Courage and Taking Risks in Life | Motivation
I'm Pauline. I am married, to Sam, and I have three kids. They are 16, 13, and 9. And actually Sam and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary last month. And I did it. And I was, thinking about how about 20 years ago, when we were a couple years into our marriage, we had one of those situations where we had a choice to make.
And if we had chosen differently. Where we are today might look really, really different. In fact, even the introduction that I gave this morning might have looked really different because maybe I would have got up if I got up at all, I would have got up and said, morning, everyone. How are we? I'm Pauline.
I'm married. Well, actually twice married. First one didn't quite work out a bit of a fizzle, but I've been married the last 15 years to Chris Hemsworth. It's my alternate reality. I can say whatever I want. Um, But my story might be really different today. That's how significant this choice was that we had to make.
So Sam and I met when we were 19. We got together, sorry, when we were 19, we got married at 22. At the time, I was a personal assistant to the head of the junior school at one of the local schools. And Sam was a full time rock star in a band. He's laughing in a band called Alabaster Box. So that was a band that started out of this church.
Oh, hang on. But that. Take that away. Take that away. What's that? Oh, you might as well show it now. Put the wedding one up, Audrey. I wasn't going to, but we might as well look at it if we've got a minute. Can you put it back up again? There we go. I thought, I don't have time for this, but now I have to do it.
Here's Ruth. Can you see Ruth there? Paul McGuire, Sam's sister. There's me and Sam. Mr. Nathan Greenway, right there. Anyway, we're done with that one now. Thanks, Audrey. Um, yeah. Yeah, so Sam was in this band, Alabaster Box, and they had started out of the church as a youth group and things just, sorry, as a youth band and things just snowballed, went crazy.
They ended up recording multiple albums over many years and traveling the whole world. And I actually have. Remember these? I found these this week. Multiple albums. Now these guys, you can put that one up there. Have you got that other one, Audrey? Which one was it? Love on the Radio. Oh, mine looks a bit different to that one.
But you'll remember Nara, because she gets up here and sings on Sunday mornings. Brett plays guitar. There's my husband Sam there at the back. He's still got that jacket. That was about 20 years ago. And I have that album here. Huh? So today only, special 100. I actually saw this morning, this was recorded in 2004.
20 year special edition, 100 bucks, cash only. CD player not included.
So this band, uh, you know, I made a joke before about them being rock stars, but they would never, ever, ever have described themselves as that because their mission was to go out and tell as many people as possible about Jesus, not themselves, but to tell people about Jesus, to give out that message of hope, especially to young people.
They played at everything from little youth groups on a Friday night through to festivals of tens of thousands of people. They played at schools and conferences and churches, anywhere that they could get their foot in the door, they would to go out and tell people about Jesus. And they traveled all around Australia, all around New Zealand, all around America for many, many years.
And Sam had been doing that for at least a year or two before we got married. So we were together, but not married. And then at least another year or two after that, which is when our story begins to unfold. So, he would be gone, we realised after we got married, that he would be gone for around eight months of every year.
So we only had about four months of each year together, which was separated into like a week or two in between tours. And this was the early 2000s, so things looked really different. We did not have these magical tools that we have now, where every single one of us could pull out our phone and call anyone in the world right now, talk face to face for free for as long as we want.
This was, um, we couldn't even imagine this back then we had just gotten mobile phones and all they could do was call people. Some of you will remember this era. All you could do is call people. And you could eventually text, but we didn't have unlimited calls and texts every minute you paid for on your phone.
And every text was 25 cents and they limited your characters. So Sam and I did not have a lot of money. Um, I was working at the school, but I was on a very low income. I made about 350 a week. Um, Sam did make money in the band, but it was difficult. not much, and I'll get to that later. So we lived on the stringiest of shoestring budgets.
And when I say that, I mean, we lived in a tiny granny flat. We, I remember we spent about 40 a week on groceries, which sounds impossible now. I know it was 20 years ago, but also I drank like those cup of soup packets for lunch. We ate two minute noodles. We lived on frozen vegetables and rice, like we budgeted.
We wanted to be really responsible with what we had and save so that we could give and use that money for things down the track. So we didn't find it easy to talk to each other. We couldn't just pick up the phone. In fact, to give you an idea, a friend of ours got his first mobile phone. His first month's bill was 700.
