What Happens When You Risk it All to Live by Faith?

I’m big on vision. I believe people are more healthy when they are heading somewhere.

One of the main questions I ask people is, “What do you want to do with your life?” If a person has a solid answer to that, I know they are more likely to be healthy. And if they don’t, I love to sit and dream with them about whatever it is that lights them up.

Often, there’s healing in the simple act of dreaming.

So recently, I began to ask myself that same question. What do I want to do with my life? And my answer was very clear. I wanted to build a home fit for a family, a tree-house office out back, and an upscale barn that could house coaching sessions for teams along with house concerts for artists.

I can see it in my mind. I know what my life will look like and I want to head in that direction.

But here’s the problem.

All of that costs money. Lots of money.

And here’s the other problem: I want to give the services away. What I mean is, I want the proceeds from the house concerts to go to the artists, and I want the coaching to be accessible to anybody, regardless of what they can afford.

So how do you build a life like this and yet give the services away?

My answer was quite predictable. I determined to raise the money first, then give it away when the life was already built.

In fact, I prayed and asked God to make it happen.

I was on a plane leaving South Dakota for Louisiana when I asked God, quite specifically, to provide the resources that would allow me to give away the services of Storyline.

About this time, my Chief of Staff, Tim Schurrer, was working on the new registration site for The Storyline Conference. We were talking about whether or not we should raise our prices. We currently had one of the most affordable Christian conferences around, and in my opinion, the no-frills best.

We focus on the meat: the guests, the real-life change.

Our conference was also very profitable. Every year, the number of attendees was growing. We had enormous momentum. We were well on our way to building the foundation, allowing us to begin giving the materials away.

But as I landed for my lay-over in Dallas, I heard God say something very specific

He said: Give it away now.

“What?” I questioned.

“Give it away now,” God said to me.

I knew instinctively what God meant. He meant: why wait till you have a foundation, until you have security to start giving your life away?

Give it away while you are in need.

So, I called Tim and told him we needed to make our conference available for whatever people could afford.

And so it is.

Storyline is breaking new ground. It’s a huge leap of faith for us, but we are going to obey God.

We are not naive. We know this will cost us a lot. But why in the world would we wait to have a tree house and barn to give something away when we can give it away right now and enjoy the benefit of being generous?

This year our annual Storyline Conference is taking place in Chicago November 5-7 and we’d like to invite you to come for what you can afford. Choose your price. Starting at $50. Pay what you want.

There are rewards for paying full price, but if you want to come, it’s wide open.

And we want you to come.

Can you imagine how great that first day is going to be?

There’s no better story than the one that travels through risk and adventure and trust and faith.

What would your life look like if you started living out of faith today?

What are you waiting for?