Live Dangerously

By Pastor Rey Diaz

When I was a kid, you couldn’t find a wilder little boy.  I was always jumping, kicking, stomping, racing, running and causing trouble.  I wanted to jump over everything, balance on anything, and hang from anything. My mom would always tell me to “be careful.”  Now that the script has been flipped.  My boy is a riot, rascal and causing a ruckus.  And I’m the one saying, “be careful.” 

Yet I also know children learn from mistakes, so I want him to grow, develop, and get strong.  I don’t want to slow down his development but I want to make sure he’s safe.  I don’t think its one or the other.  It needs to be both.  This isn’t a tension to be resolved, it’s a tension I need to manage. 

It is the same way when it comes to our relationship with God.  He is our heavenly Father.  And He wants to bless us.  Every good and perfect gift comes from Him.  Yet, he is also our king.  And He has asked us to pray “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.”  It’s not one or the other it’s both.  God blesses us as we follow him.  He provides safety and protection and provision.  He provides us comfort.  He also asks us to “go”, to “give”, and to “serve.”  We have both a Father and King.

One of our tendencies, especially for people who have been following Jesus for a long time, is to start moving towards comfort and away from God’s kingdom.  Eventually we reach a place where our actions say “My comforts are more important than God’s kingdom.”  That is what happened to Queen Esther.  God put her in a position to live dangerously yet she chose her comforts.  Eventually, she changed her mind and decided to put God’s kingdom before her comforts.  Because of her decisions the lives of hundreds of thousands of people were saved. 

I think you will experience the same type of blessing when you make that decisions – God’s kingdom is more important than my comforts. 

Where are you?  Have you gone one way or the other?  Have you ignored God’s call for his kingdom because of holding on too tightly to the comforts God has given you?

Esther 4:13-14

¹³ Mordecai sent this reply to Esther: “Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. ¹⁴ If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”