Understandably amazed and enthralled by this miracle, the people want to make him king. It is late in the day and Jesus has just performed the great miracle of feeding 5000 men with five loaves and two fish (vv. Jesus is on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The background of the story is very simple. No doubt you’ve heard this story before, and our children know it by heart, but somehow we never grow tired of it. Of all the stories in the New Testament that teach this truth, I know of none more beloved than the story of Peter walking on water in Matthew 14:22-33. If you have to have all the answers before you make a decision, if you’re afraid to take a step unless you know things will work out to your advantage, faith will always be a mystery to you. If you are unwilling to take a chance, you can never discover what living by faith is all about. That is only right and proper because the life of faith is inherently a life of risk. These are the models we want them to follow. These are the people we hold up before our children. We talk about those brave souls who laid it all on the line for God. We tell them about the great heroes of the faith–Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and Daniel and all the rest. When our little children come to Sunday School, what stories do we tell them? The very stories I have just mentioned to you. And when no one else stepped forward, they themselves volunteered. They thought that more could be done if only someone would lead the way. When you read the Bible, again and again you discover that the men and women who accomplished great things for God weren’t content to accept the status quo. Nehemiah led the Jews to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Joshua marched around the walls of Jericho.Įsther risked everything to save her people.ĭaniel refused to defile himself with the king’s food. Moses led the people of God out of Egypt. “Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all.”Ībraham left Ur of the Chaldees to go to the Promised Land. Almost without exception, they were risk-takers who weren’t afraid to lay it all on the line for God. Go back to the Bible and take a look at the men and women who did great things for God. When you bring this observation over into the spiritual realm it looks something like this: The life of faith is inherently a life of risk. So I ask you to consider her words a second time: “Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all.” Millions of people have drawn inspiration from her example. Her story is one of the great miracles of the twentieth century. Born blind, deaf and unable to speak, she somehow found a way out of the darkness and into the world around her. It was Helen Keller who said, “Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all.” Those words would ring true no matter who said them, but coming from someone who lived a life like Helen Keller, they merit special consideration.
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