Jesus's Call to Meaningful Risk
“When God removed all risk above, He loosed a thousand risks of love.” – John Piper
Exhausted of Playing It Safe
During the pandemic, I was faced with an unnatural amount of time alone—time to ponder, time to wander. During my pondering and wandering, I heard a consistent voice that I simply could not shake…Risk it all…For what? Why? For what purpose? For what goal? Risk it all…to uncover the person I knit together. I do not believe this is a call to do something crazy, to put my life in danger, or to risk the well-being of my family, but I do think it is a call to meaningful risk—to put something at stake that truly matters so that I can find out who Jesus made me to be.
It was during my counseling sessions this year that I came up with a term that has defined this season of my life—and the majority of my life if I’m being honest. I am “exhausted of playing it safe.” Basically, I’m Fred, and I’m tired of being Fred. I mean, I love popcorn, but I want to get in the game. I am exhausted of watching others, copying them, and trying to pursue their dreams. I am exhausted of seeing opportunities in front of me and saying to myself, I can do that, I feel gifted in that area, I have a unique chance to impact that part of God’s kingdom…but never trying, never even starting, and of course, never finishing. During the pandemic, I became convinced that I want to enter my life and find out who God made me to be—the genius inside me and the flaws that do not define me. I’m ready to be William Key Norvell Jr., born April 14 , 1983—one of a kind, never before and never to be again.
But how…
Jesus’s Framework for Meaningful Risk
After some deep searching, I determined that I needed to fully understand three things in order to take meaningful risk alongside the Savior—Grace, Humility, and Passion.
Grace. I heard somewhere that grace can take you places that hustling can’t. It’s simple, but profound. My grace journey was sparked months before CEF in 2019 but lit on fire when a member of my group prophesied 2 Corinthians 12:9 over me…“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” This was a watershed moment that sent me to tears…and to my knees. Am I truly loved because of who I am, not in spite of who I am? Is that love enough? Grace opens the door to our true selves. As Steph Curry said recently…“I have a lot to accomplish. I have nothing to prove.” That is grace-filled motivation.
Humility. Intertwined with the power of grace is the power of humility. God says in I Peter 5:5 that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Awe-inspiring, soul-settling grace cannot be found without the keys of humility. Look in Deuteronomy 8:2 to see how much God cares about our humble hearts: “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.” 40 years!!! Just to teach them humility. Was He worried they weren’t innovating, building new towers, creating new technology? No! He wanted their hearts for Him, full stop. I must pursue opportunities to serve others not for worldly rewards but rather to uncover my true motivations and find true humility.
Passion. If you spend enough time with me, you will one day hear the only Latin root I know. The word passion comes from the Latin root “pati,” meaning suffering, or enduring. This is most obviously seen in the Passion of the Christ. In that moment, we see our Savior so passionate about us, each and every one of us, that He refuses to stop climbing that hill, He refuses to put down His cross, and He puts one foot in front of the other so He will die…and we will live. Even though today’s culture tries to tell us different, passion is not something that makes us happy. True passion reveals something that we are willing to suffer for…and people we are willing to suffer with. Meaningful risk is rooted in passion. It’s rooted in the idea that you are willing to suffer for what God has placed on your heart.
Jesus shows us that, once we understand how much He loves us through His grace, once we submit our hearts to Him in humility, and once we fix our eyes on the things He has called us to suffer for, we become the person He made us to be. We are then following in the mold of Jesus—fully loving, fully servant-hearted, fully passionate Jesus.
What Do We Risk?
I have heard the Parable of the Talents used to justify financial risk over and over and over again. As I studied this parable, I felt a prompting from the Holy Spirit saying over and over…“It’s not just about money…It’s about everything!” We must risk it all—all the gifts we have been given—and try to earn interest on—or 5x or 10x—everything we have been called to steward—prayer, encouragement, innovation, inspiration, laughter, generosity, courage, and financial resources.
It is through meaningful risk that we grow closer to Jesus, we learn more of His character, and we see more and more of who He made us to be. This is not an invitation to success but an invitation to life with Jesus. I can’t promise you riches with this path, but I can promise that you will feel alive—and that you will also experience all that He did…joy, pain, sorrow, being known, friendship, betrayal…and no regrets. Jesus has no regrets that I can find in Scripture, and He invites us into that life.
