What was the riskiest stunt you ever pulled off as a kid?
Was it pedaling down the street in your banana seat bicycle as fast as you can and careful hold the handle bars still as you drove up on the ramp and sailed into the air for a brief moment into what seemed like infinity?
Or was is risking riding with your friends in the dead of night as you slowly drove down the street to your principals house to decorate his front lawn with Charmin toilet paper?
Or maybe risking crossing over into old man Carriers land to help yourself as you plucked one of his prize watermelons from his garden. Only to hear a distant shout from his front porch as you scampered across his watermelon patch desperately clutching that watermelon as if it were a football. All the while trying not to snag your jeans on the rusty old barb wire fence.
Remember the exhilaration and adrenaline rush you got from taking those risks
Life is made up of opportunities in which we make decisions that count.
And it even counts more when we do it for our Master.
Those opportunities require RISK when we would rather play it safe.
RISK involves questions such as what will I do with my life?
RISK involves questions such as what am I going to do with myself-now?
IS TAKING A RISK a sucker’s game--to give myself for others--when everyone else is looking out for themselves?
Should I get involved with my neighbor’s problems--which seem endless and beyond any solutions?
RISK INVOLVES answering the question--should I try to help them? ---or should I just read my Bible, study, and pray?
Maybe you need to leave your COMFORT ZONE
One of the most inspiring sights in nature is the eagle in flight.
With an endless expanse of blue SKY behind it the eagle spreads its mighty wings and soars majestically across the sky.
Free, powerful, complete. Because of this the eagle becomes a symbol for how we’d like to be.
We all want to soar like an eagle in life. But I wonder if you know how it is an eagle learns to soar?
I am told that there is a particular species of eagle which builds its nest high up on the face of a cliff overlooking the sea.
In this nest the chick is hatched and spends its first days watching its mother come and go, collecting food and bringing it back.
One day mom decides it’s time her chicks learned to fly. You know how she does it?
She forces her way into the nest and then pushes her chicks out.
The chick starts plummeting down the cliff-face, terrified, shocked, heartbeat racing, aware that death is just seconds away.
And then something amazing happens.
The chick instinctively stretches the wings which it never knew it had, and the terrifying fall now become a gentle rise.
And soon the chick is soaring like its mother in the great blue sky.
It’s in that split second of terrifying danger that the chick comes face to face with itself, and face to face with wider reality.
In those terrifying moments the chick discovered what it is.
And without that terrifying moment it will never learn to soar.
When it comes to God investing His power in you here on earth, have you learned to fly as the young eagle?
Have you RISKED spreading your wings?
What made the difference between the servant getting 5 talents instead of 2 or 1?
It’s called TAKING A RISK – Risky Business
He looks our abilities and sees NOT JUST WHO WE ARE, but who we can become and what we can accomplish for His glory.
If you have a pretty bad outlook of yourself, then you’re essentially telling God that He didn’t do such a good job.
That’s like telling your boss that He really didn’t do a good job in hiring you because you know what you’re really like!
DISTRIBUTION OF THE TALENTS – HOW DO I GET MINE?
The servants in this parable were each given talents according to their abilities and faithfulness.
Each servant had potential. Potential is what we will call undeveloped skill.
Potential is that God-given skill or ability that has been walking the sidelines in you life-----that looks for the opportunity to be unlocked and developed.
Go to any High School Yearbook or Annual and look at the Senior class and you will find those that have been given a special status by their peers---
You have the most wittiest, most popular, best dressed, most talented, most spirited, most intelligent, friendliest, best looking, best all around, most athletic, most dependable and last but not least, most likely to succeed.
Maybe you’ve never been one of those---and chances are, some or many never accomplished WHAT THEY WERE LABELED in the yearbook.
God has given all of us talents that we have the potential to develop—but they never will if you don’t USE them.
Don’t spend your entire life by just receiving salvation and not using the inheritance God has given to you in simply just waiting for Him to return to take you back home.
-------ILLUSTRATION: The Miser and His Gold
Once upon a time there was a Miser who used to hide his gold at the foot of a tree in his garden.
but every week he used to go and dig it up and gloat over his gains.
