Faith Over Fear and Why You Have Nothing to Lose

There was a very cautious man who never laughed or played. He never risked, he never tried. He never sang, never prayed. And when one day he passed away, his insurance was denied. Because he never lived, they claimed he never died.

Some of you have life insurance and you aren't even living life. You're protecting yourself from things that aren't going to kill you while ignoring the one thing that is: never taking the chance God put on the table.

You have nothing to lose. The only way for a turtle to make progress is to stick its neck out. Some of you have been turtling too long.

You're Already Taking Risks

Let me clear something up first. You can't avoid risk. You're taking risks every day, you just don't think of them that way.

Statistics from people who set insurance premiums say the chance of dying in a commercial plane crash is one in 800,000. You're more likely to choke on your food than die in a plane. You're twice as likely to be killed playing a sport than stabbed by a stranger. The chance of dying from a medical complication is one in 84,000. Driving your car is more dangerous than that.

Most of us are what they call risk illiterate. We avoid the things that statistically won't hurt us and ignore the things that statistically will. We eat poorly but won't get on a plane. We sit on the couch but won't try the new business. We marry the wrong person quickly but won't risk a real conversation with the right one.

Relationship is a risk. Witnessing to someone is a risk. Starting that business is a risk. Pursuing that calling is a risk. Doing your job well is a risk. Sometimes even staying right where you are is a risk. There's no risk-free version of life. There's just whether you're risking with intention or risking by accident.

Michael Jordan said, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I was trusted to take the game-winning shot and I missed it. I've failed over and over again in my life, and that's why I succeed."

Wayne Gretzky said it shorter: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

And Robert Kiyosaki said the most important one for some of us: "The biggest risk a person can take is to do nothing."

Four Lepers and an Empty Camp

2 Kings chapter 7 is where we land today. Israel is under siege. There's a famine in the land. People are starving. Things are so bad that the prophet Elisha announces that by tomorrow, food will be cheap and abundant.

A royal officer standing nearby scoffs. He says, "Even if the Lord opened the windows of heaven, this couldn't happen." And Elisha tells him, "You'll see it with your own eyes, but you won't eat any of it."

Watch your mouth. Sometimes you disqualify yourself from what God is about to do because of what you say about it before it gets there. Proverbs 18:21 says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit."

Notice the verse leads with death before life. We have a much higher tendency to speak negatively than positively. If you don't like how you're living right now, check what you said in your last season. You might be eating the harvest of your own words.

Now back to the story. There are four lepers sitting at the entrance of the city. They're outcasts because of their disease, and they're starving because of the famine. They have a conversation in 2 Kings 7:3-4 that should be required reading for anybody stuck in a hard situation.

"Why should we sit here and die? If we say, 'We will enter the city,' the famine is in the city and we will die there. If we sit here, we will also die. So let us go over to the camp of the Arameans. If they let us live, we live. And if they kill us, we die."

That's it. That's the whole framework. Three options: stay here and die, go to the city and die, or take a chance and maybe live. They picked the chance. Sometimes you have to look at your situation and admit, "What I'm doing right now isn't working. I'm dying anyway. Let me do something different."

They Would Have Never Known

Verse 5 says, "They got up at twilight to go to the Aramean camp, but when they came to the edge of the camp, there was no one there."

God had caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots and horses, and they thought a massive army was coming. They scattered, leaving everything behind. Tents. Horses. Donkeys. Gold. Silver. Clothing. All of it just sitting there.

Here's what hits me. The lepers would have never known the camp was empty if they had never moved. The miracle was already prepared. The provision was already waiting. But it required them to take a step toward what scared them.

You tell yourself every reason it's not going to work out, and you never go see. You stay outside the situation analyzing it instead of walking in to discover it. The breakthrough doesn't come to you on the couch. It comes when you decide to find out what God already set up.

When I started my church, my mother gave me 800 dollars for the deposit on a youth building room. We started preaching with a toilet on the wall. Literally a toilet hanging on the wall in the room we rented. Imagine being a guest there for the first time and trying to focus on the word with a toilet right in your line of sight. One of the men in the church told the others, "Don't look at the toilet. Just listen to him."

