RISK - Get Out of Your Safe Zone 2

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. Listen now, as David introduces the conclusion of his message, Risk.

Get out of your safe zone. You know, Caleb's always been one of my favourite characters, and as I've gotten older, even more favourite, because Caleb did the greatest work in his whole life after he was 80 years old. That gives hope to everybody, doesn't it? God isn't finished with us until he's finished with us, and Caleb illustrates that.

What a great champion he was. He and Joshua, the two minorities of the majority report going into Canaan, they came back and said, we can do it because we have a great God. They saw God before they saw the giants, and that's what everybody else failed to do. How many of you know that we often have to fight that battle in our lives? We have to see God before we see the giants.

We have to know that nothing is too hard for God, and there's no giant too big for him to knock down. So what an encouragement this lesson is. It's called Risk. Get out of your safe zone, and that's my message and encouragement to you today.

Now let's finish up what we started yesterday. We're learning how to risk and get out of our safe zone. Don't maximize the opposition.

Don't minimize the opportunities, because if you do, you will jeopardize the objective. In their unbelief, men and women, the Israelites discarded the precious powerful future that God had for them. Their act of defiant unbelief incurred a terrible penalty. First of all, the punishment for bringing back an evil report to the people of God was meted out in two severe sentences. First, the 10 men who gave the evil report were killed immediately by a plague. Numbers 14, now the men who Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation complain against him by bringing a bad report of the land, those very men who brought the evil report about the land, they died by the plague before the Lord. But Joshua, the son of Nun, and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, remained alive of the men who went to spy out the land.

Second, not only did the men who brought the report die, but all the people who listened to the report, they were sentenced as well. Listen to Numbers 14, 29, and 30. The carcasses of you who have complained against me shall fall in the wilderness. All of you who were numbered according to your entire number from 20 years old and above, except for Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in.

How very sad. I mean, the blessing of God was just waiting to be poured upon his people, and it was forfeited by their unwillingness to risk obedience to his command. Let me ask you a question today. What is your Canaan? What does God want you to tackle? What does he want you to possess?

What does he want you to accomplish for him? Unbelief forfeits your opportunities and jeopardizes your objective. So let's keep seizing the moments God provides for us with childlike wonder.

If God said it, I believe it, and that settles it, and I'm going to do it. How to live life in the safe zone. So let's talk now about how to risk life in the faith zone. That brings us back to Caleb.

He and Joshua represent the minority opinion among the spies. Caleb had pleaded with the people. He said, let us go up. Let us take possession.

We are well able to overcome it. Imagine Caleb's frustration when the whole nation shouted down his words. But God heard, and as the decades passed, one by one the older Israelites passed away, and their bodies dotted the desert. Even the aged Moses ascended Mount Pisgah and died. Joshua and Caleb were the sole survivors of their generation. When the day came to lead Israel into the Promised Land, they were as young in spirit as 40 years before. Joshua succeeded Moses.

He led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan. And as we read through the book of Joshua, we find conquest after conquest, and allotment after allotment. And then we open our Bibles to Joshua chapter 14, and who should we meet again but my favorite man Caleb.

He made a trip to see his old friend and fellow spy Joshua, and this is what he said to him. You know the word which the Lord said to Moses, the man of God concerning you and me and Cades Barnea? I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Cades Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless, my brethren who went up with me, the heart of the people, they made them to melt, but I followed the Lord my God.

So Moses swore on that day saying, surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever because you have wholly followed the Lord my God. Now friends, with the passing of years, Caleb's faith had grown. His mind was sharp. His spirit was strong.

His enthusiasm was like a child's. The promise of God was still the obsession of his heart. I believe there are four reasons for this, and they help us understand what is involved in living a life of risk. If you don't get anything else out of what I'm saying today, get these four things because these are the key to your living a life out of the safe zone. First of all, risk takers stay exuberant about their lives. The first reason has to do with Caleb's exuberance.

He told Joshua, the Lord has kept me alive these 45 years, and ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel wandered in the wilderness, and now listen to this, here I am this day, 85 years old, and I am as strong this day as I was on the day that Moses sent me. In other words, Caleb said, I'm 85, but I should be 40 because I have the same energy, the same enthusiasm, the same exuberance about life that I had 45 years ago. Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison wrote these words, exuberance carries us places we would not otherwise go, across the savanna, to the moon, into the imagination. By its pleasures, exuberance lures us from our common places and quieter moods, and after the victory, the harvest, the discovery of a new idea or an unfamiliar place, it gives ascendant reason to venture forth all over again.

That's a description of Caleb, my friends, and I hope it's a description of you. It is very hard to go forward without the kind of joyful zest for life that Caleb had. That same joyful eagerness is available to you and to me. For me, you say?

Yes, it is. You can't lose the wonder of the worshipful, promise-filled life Christ died to give you. You can ask God for joy. You can choose to be exuberant in life based on his promises.