So Brett Inara and Sam might know who that person is. Josh. His name was Josh. And, you guys probably don't know him, but anyway, that's a little inside joke there. But I always remember that. It put the fear into us. Don't use your phone. It was so expensive. We did not have a home phone. We didn't have a landline because it cost 25 a month and now we had our phones.
We didn't need them anymore, right? Internet. We had moved on from dial up, but you still had to physically plug your computer into the internet cable, the Cat5 cable. Most of us didn't even have internet at home. We didn't. Um, we just used it at work. Why would we need internet at home? What on earth was there to even look up?
There was no social media. The internet was pretty new at that point. Um, and the other thing is that, um, You couldn't call overseas either. Like right now we can call using the internet for free anywhere. Back then Sam would go away. Sometimes I wouldn't hear from him for weeks. Even when he was in Australia, it would be days sometimes before we talk to each other.
You couldn't actually get access to the internet to even send an email unless they went to an internet cafe. Or they managed to go to a church or someone's home where they could jump on and send a quick email, which I would read the next time I was at work. So us coordinating time zones and calling landline to landline when we didn't have one, and you used to have to go get an international call card.
Yes, some of us are remembering this. And you'd buy like a 30 card and then you'd call landline to landline. It'd be nine cents a minute. And he would have to try to tell me where he was going to be and I'd have to read the email and then try to get to a phone to call him. I remember one time they went to America.
I didn't hear from him for three weeks. No idea. And this was not unusual to hear nothing. And I remember calling Nara's mum going, Have you heard from them? Are they alive? Like, where are they? Like, we would have to just check in and see who had got a message from one of these band people over in the great unknown of the other side of the world and we couldn't talk to.
So, when we would eventually, actually let me show you something quickly. Because it was so hard for us to talk, we're going right back now. My husband, he wasn't my husband when he did this, wrote me a diary. He doesn't know that I've kept this. He wrote this in 2001, so it was the year before we got married, and they had gone over to America to record an album.
And because we couldn't talk, I think the place where they were staying was really remote. I don't think they even had internet. It was almost impossible to chat. So he wrote in this diary for me. He would have been 22, I guess, at the time. Do you want me to read the first page? Is that okay? He's cringing!
He's like, no! No, it's really cute. It's really cute. Alrighty. It says, a present for my Moo. That's me. My nickname's Moo. And it's got a little picture of a present. It says, well, I was thinking about keeping a diary of our trip, but as I was brushing my teeth, it hit me. Why write to the ever present but seldom responsive dear diary when I have a perfectly good best friend sitting at home patiently waiting my return?
As I go off gallivanting around the world, my sweet love sits and can only wonder what I am thinking, doing or dreaming at that exact moment all these miles away. So, Pauline Marie Tipton, that's my old name, this is for you. Read it as slowly and as often as you like, and I will try as best I can to take you with me on my journey.
It may not always be exciting, for my life here will inevitably hold boring, monotonous days, but if this comes out the way it's supposed to, you'll feel right beside me, almost holding my hand. I love you, Sam.
It's like, that's like social media of the 2001s. Like that is it, that is, but then he went on to write, I don't know if you can see this very well, probably not, for 53 days, he wrote in this diary, every day for 53 days. But that also means he was gone for 53 days. That's almost two months. that he wasn't around and we barely talked.
And when we did finally get to talk, I remember one trip they did to America, we finally got on the phone. I mean, this isn't going to be an exact replica of what happened, but I remember we were talking. I said, what have you been doing? And Sam's like, Oh, well, you know, we did some gigs and whatever, but then we went down to Hollywood and we got to do the Walk of Fame.
And I saw that person from the Matrix. It wasn't Keanu, but anyway, and then someone who's a friend of a friend of a friend got us into Disneyland for free and we got fast track passes and all this stuff. I was so cool. What have you been doing? I've been working! I've been here working! But it wasn't even like that, because I was over here, living my best single life for eight months of the year.
I had a house to myself and I had great friends. We hung out all the time. I was very involved in our music team and different things at church. I was living a great life. And then every now and then we would come together in this great big clash of routines. So, we were young. We were very young. We were only like 22, 23, 24 when this is happening.