A robber, who had noticed this, went and dug up the gold and ran away with it.
When the Miser next came to gloat over his treasures, he found nothing but the empty hole.
He tore his hair, and raised such an outcry that all the neighbours came around him, and he told them how he used to come and visit his gold.
"Did you ever take any of it out?" asked one of them.
"Nope," he said, "I only came to look at it."
"Then come again and look at the hole," said a neighbour; "it will do you just as much good."
Wealth unused might as well not exist.
What will be said of you?
------------
"A pastor tells of standing by his father’s tombstone and reading the words, "Born 1884 - Died 1970."
It suddenly occurred to him how much the little dash between those two dates symbolized".
It is what we do with the talents that God has entrusted to us that determines how much or how little is represented between the dashes.
If there is no RISK involved, then you will never know what you could have been.
That is the part of the responsibility that is up to each one of us.
We are responsible for what we do with the dashes between the dates of our births and deaths that will appear on our tombstones.
And ultimately when we stand before God to account for all the potential we had on earth and never RISKED using it for His glory.
EXCUSE: BUT I’M NOT GIFTED LIKE THE SERVANT WITH FIVE TALENTS
"The history books are full of stories of gifted persons whose talents were overlooked by a procession of people until someone believed in them.
"Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read".
Einstein became one of the greatest physicists who ever lived.
Play write Neil Simon said, “If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”
"A newspaper fired Walt Disney because he had "no good ideas"
"It is reported that Walt Disney was not only a remarkable man but also a remarkably happy man.
Somewhere recently there was a story about his early years.---When he started out in Kansas City,----he couldn’t sell his cartoons.
Some hinted that he had no talent----But Disney had a dream, so he set out to conquer his foes.
He found a minister who paid him a small amount to draw advertising pictures for his church.
Disney had no place to stay, so that the church let him sleep in the mouse-infested garage.
One of those mice which Disney nicknamed Mickey, became famous---as the world knows today as “Mickey Mouse”.
How satisfying life must have been for Disney when he remembered the hard struggle he spent in a church garage.
How satisfying life will be when you realize that you have more talents than what you think you do.
How satisfying is when you realize that all you have to do, is be available and show God that you have the faith to follow.
How satisfying is it when you begin to do as the old hymn boldly proclaims, “Wherever He leads, I’ll go.”
WHAT ABOUT ME? HOW MANY TALENTS WILL GOD GIVE ME?
How do I get to have the Five Talents of faithfulness in God’s ministry as the servant did in Jesus’ parable?
It all starts with Risky Business…
1. Look above you.
What does God want? Seek God’s guidance.
2. Look within you.
How has God gifted you? If you want to know, please write your name on and give it your pastor. He’ll make an appointment with you, and he’ll help you discover and discuss your gifts.
3. Look around you.
What needs are there? Help with teaching the bible to children? Working with teens in helping them navigate through life? Visiting a Nursing Home to give an elderly senior some attention which they thrive for?
4. Look beside you.
What resources do you have? Money (use it), time (use it), energy (use it), skills (use it), love (risk it), influence, friends?
5. Look behind you.
What experiences do you have to share that would help others? Do you have a hurt that makes you able to relate? Has God changed your life? God can use your past to perhaps answer someone’s prayer.
And finally…
6. Look ahead of you.
What vision fires you up enough to were you’re willing to take a risk? Is it helping the homeless?
Is it a desire to see the children in this church learn about a loving God?
Is it a risk to open your home to begin an adult bible study?
There’s a spot for you! What would you love to do more than anything else?
And when He calls upon you to use them---it’s a risk, but if you want to be like the servant who the master trusts enough to invest 5 talents in—you’ve got to be willing to take risks.
And by taking that risk, you will reflect the glory of God.
Because what you decide---reflects who you really are and ultimately—what you will receive in return
What I know is this...that God took a risk on you. "That while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." -Romans 6:23
Will you now take what He as given you---and risk it in someone or something else -- so that it can be doubled?