It's not a matter of conjuring up emotions. It's a matter of saying, Lord, with your help, I'm going to be like Joshua. I'm going to be like Caleb, not like the other 10 who came back from Canaan. Risk-takers stay exuberant about their lives. Number two, they stay excited about their futures. I was having a discussion with my wife, and we were both talking about how you should live as you get older. We both agreed that the way you should live as you get older is the way you've lived all your life, always looking to the future, always planning on what's next, and don't get caught in a defeatist attitude which inhabits so many people as they grow older. Watch Caleb.

Watch what he does. Caleb told Joshua, Now therefore, he said, Give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day. For you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I will be able to drive them out as the Lord said. Now, I don't know if you get what's going on here, but Caleb has just walked up to his leader and asked for the toughest assignment in the settling of the land. When I read that, I felt like shouting, Yes! At age 85, Caleb was ready to claim the hill country, to tame the land, provide a lasting inheritance for his children.

There's something here I don't want you to miss. Early in this message, I told you about Hebron and that it was the ancestral home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but now it was inhabited by an evil tribe of huge warriors known as the descendants of Anak. The sight of these warriors had terrified the ten unfaithful spies. They were made to feel like grasshoppers compared to the enemy. This portion of territory was still not taken by Israel. It was unpossessed, unclaimed, and the giants had scared everybody away. Everybody except Caleb who said in effect, I want that country as my inheritance, and I'm ready to take care of those daunting super villains.

Let me at them. No matter your age or your circumstance, no matter what hill you need to climb, that kind of enthusiasm is what carries you forward. Jessica Long was an orphan in Siberia as an infant born with fibular hemimelia. She didn't have fibulas, in other words, ankles or heels, or most of the bones in her feet, but after much prayer, a Christian couple from Baltimore, Maryland, Steve and Beth Long adopted her when she was 13 months old.

A few months later, Jessica's legs were amputated below the knees. Growing up, she couldn't do everything other children did, but she learned to swim without prosthetics in her grandparents pool. At age 10, Jessica joined a swim team. At age 12, she won three gold medals in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. Since then, she has competed in three more Paralympic Games, and her medal count is up to 13 gold, six silver, and four bronze.

She's one of America's most decorated Olympians. She said, I was raised the right way, but I still had to come to Christ on my own. Eventually, I decided I wanted to give Jesus my whole heart, and it was the best decision I've ever made.

She has some advice for us. Believe you are capable of incredible things and that God has a plan for every individual. I want you to embrace who God made you to be. I now look at my legs and think of all the people I've been able to touch because God made me this way.

Embrace who you are. Shine bright and never give up on your dreams. Jessica looks back with gratitude, but her focus is on the future. She said, I'm so excited for what's next.

That's what she told a reporter. Someone has said, if you can get excited about the future, the past won't matter much. Even when the world is coming apart at the seams, when global panics and pandemics are the order of the day, when our economy is uncertain and our faith is under assault, even then, especially then, you need to look ahead to the next step that God has for you. Caleb didn't use his gray hair to beg off the heavy lifting. He asked for a worthy challenge because he had the wisdom to know that with a powerful quest comes a powerful reward.

In other words, knock down a giant and you become a giant yourself. He still had a vision for the future and because of that, he accomplished the greatest victory of his life when he was 85 years old. Risk takers stay exuberant about their lives.

They stay excited about their futures and they stay enthusiastic about their assignment. As you can see, Caleb was enthusiastic about his assignment. Joshua and the Israelites had not yet succeeded in driving the evil occupants out of the large sections of the Promised Land. The business was unfinished, but Joshua 15 verse 14 says, Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak, Sheshi, Ahaman, and Telmai, the children of Anak.

Caleb did exactly what he was told and he did it immediately. He is one of those success stories whose secret isn't so secret. He just did it in the strength of the Lord. That's enthusiasm. Today our ministries at Turning Point cover the globe because of the capabilities of worldwide broadcasting.

Much of the technological credit goes to Sir Edward Appleton whose scientific discoveries won him a Nobel Prize in 1947. When asked about the secret of his lasting accomplishments he said, it was enthusiasm. I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill. You know the word enthusiasm, made up of the Greek words for in and God, enthaism. It was coined to describe the zeal of the early Christians. When we have the God of all energy within us, there's a surge of power that's like an atomic reaction in our hearts.

The apostle Paul said it this way, I strenuously contend with all the energy of Christ so powerfully works in me. Risk takers stay exuberant about their lives. They stay excited about their futures. They stay enthusiastic about their assignment and they stay energized about their God. That brings us back to the consummation of our story. Only the energy of God within us can keep us barreling forward into the remainder of God's will for our lives.

