Risk is right
Author: John Piper
Subtitle: Better to Lose Your Life Than to Waste It
0 Preface
In Matthew 13:44 Jesus tells his disciples, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
1 The ultimate meaning of life
It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Phil. 1:20–21)
The universe was created for this—making much of Christ. Paul says as much in Colossians 1:16: “All things were created through him and for him.” For him.
So make much of Christ is our meaning as well, the same as the universe.
2 What is risk?
If our single, all-embracing passion is to make much of Christ in life and death, and if the life that magnifies him most is the life of costly love, then life is risk, and risk is right. To run from it is to waste your life.
This means that God can take no risks. He knows the outcome of all his choices before they happen. This is what it means to be God over against all the gods of the nations (Isa. 41:23; 42:8–9; 44:6–8; 45:21; 46:8–11; 48:3).
There is noting in this world we really have. If you think our life is full of uncertainty (Risk). But God take NO risk! He is the safest place for us.
There is no one in this world, can gurantee us anything for sure. But God do.
3. Stories of risk in the old testament
May the lord do what seems good to him
2 Samuel 10.
If I perish, I perish
Esther. 4:15-16
We will not serve your Gods
Dan. 3:16–18
4. The great risk taker in the new testament
Paul.
为神做功是跟神同工的荣耀。
6. Right and wrong reason to risk
Risk not for Christ is simply wrong.. and expect short term success is wrong reasong as well.
7. The foundation of risk
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than con- querors through him who loved us. For I am sure that nei- ther death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Does God give us what we need? Well yes, but we must be very clear on what we really need. It is love from God.
8. The far end of risk.
The bottom-line comfort and assurance in all our risk taking
for Christ is that nothing will ever separate us from the love
of Christ.
Even we think the worst case of a risk: death.. God has defeat it… So…