And eventually we, you know, I guess you could say that we were little baby people in this little baby marriage growing up apart. We had very few shared experiences in those couple of years after getting married. So we. It was never a question that Sam would leave the band. That was not even a thought in our minds.
We knew that that's what he was meant to be doing. That was the mission. That was the goal. Those guys were doing incredible, incredible things. And they will, I hope one day share some stories about what happened in the years that they did AV. But instead we went to the other band members and we said, what are the chances of me being able to quit my job and come and work with the band?
And to their credit. Despite the fact that we had very little money, all the money that came in for the band came from donations, it came from churches giving offerings, it came from CD sales, and all that also covered all the costs of bands, you know, the bus, the equipment, fuel, accommodation, anything like that.
We lived week to week. But they said, yep, we can make that happen. So, we were all, whoo, this is going to be awesome. So we got out our trusty notebook, which is what we used to use back in 2001. In 2002, and we wrote down all of our expenses. It was pretty, you know, it's pretty simple back then. We wrote them all down, wrote down our income.
We were like, this is going to be great, it's going to be amazing. Oh, we must've left out a zero. It's okay. I'll try it again. And we did it again and we did it again and we did it again. No matter what we did every single week, it was a negative number. We did not, we would not make enough money to cover even the basics of our life.
Assuming that we never went out and bought a cup of coffee, we never needed a new pair of undies, nothing, just basic life, it was a negative. And we said, well, that's that, what are we going to do now? Quitting my job, going into this completely unknown, uncertain income, going backwards, having to go into our savings, eventually we'd run out of our savings, then what?
We just go sleep under the band bus? Like what are our options at that point? And even more importantly, what would my parents say? My very non Christian parents. My dad worked in the same job from when he was 17 until he retired 45 years later. What's he going to say about his 24 year old daughter leaving a very respectable job to go and be a band groupie for Jesus?
What is he actually, what are they actually going to say? Did we have the courage to do something like that and hope that God would just provide money out of thin air? Provide money out of nothing? I'm going to tell you the rest of that story later. I'll tell you how it ended later. Alright, but first I kind of want to bring it back to you.
I want to ask you about your experience. Have you ever felt that feeling that something had to change? Have you ever felt that nudge, that little prompt? Maybe you just knew somehow within yourself that there was another course of action or a better course of action that you need to be taking, but there was this risk attached.
It would require some measure of courage to be able to do that thing because it required stepping out of your normal, everyday, what we call our comfort zone. We all know what our comfort zone is and what it feels like. But have you ever felt that you've wanted to be pushed out of that? The feeling of needing to do something, even if it's something as small as just saying something to someone.
You know, when you get that little feeling of, oh, I need to go say sorry, or I need to go say hello to that person. And when we get that feeling, it can feel like lots of different things. It can feel like your heart beating a little faster, maybe your tummy gets some butterflies, maybe your soul just feels a bit uneasy, like a bit, you just can't quite rest comfortably.
Maybe you feel really excited because whatever it is that God is prompting you is like actually really cool. But there's risk in there and that brings the fear. Can I do this? Can I really go and just jump into it? Because it's a little bit like, risks like that are a bit like jumping into a great big hole and having no idea what's at the bottom.
You can't see anything. You're just jumping into an abyss. It's a very complicated set of feelings to be having around risk. So I'm going to give you some examples just because I think the examples are really good for helping us to see ourselves in things. So I've split them into two groups because I reckon this is just me saying this.
I think there's two different types of risk, things that make us feel, um, like it requires something a little extra to do this thing out of our comfort zone. I think the first one is anything that interrupts our sense of security. So, have you ever heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Well, some of you have, great.
Well, he was around in 1943, so I'm not surprised if you don't know. Have we got that slide of the pyramid? OK, so Maslow came up with this Hierarchy of Needs that basically says this is what people need in order, in order to feel comfortable and fulfilled. The very bottom one here is physiological. This is foundational.
Nothing else will work in your life unless these things are in place. And they are the basic needs for physical survival, including food, water, a livable environment, clothing, and shelter. So if we've got food to eat, clothes to wear and somewhere safe to sleep, we're okay. So when something comes along that threatens to turn that unbalanced, that's when we go, Ooh, hang on.
I don't feel okay about that. That's why I think, well, okay, let me say this to you. How do we get food? We need money to buy food today, don't we? Very few of us probably have our own vegetable gardens growing and we never go to Woolies. We need food. How do you get clothes? Right. How do you pay your rent and your mortgage?
Money. Money has become what appears to be to us essential for our every day. No wonder, whenever something comes along that makes us think that that is going to suddenly be out of our control, no wonder we go, I, that's, I can't do that. That's too risky. That's upsetting my sense of security. Because what if tomorrow I don't have food?
What if tomorrow I don't have somewhere to sleep? That's why I think that anything to do with money, because it feels so essential. It's our safety net. Jesus knew it. He said lots of things about money. One of the things he said that was pretty simple was you can't have two masters. You can't love God and money.
You're going to be hot towards one and cold towards the other. And I'll add to that, he might've said, just choose, you got to choose which one you're going to love most. So I'll give you some examples. Okay. These are examples that can You know, put that sense of security into question, feeling called into a charity.
So working with certain people or in a certain area where you're committing time or money, feeling a prompt that it's time for change, maybe becoming a parent, retiring, stepping down at work to pursue something else, leaving, I think it's a big one, leaving a toxic or unhealthy environment, like a job or a relationship that's going to massively throw that sense of security out.
Everything that you know will be gone. Facing the challenge of breaking free from addictive or harmful habits. Leaving your job to follow what God is calling you to do, or what's best for your family or situation. Committing to a missions trip. Adopting or fostering children. Speaking up for justice or truth.
When your beliefs and convictions might be unpopular, and it might cost you your friend's job or your parents in my situation. So all those examples shake the safety and the comfort of our lives. They require courage to be able to do because you're, you're jumping into something that you don't know. How are you going to get your food tomorrow?
Whatever. Is this going to change now? I'm not going to have enough money. So that's the first one. Anything that imbalances that sense of security. The second one I think is that anything that makes us vulnerable. Anytime we're in a situation where we could be emotionally hurt, where we could be rejected, where we could be embarrassed, that I think comes with a sense of, I don't want to do this.
I want to stay in my nice little comfort zone. I call it turtling. I just don't, I'm just gonna put my head in. I don't want to even think about it anymore. So let's have a look at some examples of vulnerability. These kinds of risks. Being the first one to say sorry, or I love you. Both require courage.
Feeling like you have to have a difficult conversation with someone about their actions or their struggles. Mentoring or discipling someone. Making a public declaration of your faith, like a water baptism. Standing firm in what you believe, even when people around you are making fun of you for it or even worse.
What about volunteering in a new way? Maybe starting your own village, which is what we call our small groups that meet in homes. Maybe running a program for the church or for the community. Maybe sharing on stage. Getting up and saying something that you want to share. Opening your home and inviting people regularly to come to your house, have dinner, have coffee, saying hello to someone new at church, telling someone about Jesus or inviting them to church and then following through and actually bringing them to church, which is also scary because we all know that we sit there going, Oh, please don't be weird this morning.
Please don't be weird this morning. Be normal. Please be normal. Uh, so yes, I'm feeling like, yep, yep, yep. And if you're new, I'm so sorry. Hello and welcome. Um, It might be a weird one. Yeah, yeah. If you've ever been through one of those, like I wanted to go, I'm sure there's more examples, but I wanted to give some examples so that maybe you could go, Oh yeah, actually I do know the feeling around that one.
So if you've been through one of those, how did it turn out? Did it go okay? At the end were you like, man, I'm so glad I did that. I'm so glad I followed through. Look at what happened because of that. And, On the other side of that, have you had situations where you know that you didn't quite follow through, you didn't go and do the thing that you felt that you should do, and you look back and you go, Ugh, I wish I'd done that.
What would have been different now if I had done that a year ago? Maybe I would have saved myself a lot of angst and stress.
So, taking that leap of faith into that big abyss of I don't know where you're going to land, takes courage. We've said that a few times. So where does this courage and faith come from? So, I'm going to ask Tom to hop up here with me. He does not know what we're going to do, but I asked him this morning if he would be willing to be my, uh, guinea pig.
All right. So, Tom. Yes. So, you have to have the microphone on. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Some of you know Tom, he often leads worship here, um, at church, married to Tiani. Um, very lucky man, two kids. I am a lucky man. I am a lucky man. I'm a very lucky man. All right. So Tom, I've got a box here. Do you know what's in this box?
I have no idea. No. Okay, great. What I'm going to do is in a minute, I'm going to ask you to reach your hand in without looking at what's in here. Okay. And touch what is in this box. Okay. Are you willing at my request to put your hand in here? Now remember, knowing you don't know what's in here. It could be a puppy.
It could be razor blades. Yep. Okay. Yep. I have two cats. I emptied their litter box this morning. Yeah, you don't know. Okay, could be anything. I'm game. Yep, sure. There's no guarantee. No problem. All right. Yep. Are you willing at my request to do that? I am. Why are you so keen to do that knowing that you don't know what's in here?
Because I trust you. Because I know you. Because you know, I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me. I hope you wouldn't do anything Maybe this is payback I'm hoping you don't want to hurt me and I trust you. He knows me and so he trusts me Thank you, Tom without looking please reach into the box
Okay, yeah, yep, you can take it out yeah and look at it properly read what's on it Skinny mocha. My favourite drink. Skinny mocha from the junction. On me? Come on. Why is that significant? Because this is my love language. This is what gets me up in the morning. Yep. And Jesus of course. Skinny mocha. Skinny mocha.
I know you Tom. Thank you. Thank you very much Tom. I will shout you one of those another day. I know you already had one this morning. Okay. What did Tom say? He said, I trust you because I know you. He knows who I am. He said, I hope he put the hope in there at the end. I hope you wouldn't do anything to hurt me.
So trust creates courage. It creates the courage to go and do something scary. There's a really good example of this. When Jesus was, um, he was basically, I think he was probably about 30. When he did this, he was just about to launch his campaign is not right. He was just about to like, start going out and telling people that he was the son of God to this point.
He'd been a little quiet about it and he would spend the next three years going around healing people, doing all the miraculous things he did. So he's at the very beginning of this, he's walking along the sea of Galilee, um, in Israel, and he sees two fishermen. And they're, it's their job. They're out there.
They're throwing nets into the water. And he says, follow me and I will make you fishes of people. And then immediately after that, the author, Matthew, who's writing about this, he was one of Jesus disciples. He writes this immediately after.
Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Now I had always thought I just assumed, I guess, that the reason that they did that is because Jesus carried such a presence with him, that it was no question that they would go and follow him. Maybe, I don't know, he just had this air of authority. Maybe he glowed a little bit.
Maybe there was some, like, glitter dust coming from his robe as he went by. Maybe when he said, follow me, it wasn't like, follow me. Maybe he said, follow me and I will make you fishes of people. And they were absolutely compelled. There was no question. They dropped it and they followed. Yes, Jesus, we will follow you.
That's what I just, I guess I always assumed. May I put forward another suggestion? A couple of weeks ago I was reading in John, which is another account written by one of Jesus disciples, and I had not put two and two together until I read this, and I'm so sorry if everyone knows this and I just missed it, but I'll tell you anyway.
So in this book that John is writing, in this, in this account, he's talking about a guy named John the Baptist. who was baptizing people in water and he was telling them, this all happened before Jesus said, follow me to the fishermen. So before that John the Baptist is there, he's saying, I'm baptizing you, but the son of God is coming and he is who we're waiting for.
Now, John the Baptist was a teacher and he had his own disciples. He had students. And one of them was Andrew, who was the fishermen that Jesus would meet later. So Andrew is learning from John the Baptist. Then Jesus walks by one day and John the Baptist says, there he is, that's the Lamb of God. Andrew runs back, grabs his brother Simon, who was the other fisherman.
They go back, they follow Jesus back to where he's staying and they spend the whole afternoon with him. They're there, they're learning from him, they're, he's teaching them stuff, they're probably eating together. And during that time, Jesus said to, to Simon, from now on, your name is going to be Peter, or it was actually like Cephas or something like that in Greek, but it became Peter in English.
And so from then on, Simon is actually called either Simon Peter or just Peter. So when Jesus walked by those two fishermen later at the Sea of Galilee, they already knew each other. So when he said, follow me and I will make you fishes of people. I will show you, I'll teach you how to go out and bring people to me so that they can go to heaven and have eternity with me.
They already knew him and they already trusted him. Maybe. I don't know, maybe, that makes sense to me. They knew who Jesus was and so they trusted him and that trust turned into courage to leave their net. Their net full of fish, this was their trade, a net full of fish that they dropped, fish that would become food that they would eat, fish that they would barter for clothes and other things that they needed, the fish that helped to keep them in a home and a roof over their head.
They dropped it and immediately they went and followed him. Because they knew him, they trusted him and that trust turned into courage. So 20 years ago, when Sam and I had to make that decision, we said, well, we know for a fact that God would have us choose our marriage over money. So I handed him my resignation and I started just doing like merchandise and websites and money stuff for the band.
And I got to travel around and God always looked after us. And again, I think that Brett and Nara and Sam and we could all get up and share so many stories about this. But for us personally, we never really had to worry about money, but we always had to have faith that God would bring it in. And stuff happened like, uh, when I worked at the school, I was doing the yearbook and they said to me, Oh, can you just keep doing it and send us invoices?
Yep, sure can. Then another school found out that I was doing yearbooks and they said, can you do our yearbook and just send us invoices? Yep. So I became this part time traveling yearbook creator sending in invoices and Sam got random work. And I remember one time. I messed up our online banking. You had to do it by phone and whatever.
I accidentally locked us out of our account. We had no money in our actual account for the weekend. It was a long weekend. I was like, Oh, we've got no cash. Like someone, an old colleague from my school rang me that night and said, God told me to give you 50 bucks. more than enough to cover our food for a whole week.
And, uh, just things like that happen over and over and over again. God never deposited money in our account, but he got other people to listen and be faithful to what he was asking. And so we did live and learn to trust God for every next, whatever, Devon sandwich that we got to eat on the road or whatever it was.
We trusted him for that. And that built my faith in God even more. But what I think was even more special to me was that over the next few years that we traveled around, how much I grew spiritually in that time. I was a very young Christian still, I would say. And I remember I would, I got to the point where I would stand at the back while they were playing to a bunch of young people, and I would just pray for these young people.
I would pray that God would deposit something in their heart that they would use that night or later that it would come out and God would say, remember this. Those people believed in you. Those people talked about Jesus. And I would stand in the back of churches while they, you know, led the worship on a Sunday.
And you could just feel the Holy Spirit in the room. And I would pray and I'd say, God, if you want me to go say something to someone, I will. I don't want to, but I will. And I just pushed myself over and over again. And I know I didn't get it right all the time. I know I missed the mark sometimes, but the growth that I had spiritually in those years was the foundation for who I am today.
I don't think I would have had those opportunities if I'd stayed at home and just kept on working and living our separate lives. And who knows where we'd end up and if our marriage would have made it. All the money in the world can't buy the experience and the love and the laughter and the tears and the friendships that we made over those years and the impact that that band might have had on people that we don't even know about.
So. And I eventually, do we have that next photo, Audrey? We did get to Disney. There's Nathan. I think Nathan's in there. So it must have been Disney World, Florida. I don't know. We went to all of them. So yeah, anyway, there we go. All right. You can take that one down. Thanks, Audrey. So just want to finish up with this.
How do we, I've talked a lot about, Oh, you've got to have courage. You've got to trust. You've got to blow up. So how do we actually. Get to the point where we feel that we can do that rather than just going, I don't know, blind faith leap off. Well, here's how I'm going to give you two simple steps for creating the faith that you need that turns into courage.
The first one is that you need to read. So. You have to know who you're trusting. You have to go back and you have to read all the things that Jesus did and all the things that he said, all the promises he made. He talks so much about God's faithfulness. He was incredibly faithful. He healed people all over the place.
And then you can even go back further than that. And you can talk about. Sorry, you can read about everything that God did before that, and you can read about how faithful He was to all of the people in the Old Testament story, which is before Jesus came. And if you want the TLDR, the Too Long Didn't Read, you can read Hebrews 11, which basically goes through a lot of the people in the Old Testament and lists out how faithful they were and how faithful God was to them.
And Hebrews 1, 11, sorry, Hebrews 11, the very first line says, Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, And assurance about what we do not see. Confidence in what we hope for, assurance in what we don't see. When Peter and Andrew left and they went traveling with Jesus for the next few years, they watched Jesus perform incredible miracles, changed people's lives.