As I said, the story of Caleb's life is told in just 30 verses in the Bible, but six times in those 30 verses we are given the secret to his risk filled, risk taking life. I want to put these before you. I want you to see these. It is really stark. It is really overwhelmingly clear and very powerful. Just 30 verses. In those verses, six times we are told Caleb's secret.

Let me tell you something. When you find Caleb's secret, you will find the secret for your life. Here are these verses. My servant Caleb has a different spirit in him and he has followed me fully. They have not wholly followed me except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua, the son of Nun, for they have wholly followed the Lord.

Deuteronomy 1, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, he shall see it and to him and his children. I am giving the land on which he walked because he wholly followed the Lord. Joshua 14, I wholly followed the Lord my God. So Moses swore on that day saying, surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever because you have wholly followed the Lord my God. Joshua 14, 14, Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite to this day because he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel.

Now if you didn't pick up from my voice the key phrases in these verses, you're not listening. Caleb wholly followed. He wholly followed. He wholly followed his Lord. By the time he was 85, most of his generation had given up hope and died, but Caleb still had a bright fire burning in his heart. He still wanted to risk his life on the greatest possible task that God could give him. As I reflect on what it means to incorporate risk into our walk with God, I want to tell you a story about the church I serve, the Shadow Mountain Community Church.

We're here in El Cajon, California. By 1990, I had been the pastor there for about 10 years. After almost eight years of struggling, we were finally ready to move into our new worship center. We knew we'd experienced traumatic growth and we were trying to prepare for it. One of the things on our minds was finances. We were concerned that our giving to worldwide missions would suffer if we didn't do something special.

We wanted to increase that number, but we didn't know how to go about it. You see, at that time in our church, when people gave to the offering, they had an envelope with two spaces on it. One space was for missions and one space is for the church budget.

People would usually come into the church and they would put all their money into the church budget. Then along the way, they would learn about the importance of missions and they would start allocating some of their funds to missions. We knew if we moved into this new building, which was huge, we would grow. In fact, we did.

We tripled our size in almost three years. What our concern was, was that our regular budget would grow and missions would be left behind. We had a business meeting to talk about it.

I'll never forget it. During the meeting, someone suggested that we allocate 5% of our general budget to missions. Someone else stood up and said, we give 10% of our income to God and we ask people to tithe. Why should not the church tithe their income to missions? That seemed like a big risk. Our new building payments, our growing ministry, we're struggling to meet our financial obligations.

How would we ever survive if we took 10% of our already not enough money and gave it away? That's when I heard myself get up and say, what do you think God would do for us if we gave 20% of our budget to missions going forward? That was a long time ago.

I tell you, I still remember how quiet it got that moment in that meeting and it seemed like it stayed quiet for a long time. Then a man by the name of Ralph Radford, one of the Caleb's of our church, he stood up and he encouraged us to take that challenge. He predicted that God would bless us if we did. Someone also reminded us that missions is the closest thing to the heart of God in the Bible. God had sent his own son into this world as the first missionary. We made the decision, that kind of risk decision, that decision not to keep from failing, but to actually go forward and win.

I've been talking about that decision in this message and we carried that out that day and we have been doing it now for over 30 years. Today, Shadow Mountain currently supports 198 missionary families with ministries in 41 countries in over 50 different languages. We help to underwrite three pregnancy care centers, the downtown rescue mission, the servicemen's center and our Spanish, Arabic and Iranian congregations. Our missionary budget this year will exceed for the first time $4 million.

Over the years, since we took that risk back in the early 90s, we have given over $50 million to evangelize the world. None of that is said to boast. I didn't tell you that so you could think how great this church is or how great its pastor is.

No, it's thanksgiving. It's gratitude, but it's also a lesson for us. We made a decision to take a risk and not just to try and God honored that decision in a magnificent way. What risk is God asking you to take as you go forward?

I want to tell you flat out, you can't go forward without risk. What God has done for us, he will do for you. His will for you is not earthly comfort, but divine courage. Courage in the face of opposition, courage in the face of cultural change, courage when confronted with the unknown, courage in the midst of a pandemic. God will never choose safety for us if it will cost significance.

God created us to count and not to be counted. This is your time to move forward. This is my time to move forward out of the safe zone, into the faith zone, and going forward.

Well, that's true. Thank you so much for listening and for letting us talk about how to risk, how to get out of the safe zone. It's a hard first step, but when you begin to walk with God and trust him every day, sometimes when you don't know what's coming next, it's an adventure you will never forget. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about pursuing, chasing your dream, how many of you know that sometimes God gives people a dream and they think that it's all going to just be dumped in their lap and they don't do anything about it?

When God gives you a dream, you need to pursue that dream with all of your heart to chase your dream. That's our discussion tomorrow. I hope you'll be with us. I'm David Jeremiah. Thanks for listening. Our message today came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church, where Dr. David Jeremiah serves as senior pastor.

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All available in a variety of handsome cover options. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hooke Fleet. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series, Forward. That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au.