Live surrendered

It is time to start taking risks. When the way we live our life doesn’t require the Holy Spirit to come through for us something is drastically wrong. Often we play it safe. We don’t take risks. We hear the stories in Sunday School of Bible characters who did bold things in faith, like Daniel in the lion’s Den, like Noah building the ark, like David slaying Goliath, but then we grow up and we become more concerned with just getting by and trying to be good people. We think that all God wants for us is to keep us safe and protected. But that isn’t true. All through the Bible we see examples of people who face struggles and hardships as they followed God and yet saw great fruit as they served Him. It is like CS Lewis said of Aslan “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good”. We can trust that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. But sometimes He will call us to take risks and to face some opposition for the sake of the Kingdom. A ship in a harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are made for. They are made to cross oceans. We too have been made to metaphorically cross oceans by living out our faith with burning passion rather than being lukewarm in the comfort of a harbour.
I heard a good description of some air hostesses recently who were unhappy in their job – a passenger noted they were smiling only with their mouth and not their eyes. Our eyes can give away when we are “faking it” with emotions, and that is a condition we can easily fall into – living lives that outwardly look Christian but inwardly are dead and devoid of fruit.
God has called us to be active participants in the task of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. If not us, then who? It is time to rise up. It is time to live out the faith we profess. It is time to give God our all, to sprint and not walk, to dive fully in rather than just dipping our toes. It is time to seek God with clean hands and pure hearts, rejecting the false idols of society and giving our lives to the things that really truly matter. It is time for us to stop just coming along to church on a Sunday and start living our faith out seven days a week. It is time for us to open up the door and let Jesus into all of our life, to surrender all to Him and to be His ambassadors in our schools, our workplaces and our families. It is time for us to share our faith by authentically living out the faith we are trying to share.