Taking a Risk to Encourage You

Daily writing promptWhat’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to? View all responses

Our world,
Full of confusion,
Trapped in delusion,
Needs an infusion
Of hope.

I’d like to risk sharing more hope, but not just speaking from myself or in my name. I’d like to more directly speak what God puts on my heart, not as something I am saying but as words from Him.

The Bible calls that prophesying. I hesitate to do that because I don’t want to be presumptuous. I don’t want to speak my words in God’s name. What if it’s just me and my opinion and I only think it is God. So, I’ve tended to just say and write what God puts on my heart and let the people who read it and/or hear it decide where the words I communicate come from.

If I would take the risk to write what I sense that God is saying to the people who read this, I’d write to you:

God says: “I know everything about you. You can’t hide anything from Me. Yet, nothing I know about you makes me love you less. I am always reaching out to you, speaking in your heart, asking you to come to Me and to let Me heal your hurt, set you free from your confusion and rebellion, and bring you to a beautiful, never-ending heart-to-heart relationship with Me.”

I’ve been on a long journey of risk by walking with and seeking to daily obey the risen Jesus while getting to know Him better and better along the way. The more I’ve stepped out in obeying and trusting Him, the more He has shown His power, mercy, love, and presence to me. Here’s how my journey with Jesus began.

As a child my family didn’t attend church. However, when I was about 11, we started to attend a Presbyterian Church, and they sang these words every Sunday: “As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” Those words never made sense to me. I didn’t want the evil in the world to never end. I believed in God when we started attending that church, but God felt so far away from me there that I became an agnostic. Later as a freshman in college I encountered a group of people who talked and acted like Jesus is really alive and really at work among them. The risen Jesus who I saw living in and through them came into my heart and life and I’ve never again been the way I was in the beginning as a fallen human being without Christ and without hope. I’ve been a new creature in Christ ever since then!

The biggest risk is not taking the risk to surrender to and rely on the living God to lead and direct your life. Boldly risk opening your heart to the living Jesus now.

Before Christianity was tens of thousands of independent religious organizations doing their own thing, it was people connected heart-to-heart to Jesus and to one another. Experience pre-institutional Christianity by talking and walking with Jesus without going through a religious organization.

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