Stepping Out

What are you afraid of?

Think about the one thing in the world that is keeping you from living the life you have always wanted to live.

Is it fear of rejection, disappointment, embarrassment, or failure? Is it fear of losing something or someone? Is it fear of not being accepted?

What fear is hindering you? 

Too many times we miss out on life because of fear.

We confine ourselves to what we are comfortable with, even if that means mediocrity. 

We give up on adventure, accept loneliness, wave goodbye to dreams, forfeit our influence and lay low because of fear.

We build up wall after wall after wall until we are enclosed so tightly that we have only left room for ourselves.

We close our eyes and shut out everything that intimidates us, then open them and wonder why our world is so small.

It’s because we’ve allowed it.

Fear is apart of our sin nature. And just like any other sin, it is something we have to fight against.

We spend way too much of our time letting fear control us when we should really be focusing on learning to control it.

We sit in the boat watching everyone else step over the side. And just when we muster up enough courage to throw our leg over, fear tells us that we aren’t ready. 

God wants to use us now, but fear tells us we have to wait.

It is crippling.  It keeps us from moving forward in life. It makes us believe we aren’t capable.  It steals our courage, our joy, and our peace. It causes us to live in complacency and slowly convinces us we are ok with it.

 Living in fear means we are living with the mentality that everything is in our hands.

There is nothing biblical about that.  The Bible says in Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind,

 Where does this power come from? Where does this love come from? Where does our help come from? It does not come from within. It is not something we can achieve on our own.

Our power, our love, our help comes from the Lord, a God who loves us perfectly.

And perfect love cast out all fear. If we know we are loved perfectly by our creator, then our fears have no choice but to leave.

 God does not send us into any situation by ourselves. There is nothing he expects us to do all on our own. He is always with us.

In any and every moment, God is there.

We need to be living with that mentality.

 God wants to use us. Not as a pawn but as a vessel. A pawn is a dense object that cannot be filled, but a vessel is hollow. God wants to first pour himself into us, and then send us out for His purposes.

There are so many things He has planned for us. But we must first learn to get out of our boats.

 Sometimes getting out of the boat isn’t exciting. It’s not always going to be a “walking on water” experience. Sometimes getting out of the boat just means talking to someone you are intimidated by or being vulnerable and opening up to a family member or friend. Sometimes it means caring more than we want to or loving freely without fear of losing.

 Sometimes getting out of the boat just means having the courage to leave your house, stepping out of your comfort zone, or letting go of your daily routines and activities.

Whether or not it is exciting, no matter what getting out of the boat entails, it is something we are called to do.

And until we do, we won’t be able to fully experience God’s blessings.

God is waiting on us to throw our fear aside, swallow our pride,  fix our eyes on Him, and step out.

 

“Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, would have done, but did not do.” 

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe