The 3 Essentials: All You Need for Success in Life by Casey Treat Read Free Book Online

life becomes gloomy and doomy. But if you will agree with God’s Word, stretch your faith to receive the blessings found in His Word. Then you will experience the abundant life Jesus died for you to receive!

4

    Faith Takes Risks

    W hen you hear the word risk, how do you respond? Does your face get flushed with excitement for a new adventure, or does your hand reach down to grab a brown paper bag in case you start to hyperventilate? If your life was to be made into a movie, would it be classified as an action/thriller or a slow-paced slice-of-life film? So many of us were brought up to play it safe, to be careful, and to never rock the boat, but could you imagine what our Christianity would look like today if Jesus had lived His life like this?
    My wife, Wendy, is a real risk taker. I’ve been blessed to have her as a partner in life and ministry because much of what God has called us to do has required both of us to step out with extreme faith. She’s always been right by my side ready to take leaps off of huge cliffs with total faith in God. So I was surprised by what happened when I saw her reading the last pages of a novel she had recently purchased, and I asked, “Have you finished that book already?”
    She smiled at me and said, “No, I’m reading the last few pages to see how it turns out so I can decide if I want to read it or not. If it has a good ending, then I know I’ll like it, but if it’s got a bad ending, I’m not even going to waste my time.”
    I just laughed and said, “You go for it, baby.”
    I can understand a person not wanting to give the space and time to a book they might not like. No big deal. But throughout over thirty years of teaching and ministering to people, I have come across countless individuals who live every aspect of their lives the way Wendy approached this novel. They want to have a guarantee of a happy, successful ending before they try anything new or go out of their comfort zone. The only problem is that a person cannot live a powerful Christian life if they have to see everything with their eyes before they choose to trust God. Everything about God and every aspect of our Christianity can only be experienced by faith.
    In the New King James Version of the Bible, Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.” But I especially love the Amplified Version (AMP) of this verse: “Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses.]” Faith believes in something we can not see. Faith is trusting even when we don’t understand or when we are not sure what the end result will be. Faith sees factual things which have not yet been revealed to our senses. Any kind of faith is risk, and if we choose to never take any risks, then we will probably never live by faith.
    Faith is trusting even when we don’t understand or when we are not sure what the end result will be.

    Now before you opt out, thinking, Taking a risk scares me—I’m just not that kind of a person, recognize that’s not really true because you take risks every day. You wake up, get ready for work, and when you drive away in your car, you are taking a risk on the highway. You don’t know for certain you won’t get into a car accident before you make it to work or that the guy driving next to you hasn’t been out partying all night. But you take the risk and go to work anyway. When it is lunchtime, you drive up to a window, throw money at a person who throws back a sack of food, and you eat it! Now that’s a risk—you don’t know where that meat came from or what was happening back at the grill while it was cooking. But you eat it anyway.
    This morning, I took a vitamin, and I thought, I don’t have a clue what’s in this thing. So I read the box and still had no clue