TOPIC: Change, Risk
REFERENCES: John 10:10 (NLT), Luke 13:3 (NIV), Acts 15:25-26 (NLV), Hebrews 11 (MSG)

SUMMARY
Life is about change. Some people try to deny that by not taking risks, but essentially, life is about change. The older we get the greater the temptation for complacency. And whether you’re 18 or 88, the reality is that the older we get the easier it is to take the easy road and the more frequently we rationalize why we can’t do things. In short, we just take fewer risks. I’m not talking about thrill-seeking risks. I’m not talking about risk-taking for the sake of risk-taking or gambling away the family farm in Las Vegas. I’m talking about taking the kind of risk necessary to be alive, to be full of life and to experience exuberant living.

Stage 1: God created us natural born risk takers.

Stage 2: We learn to be risk adverse.

Stage 3: The greatest risk of all is to do nothing.

In the movie “The Truman Show” a character named Truman lives his whole life on an island. He’s got a perfect wife, perfect neighbors, perfect job, seemingly perfect world. What’s wrong with this picture? He has no risks, absolutely no risks, that he has to take. The weather is even perfect. What he doesn’t know is that his whole life is a television show, that his wife is an actress, and that everything around him and about his life is make believe. And what he doesn’t know is that hundreds of millions of people around the world watch his every move day and night and they’ve allowed their lives to be consumed by a television show. Until one day when a klieg light falls to the earth and he slowly begins to realize that not all is as it seems. The crux of the movie, for me anyway, came when Truman and his life-long friend, who is yet another actor playing a role, are siting on a dock late one night and Truman asks, “Did you ever get the feeling that the world revolved around you?” See, I think that is the key question in the whole movie. And when Truman asks it, when he realizes how important it is to simply ask that question, his whole life begins to change, because from then on he is able to take risks and assess how his life is being lived. That’s when Truman realizes that life is a series of questions related to the main question, “Does everything in life revolved around me?” or put differently, “Should everything in life revolve around me?”

When we think the world revolves around us, when we are focused entirely on our own fulfilment we ultimately find ourselves like Truman, unfulfilled. When everything and everyone including ourselves focus on our own fulfilment exclusively we end up unfulfilled.

We don’t really start living until, like Truman, we take some risks for the sake of love.

MY COMMENTS
One of Gordon's best sermons.