Birthing something isn't pretty. Have you ever been in a delivery room? It's not organized. It's not the way you imagined. It's just messy and loud and necessary. You push because it's time. I didn't expect to start a church with a toilet on the wall. But I started anyway, because the assignment outweighed the conditions.

Divine Transfer

Proverbs 13:22 says, "A good person leaves an inheritance for their children's children, and the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous."

God will move money into your hands that you didn't work for. Joshua 24:13 says, "I gave you a land you had not labored for, and cities you had not built, and you live in them. You eat from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant."

There's a thing called divine transfer. You walk by faith, and God starts moving stuff in the back end you couldn't have engineered yourself. As Job said, "He gave me double for my trouble." Some people work their whole lives building up wealth and never enjoy it, and God knows exactly how to put that into the hands of someone who will steward it for His kingdom.

Six Thoughts on Risk

Let me give you six things to chew on as you walk this out.

One, fear is normal. Stop treating it like an emergency. 2 Timothy 1:7 says God did not give us a spirit of fear. So if God didn't give it to me, where did it come from? Fear is just an indicator that your faith tank is low. When fear creeps in, feed your faith. "Perfect love casts out all fear" (1 John 4:18). And 1 John 4:8 tells us God is love. So when you draw closer to God, fear has less room to operate.

Two, Jesus already gave you peace. John 14:27: "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." Jesus didn't give you that peace as a suggestion. He gave it to you to actually use. Stop walking around scared when you've already been handed the antidote.

Three, give it to God. Philippians 4:6-7 says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds."

Notice peace shows up after prayer and thanksgiving. So if you don't have peace, it usually means you haven't actually given the thing to God. You're carrying what you should have cast. He said, "Cast all your cares on me, for I care for you." Carrying creates stress. Casting creates peace. The word disease literally means dis-ease. When you're not at ease, you make yourself sick.

Four, God wants you to try different things. Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 essentially teaches diversification. "Send your grain across the seas, for in time profit will come back to you. But divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks may lie ahead."

That's literally a Bible verse on diversifying your income. I write books, so Audible and Amazon checks come in regularly. I have LED trucks running at events right now. I do speaking engagements. I pastor. I preach. Why? Because God said diversify. If God told me to walk away from one stream tomorrow, I'd be okay because I built more than one. Genesis says there were four rivers in Eden. How many streams are flowing into your house?

Five, God rewards the risk taker. Matthew 25:14-30 is the parable of the talents. The servant who took two talents and made two more got "well done." The servant who took five and made five more got "well done." But the one who took the single talent and buried it because he was afraid? The master called him wicked and lazy. "You knew that I reap where I do not sow. You should have at least put my money in the bank to earn interest." God doesn't reward inactivity. You can't stand before Him at the end and just say, "I was here." He's going to ask, "What did you do with what I gave you?"

Six, you don't need finishing grace until you start. A good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan sitting on the shelf. Some of you are waiting for a perfection that doesn't exist. As you walk it out, you'll learn. As you take steps, you'll get better. Grace doesn't show up in the planning stage. Grace shows up in the moving stage. God can't move with you until you move.

You Have Nothing to Lose

Hebrews 11 lists the people who took risks in faith. Ruth went to the field of a stranger because she had no other option, and she became part of the lineage of Christ. Daniel kept praying with the windows open even when it was illegal, and God shut the mouths of lions for him. Abraham left his country, his family, and everything familiar because God said go.

In your faith walk, God is going to ask you to do some things that look like risks. The higher you want to go, the more risk gets attached to the climb. The mama eagle has to push the babies out of the nest, and yes, they might fall. But they might also fly. And they'll never know which one until they get out.

Maybe you've been telling yourself you're playing it safe. Maybe you've been calling it wisdom or discernment or "waiting on God." But somewhere in your spirit, you know God already spoke. He already said go. You're just stuck because the conditions aren't perfect.

The conditions are never going to be perfect. The four lepers didn't have a plan, didn't have a guarantee, didn't have all the information. They just had the courage to admit that staying still was killing them faster than moving. So they moved. And they walked into a miracle.

Your time is now. Move.