Risky Business

You know the saying - “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. What does it mean? What about the saying “I’m in over my head”?

A few weeks ago I was away with the Church Youth Group at Mt Mauganui on a Camp. We had a great time together – climbing the mountain, eating, learning, watching a movie outdoors and because the weather was so good, a lot of swimming…at the pools, in the river and in the sea. I wanted to join in at the beach so I went out into the surf with my glasses on, planning to only go in as far as my waist. However, because it was a lot of fun, I slowly went further and further out until eventually I was swimming and jumping to get over the waves. A lot more fun, but obviously more risky. Someone asked me if I should be out there with my glasses on... a first warning. Shortly after a wave came and just lifted my glasses slightly off my ear. A second warning which I again ignored. That’s good I thought; they aren’t going to fall off easily, so I went a bit further out. The next wave was a very big one. It came in and swamped me, knocking me over…and as I stood up I found I couldn’t see. Yes stupidly my glasses had been lost in the ocean! Despite a great search, they were lost. I spent the rest of the weekend depressed :(

Life is more fun if there is danger and risk involved. We take risks for the reward.

There is good risk and there is bad risk. Even with a good risk sometimes we will bomb out and we’ll suffer the consequences but we can learn from our failures. Next time we’ll achieve something great. For example, Thomas Edison failed a lot of times (some say more than 1000) to make the light bulb. It cost him a lot of time and money but eventually he invented something that changed the world.

But there are some risks we can take that don’t fall in that category. These are bad risks. We know they are wrong and dangerous to our health. God’s warned us, our parents have warned us, authorities have warned us, even our friends have warned us.

We need to distinguish between the 2 types of risk and take only the good risks in life. But the Bible teaches us that we are weak and give in easily to the bad risks which it calls Sin. That’s a bad situation! If we are struggling to avoid bad risks, only Jesus can save us from them. What does that mean? It means that with Him living inside us, He gives us His power to avoid the bad risks. The Power he showed when he died on the Cross for the whole World’s Sin. Only Jesus can do that, we can’t do it on our own.

The simple Gospel is we need to believe in Jesus and trust Him. Ask Him to help us. When we do this, He comes and lives inside us and gives us His Power to avoid bad risks in our lives. We need to know when we are “in over our heads”. My glasses cost me plenty of money to replace. There are some things in life we simply cannot afford to lose.