DWYL - Chapter Five

We missed our study last week due to my youth pastor retreat. So we have preached chapter six, but only covered chapter five last night in our Connection Group.

So you can listen to the chapter five sermon here.

Risk is Right.  Last night we talked all about good and bad risk. We simplified it down to having a child like faith in God. A child asks his daddy for lunch, fully expecting his father to be able to provide. There is no doubt in his mind that if he asks his daddy for lunch he will get something to eat.  That's child like faith seen as child like dependence.  However, the father knows what is best for the child, so while the child may want chocolate for lunch, the father instead provides a cheese sandwich.  There might be a little grumbling, but the child will eat what the father provides.  This is child like faith seen as child like acceptance that daddy knows best.

When it comes to risk, good risk happens when there is childlike dependence on God and childlike acceptance from God.  In that way we are in His plan.

Bad risk happens when we ignore dependence on God... or act in nonacceptance to His plan.

Consider the context of 2 Samuel 10. The Amalekites had shamed the messengers of Israel and made themselves odious in the sight of David. To protect themselves they had hired the Syrians to fight with them against the Israelites. Joab, the commander of Israel's forces, found himself surrounded with Amalekites on one side and Syrians on the other. So he divided his troops, put his brother Abiashai in charge of one troop of fighters and led the other himself.

In verse 11 they pledged to help each other. Then comes this great word in verse 12: "Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and mauy the LORD do what seems good to him." What do these last words mean, "May the LORD do what seems good to him"? It means that Joab has made a strategic decision for the cities of God, and he did not know how it would turn out. He had no special revelation from God on this issue. He had to make a decision on the basis of sanctified wisdom. He had to risk or run. He did not know how it would turn out. So he made his decision, and he handed the results over to God. And this was right.
~John Piper - Don't Waste Your Life - p82