Provisions for the Journey
Once I understood grace, humility, and passion (I think—Can we ever fully understand God’s Word?—I think not), I felt ready to take meaningful risk. However, as I started out on this journey, roadblocks popped up all over the place—doubt, insecurity, overthinking, naysayers, and more. So, I looked for ways to provision myself for this new journey and found four key components.
God’s Truth. Speak God’s truth to yourself each morning and each night. As ridiculous as I feel doing it, I had someone challenge me to write down 15 things I know to be true and to look in the mirror each day and say them to myself. They are rooted in God’s view of me and His call on my life, and it’s a life-changing exercise. I am happy to share with anyone my list to help you get started.
God’s Word. It is never changing but always illuminating. If you need a place to start, read Romans 8. Feel God’s grace, experience God’s passion, and see His call to humility. Lastly, see His encouragement to meaningful risk covered by His everlasting love.
God’s Community. A few months back, I reached my limit. I didn’t want to end my life, but I wanted to disappear. I felt that I had inflicted too much pain on those I love most dearly, and I was convinced that my wife, my children, and many others would be better off if they lived the rest of their lives without me. I relayed this to my community bluntly—the Jesus Bros as we call ourselves—and they organized a gathering within three hours where they surrounded me, cooked for me, laughed with me, laid hands on me, and reminded me that their lives were better with me in it and so was my family’s. They reminded me that, even though the darkness was strong, I had to run towards the faint light, and I needed to ask for help any time I couldn’t see it. I now carry a picture of that night with me as a reminder of God’s love in community. Don’t do this alone or with a fake community. It needs to be real, authentic, and rooted in truth. Your version of the Jesus Bros just might save you from making life-changing mistakes.
God Himself. Focus on Jesus. I’m reminded of Peter trusting so much, seeing so much love and confidence in Jesus’s eyes, that he stepped out on the water. Then, he got scared, he faltered, he looked at the horizon, and he fell. Jesus was, of course, there to pick him up. It’s a paradox of love, but if we can focus on Him, we won’t fall—we will remain steady.
How Have I Been Changed?
So, where has this newfound knowledge of meaningful risk taken me. In the last few months, I have launched my first solo podcast (a dream for 10 years), gone deep into crypto investing (a decision that typically would have taken 9-12 months took 2 weeks), had a significant conversation with my father 20 years in the making, studied and taken strides into prophecy (a gift I’ve felt for 7-8 years), dreamt more seriously about entrepreneurship than ever, and won 50 million points on my favorite golf game where the previous high was 4 million—I risked it all…and won ;).
I have felt it all—joy, pain, sorrow, grief, excitement, confusion, anxiety, passion. I’m still finding my way…I still don’t know who I am…but I’m closer today than I was six months ago. Stay tuned for my next adventure.
I have also reflected deeply on the most meaningful risk of my life—my marriage and the beginning of my family. I realized that the abundant grace of God introduced me to my wife and allowed me to meet my children, Liam and Eloise. I remembered how, in a rare instance, I truly humbled myself before God and physically cried out for His wisdom—and He graciously delivered. Lastly, I mediated on the passion God gave me for my family that has sustained me through pure joy and pure heartbreak from day one to year six (another essay sometime). Through it all, God’s grace, humility, and passion have allowed me to singularly pursue my family’s goals with zero regrets. It’s an odd thing about meaningful risk, even when it doesn’t work out like we hoped or imagined, we crave more because it brings us closer to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit—Who risked it all for us.
Am I still scared of things every day, and do I still overthink way too much? Yes, of course. I’m human. However, I’m getting better every day, and if there is anything the pandemic has taught me, it is that nothing is predictable, and I can’t risk not taking meaningful risk.
I do not miss my old life of comfort and security. I am ecstatic about this new life of meaningful risk and the opportunity to see myself through the eyes of Jesus.
Parting Encouragement…15%
I want to end by saying that I am not advocating for reckless risk. It’s my opinion that, while Jesus certainly can, He rarely calls us to crazy risk that puts people we love in danger. Remember, just don’t be Fred. I encourage folks to imagine their comfort zones and aim for 15% outside of them. Over time, your comfort zone will shift dramatically, and you will be seeing things with Jesus you could not imagine. But for most of us, it’s a process of taking that next step out in faith, then the next one, then the next one, then the next one, and then the next one. Before long, we cannot even see our old comfort zone from where we currently stand. We can only see Jesus staring back at us…at the true version of ourselves.