They were at the feet of the son of God the whole time. They saw him crucified. They saw him resurrected. Peter became one of Jesus best friends. He got to walk on water. That was their reward for their faithfulness and their trust and their courage. And like I was saying before, my reward and our reward has been a much richer life for saying yes to what we said yes to.
So when we read about what Jesus did, and we read about how God has been so faithful, and he's the same God, he's always been the same God, he's faithful today, the same way that he was faithful before, the more that we understand that, the smaller the vulnerability gets, the smaller the sense of insecurity gets.
It gets crowded out by the understanding and the trust in Jesus. and his father, God. So first we read, the second thing we do is then we just try it. You just start giving it a little bit of a go because now you feel more confident because you know you've read how God looks after us. And what you're going to do ultimately is you're going to build a life of testimony.
You're going to build a life of stories. about what God has done for you, how he was there when you jumped into that great big nothing with no idea what the outcome was going to be, what the other person would say, whether there would be enough money, whether there would be another job waiting for you, whether that charity was going to work or whatever the next opportunity is that you're thinking about that God is saying, Hey, maybe this is for you.
So you can start to say yes to the thing. You start to see the fruit of it. That gives you more courage to try again later. And you build this life of testimony, this life of stories. So you need to know who you're trusting. Build a life of testimony. That's how you build the trust and the faith to have the courage to take risks.
So I guess in wrapping up, my question would be, what's your next story going to be? I'm going to ask the team to come back up while we go through this. What's the thing that you feel that God might be saying, Hey, I'd like you to do this. Remember that it can be as something as small as, Saying something to someone, or it can be something as big as changing a huge thing in your life that's not working, or a direction that you're going in.
What's nickeling away at you? What's sitting a little heavy? What do you know, just from knowing God, is happening that you need to just move out of that? Take the risk and try to do it a different way. Maybe God's been really clear about something, and you're sitting here going, yeah, but, I don't think I've got the money to finance that, or I don't think I could take the time to do that, or what about that person?
And you've got a list of a million excuses. I'm saying this because I know this feeling as well. Why are you just sitting on it? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for God to open the door? Sometimes we have to also go out and look for the opportunities. So this year, as Pastor Kev said, the word has been risk.
I've been thinking about it a lot this year and it's October and I'm kind of annoyed that there are some things that I know I should be doing and I haven't quite actioned them yet and I'm like, why are you sitting here inactively just thinking about it? So this has been a little bit of a kick up the bum for me as well.
What am I waiting for? And I would ask the same thing. What are you waiting for? If something is something that you feel called to do, what are you actually waiting for? Like really do think about that. What am I waiting for? Do you just need to pray about it a little more? Do you need some more clarity?
But what are you waiting for? Can you imagine what might happen if you take that chance and just trust God for the outcome and then he comes through? What could life look like for you in a year if you went and did that thing, if you repaired that relationship or you took that little chance or you took the great big leap for something that God's nudging you towards?
Whose life would you change? Who might be missing out on eternity? Because you're worried about money, or you're worried about what someone might think about you, because it's pushing against your sense of security, or it might, might mean that you feel a bit vulnerable in that situation. And then I would say, what's the worst that could happen?
In the end, what is the worst that could happen? So, the team are going to play a song that is probably one of the best songs in the world. songs about taking a leap of faith that's ever been written. So we're going to sing this together. And I just would, I guess, encourage you that just take a couple of minutes.
You can sit and you can listen, or you can stand and you can sing. But if there is something, just take a moment to identify it, really say it to yourself and then ask, what am I waiting for? And God, what are you going to do? And then start working on that trust and that courage. So thank you. I'm going to pray and then, um, yeah, we'll sing the song together.
Thank you, God, that you are all the security that we need. You have provided everything that we have today. And we just have to remember to take our eyes off the stuff and look at you and your faithfulness. And we have done over literally hundreds of generations for your people. We thank you for Jesus and that he came and he showed us just how much he loves and cares about us and that in all things you want good for us and that you require our faith to be able to use us.
So I pray that over these next few minutes that you would highlight things to people and just give them that moment of, hey, I could do this. I could do this for you, God. Give them that moment of courage to really think about it. Thank you, God. Amen.