Playing life safe for fear God won’t live up to His end of the bargain

Pastor Sid didn’t beat around the bush. He just spoke plainly: “How daring are you?”

His words made me squirm. I don’t like taking risks. I avoid going out on a limb.

Sid was talking about The Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 in which a master entrusted his wealth to his servants. “To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability” (verse 15, NIV). And then the master left them.

Sid was referring to stewardship. We hear that word “stewardship” a lot, but what does it mean?

Stewardship is something we manage or take care of that is not our own.

Like the guys in The Parable of the Talents, God has entrusted you and me with “talents,” things like money, time, skills, and experience. In the parable, the talents were of great value. Treasures. Blessings. Gifts.

Sid told us those “talents,” those blessings, those gifts, are not only for our own use and worldly advancement. The gifts He gave each of us are not just for our own enjoyment and material gain.

No, God’s best for us is this: That we manage our “talents” so they impact God’s work locally and around the world. That’s why He has given us all of those “talents.”

Furthermore, Sid said, the God we know in the Bible doesn’t want us to be conservative in our use of our money, time, skills, and experience.

Whoa. Read that again. God doesn't want us to be conservative in our use of money, time, skills, and experience.

Let’s get back to The Parable of the Talents. When the master returned, the five-talent and the two-talent servants had doubled their holdings.

“What did the two of them do,” Sid asked, “to double their five and two talents? They didn’t play it safe.” 

I don’t know about you but that statement, “they didn’t play it safe,” makes my stomach knot. I always want to play it safe.

Let’s look at the man with only one talent. Instead of investing it, buried it—because, he said, he was afraid.

Today we don’t dare to do great things for God, Sid said, “. . . because we fear God won’t live up to His end of the bargain.”

“. . . because we fear God won’t. . . .”

Won’t what?

Won’t give us strength and tenacity

to do hard things?

Won’t stick with us through the difficult times?

Won’t supply us with what we need along the way?

Sid said:  

The degree of safety that we invest in our lives

 indicates a lack of faith.

Gulp. Lack of faith. Being unwilling to trust God to keep the promises He’s given us in the Bible: His promises to enable us to do what He calls us to do with our talents, His promises to stick with us, to meet our needs (not necessarily wants, but needs) along the way.

It felt like Sid was pointing right at me.

He left us with questions and challenges:

Are you playing it safe with what God has given you of time, money, skills, and past experience?

How much do you trust God? Let go. Invest your “talents” in what God’s doing around the world.

Do you have God-sized dreams and investments?

Or are they too risky? Too scary?

It’s tempting, Sid said, to play it safe and take it easy. He compared life to a ship in the harbor—it’s safe there, but that’s not what ships are for. Staying in the harbor is not what its creator planned for it. What has your Creator planned for you?

And here’s Sid’s final challenge:

Do great things for God.

Trust Him. Don’t settle for playing it safe.

What could God do if every person

who has a relationship with Him

dared to be great?

This homebody changed countries seventeen times in fourteen months

All I ever wanted was to live a quiet, secure life in a little white house with a picket fence and a rose garden but, as I told you a few days ago, my husband Dave and our adventuresome God had other plans. Just when our youngest finished college, both Dave and God hollered, “Africa!”

Not only had I wished to live a predictable, serene, uninterrupted, sheltered life—I also wanted a travel-free life. For years I had awakened every morning and realized I’d had yet another bad dream about travel.

Maybe I had been on a train speeding down the tracks, knowing I needed to get off someplace—but where? Or perhaps I was on a city bus and needed to get off and transfer to another route—but where? Or I had arrived at a dock to board an ocean-going vessel headed toward foreign shores when I discovered I’d forgotten to bring my passport. And on and on.

It was worse than not being a fan of travel—I had a lot of angst about travel. And I wanted to stay put!

Yet God seemed to stand there and say, “My best plans for you involve both Africa and travel.” Period.

I wanted to avoid facing my fear of travel. God wanted me to face it, stare it down. Overcome it.

To begin with, He sent me to Africa, and getting there required quite a journey—to the opposite side of the world.

But that was only the beginning. Once I got there, God gave me a job that required travel. A lot of travel.

I started my memoir, Grandma’s Letters from Africa, with an example of what my job required:

September 29, 1994 

Nairobi, Kenya 

Dear Maggie,

I awoke at four this morning, unable to sleep any longer. Ah, I thought, surprised, I’m still not over jet lag. I had arrived back in Nairobi twenty-eight hours earlier and thought I should’ve recovered from jet lag but, to my dismay, I had not.

I lay there in bed mentally drawing lines, tracing my journeys over the past fourteen months: the United States, England, Scotland, Kenya, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, back to Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Canada, the United States, Holland, and back to Kenya. As of today, I have changed countries seventeen times in fourteen months. 

Imagine! This homebody had changed countries seventeen times in fourteen months! Not states, but countries—nations. On three continents.

Do you suppose God was being mean-spirited when He gave me a job that required travel? And not easy travel, either—often international journeys have unique challenges, especially when those countries are in a place like Africa.

I don’t think God was being mean. He knew my fear was something I needed to change. Perhaps He was acting like a good coach, saying, “You can do this. Work hard. Work harder. Persevere.” If I’d been paying close attention, I probably could have sensed him saying, “I’ll help you. Trust Me.”

I love Chuck Swindoll’s words:

“Don’t be afraid. Stand still. 

Watch [God] work. Keep quiet.

It’s then that He does His best work on our behalf. 

He . . . handles our predicament opposite the way we’d do it.” 

(from Great Days with the Great Lives)

Did you get that? Chuck says that sometimes 

God does just the opposite of what we want 

or would tend to do. 

I didn’t want to face my fear, 

but God seemed to say, “You need to get over this.”

And I must let you know this: Even before I arrived in Africa, I stopped having those bad dreams about travel. I still had worries about travel, but not the bad dreams.

I was on my way!