And God said, that's too many. He finally got them down to the river and he said, look, all those who get on their knees and drink, send them home. He'd already said, all of you who are afraid to fight, send them home. Well, they were getting them down now.

Now they got down to 300. And so God said, now, Gideon, this is the task. You take 300 men with clay pots, a torch and a trumpet. Now, he already knew how many enemies he had because the scripture is very clear. And naturally he had to deal with this whole issue when he talked about how many, when he talked about the issue of the numbers of his enemies. For example, he said that the Malachites, the Midianites and then the rest of those from the east. Here's what he said about them. He said, now the Midianites and the Malachites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts and their camels were without number as numerous as the sand on the sea.

What was the risk? Can you imagine this? Three hundred men versus three whole armies of well-trained and capable people. Three hundred men circling the camp and all they had was a torch, a clay pot and a trumpet. Here's what he said. Here's how we're going to win this war. We're going to break the clay pots, hold up the torch and blow the trumpet.

Now, how's that going to kill three armies? There was nothing reasonable about that at all. You're talking about a risk. There's a man who took a risk. And what did God do? He did what He always does.

Listen to this. He always assumes full responsibility for the consequences of our obedience, period. And what did they do? They all killed each other. What was the reward for the next forty years? Gideon served as a judge. And there was peace for the nation of Israel. The Bible says he died at a ripe old age.

Then, of course, during the Persian reign when the children of Israel had been taken out of their own land and there was a man by the name of Haman who hated the Jews and he manipulated the circumstances to get them all killed. And so there was a law that said, the law of the king said, that if his wife, the queen, walks into his chamber without being invited in, she could lose her life. And so what she did, Esther said, I want to get all the people in Israel praying, fasting three days, and she says, I'm going into the king and make an appeal for my people.

If I perish, I perish. What did she do? She risked her life. And what did she do?

She saved her nation. If you're going to live a Godly life, you're going to have to take risk. If you're going to walk in the will of God, you're going to have to take risk. If you're going to obey God you're going to have to take risk. If you're going to accept the challenges of God in your life you're going to have to take risk. If you're going to grow and become the person, achieve the things that God wants you to achieve in life, you're going to have to take risk. It's not going to always be so safe and secure where you can count it all up. Any man, for example, who starts his own business knows he's taking a risk.

He can lose it all. For example, when you move, once in a while somebody will say, well, God told me to quit my job and to trust Him. Well, now think about this, God doesn't usually tell people, just stop and do nothing. When God tells you to stop something for some specific reason, He's getting you ready to take you somewhere else.

And I think about people who say, I don't like my job, I don't feel like I'm growing in my job, I don't think I'm getting anywhere, I don't see any opportunities, and on and on and on they go. Well, ask yourself the question, God, what do you want me to do? Maybe you're hanging in there because you think that's security. Let me remind you of something, there's only one secure place in the world to be, only one. In the hand of God. In the will of God. Listen, doing the will of God.

That's the only safe, secure place to be. So when God tells you to move in this direction or that direction, move in this relationship or that relationship, what is He doing? He is enabling you to take a step to become the person He wants you to be, to achieve the things He wants you to achieve, to reach your full potential in life. Thank you for listening to Taking Risks. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.