Last weekend my team and I packed our bags and headed to an air-conditioned hostel for our mid-point debrief. It was an awesome time of retreat and reflection for 8 emotionally drained women. On Monday we had the chance to visit Phi Phi Island for the day. This place would absolutely take your breath away—crystal clear teal water, white sand beaches, and steep veggie-covered cliffs.
I’ve been thinking about cliffs this week— And jumping off them. I’m reading a book called, The Cost of Discipleship by “one of the dead guys,” as one of my college professors use to say. In the book, the author talks a lot about what faith is, what it isn’t, and how it grows.
“Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.”
You see the author is really talking about cliffs here.
We get so comfortable living our American dream. We have a routine. We get up, go to work, come home, eat a big dinner, and plop in front of the TV for the night.
Is that all there is?
In the Bible I see normal people doing not-so-normal things. You don’t have to be someone super talented or super spiritual to come to God. He uses the ordinary to do the extraordinary.
Jesus calls people to follow him. Literally…do as Jesus did.
“Faith can no longer mean sitting still and waiting—they must rise and follow him”
[I still haven’t wrapped my mind around the fact that I get to hang out with prostitutes on a regular basis—something Jesus actually did]
So the question is: Are you a cliff diver? If not, what is keeping you from jumping?
God calls us to radical faith and obedience. It’s a risk. But do you want to get to the end of your life and realize that you never believed God for the impossible?
Obedience tends to have a negative connotation in our Western culture. We love our independence and hate being told what to do. But what Jesus teaches us is that:
Obedience to Him=living fully alive.
And we all want to get the most out of life.
“Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether or not we should (jump off the cliff). We must get into action and obey. But perhaps this shocks you. Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do. To that there is only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing it. You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.”
Maybe you don’t even believe in God. Maybe someone you know has been telling you about Him or asking you to come to church but you keep shrugging it off because you can’t intellectually get over this hurdle in your mind—be it your past experience with the church, questions of suffering, or science seemingly contradicting God’s existence.
But…
“If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe, take the first step all the same.”
“Do not say that you have not got faith. You will not have it so long as you persist in refusing to take the first step.”
To another audience, “Neither must you say that you have faith, and therefore there is no need for you to take the first step.”
We cannot ever claim that we have arrived. Even an 80-year-old man can be a pioneer. There is no retirement in God’s kingdom…only a life lived fully until the end.
So let’s dive off a cliff. And plunge into the most beautiful ocean this side of heaven.
