Living Large

At a recent ladies’ day we had at our church, we did an ice breaker to get to know one another a bit better. Each lady received a packet with 15 little beans. Each one of us then had to share with the ladies around our table something outrageous, unusual, or out of the ordinary, that we had done.

Every lady around the table, who hadn’t had the experience you’d had, then had to give you one of their beans. The object was for you to end up with the most beans in your packet, after completion of a few rounds of this exercise. The experiences shared around our table included such things as milking a cow, doing mosaic art, sky diving, free-falling, sitting next to the Sea of Galilee, and flying in a Cessna airplane.

What struck me was that these were ordinary ladies – both young and elderly – with a wealth of experience of life. It also brought new ideas of things I’ve never tried, or even thought of trying.

One particular lady at our table had only 4 beans left at the end of this exercise. She said she was going to keep the 4 beans to remind her to live more outrageously than she had been. I really admired her determination to push the boundaries of her comfort zone!

But this got me thinking. I myself am the one who put a limit on what I can and cannot do. This is mostly determined by my thinking, and by how safe or possible it seems in my estimation. Although there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel secure in what we experience and attempt to do, this could cause us to never venture beyond the known.

I’m reminded of the account in Matthew 14 where Jesus had been out on the mountain praying at night, while His disciples went ahead by boat to another location. In the middle of the night, Jesus came walking on the water towards them, and, gripped by fear, Peter needed proof that it was in fact Jesus, and not a ghost.

True to Peter’s character to be impulsive and bold, he asked Jesus to cause him to walk on the water towards Jesus. Of course Jesus was always ready to respond to outrageous faith and invited Peter to walk on water to Him. Peter got out of the boat and walked on water!

We know that he started doubting halfway, and began to sink, but what I see from this account is that Jesus loves big, courageous, adventurous acts of faith from His disciples.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be afraid to live large, to take bold steps of faith, but also to venture into some new things we never gave much thought to do.

Jesus did what man considered impossible. He healed lepers, provided food for more than 5,000 people in one day, raised the dead, walked on water and commanded storms to cease. I call this LIVING LARGE. How about you?

Prayer: Lord, I want to be someone who moves at Your very word, and who’s not fearful of new adventures You lead me into. I know that faith always pleases You. Please help me to take the limits that I’ve put in place off, and take bold steps of faith, in Jesus’ name. Amen.