Daring to Live

[HKHaugan]

Daring to Live 

When we were kids we used to egg one another on by saying “I dare you.”   “I dare you” to do this or that usually meant something that would arouse your pride and fear. No one ever wants to be seen as afraid of anything. Remember being on the garage roof and jumping off with an open umbrella?

 Think of all the daredevil stuff that goes on with adults; race cars, ski off cliffs, jumping out of planes, climbing ledges, high wire walking. What’s that all about? Living on the physical edge motivated by evoking the precipice of fear, shouting ‘boo!’ at the unsuspecting, What does it prove? Trying to overcome personal fear to impress people around you does nothing more than center your fears in yourself and if done to earn admiration, only lasts for brief flickering moments. You have to keep going to the edge over and over again to get noticed. How long does it last? How long can you perform? Is a moment worth it?

 There is a deeper cause, the villain within. Sin is the self-centered dare to avoid God and live without Him. It is daring to live on our own self-denying terms, being in control of our mind, our emotions and the unseen reality around us. The fear the high wire walker, the acrobat and the self-achiever experience is really their attempt at being a god but it’s really sin, the unseen power within. Life without God is the devil’s dare to think and be your own boss. If we can’t see the sin process at work in us we will join him on that one-way roller coaster into his abyss. The only thing we can control is our choices and discovering too late that it was our fear driven pride controlling those choices.rule

 However, there’s another kind of dare. That’s the dare to think and act spiritually which will lead to another kind of dare. The real dare is to make spiritual choices that coincide with God, the dare to love. Spiritual choices are always personal, loving and relational. The spirit of fear is the hidden fear on the on the edge and ledge of choice. Scripture tells us without qualification that perfect love casts out fear (1Jn.4:18). The real dare then is to love, to be relational. The real dare is choosing to live by faith in Jesus the revealer of God’s love. The ultimate dare is to accept that Jesus is the Lord of life and live for Him. The final human dare is to see death as a doorway to life, life in Jesus, life with the Father, life through the Holy Spirit, lie in an eternal family.   What does that dare look like?

 The content of the dare is to experience newness, daring to be unique, daring to be relational, daring to be looking forward to loving, daring to think spiritually like Jesus who dared to live totally focused on His Father’s will. If you look at this dare we have the One who dared to live a perfect spiritual life in the midst of complete hostility, fear and hate. He dared to be faithful. He dared to live by faith alone and the Word alone. He baptized daring to be a disciple. It’s daring to be a disciple of Jesus, daring to be like Him, daring to love like Him, daring to be His light from one moment to the next.

 When John wrote “In the beginning was the Word…,” we get the feel that God is spiritual, personal, unique, relational. When it says, “In the beginning was the Word,” there is the sense of the desire to communicate as a personal being that was there before there was a beginning to anything. The Word is the spiritual mind of a spiritual person with a forward-looking intention, to make Himself known, understood, forgiving and sharing. While the first “In the beginning (Genesis 1:1)” was centered in the structure of physical creation, the second finds its meaning in spiritual creation, a spiritual kingdom, Jesus the Creator revealing the spiritual nature behind Creation, His Father’s mind and intention. Further, He reveals He is the servant of His Father who brings the Holy Spirit to transform the empty aloneness in everyone into an eternal relationship as children of God. He reveals that spiritual reality is the only true reality and that everything else is a temporary gift to experience Him. Through Him came a spiritually relational world for which physical creation is a context to enable relational experience. Therefore, everything physical has a spiritually relational significance. We are spiritually created beings living in a physically human experience.

 Here’s the bottom line: “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jer.29:11).” The future for each of us is every next moment, every next encounter, every next event, every next meeting, every next breath. Every next moment is an opportunity. We are a future people every time we wake up and every time we go to bed. We were made to live in expectation and anticipation of the Lord doing His will through us. Seeing Him wherever we are is our motivation. It is our faith at work. In fact, faith in Jesus is the work we are given (Jn.6:29). What we labor at is what supports our work.

 When God made man, He made Him in His image and likeness (Gen.1:26-27). That is, man is an image of the “I AM” in a physical body. Jesus says it clearly, “Before Abraham was, I am (Jn.8:58).” “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (Jn.1:14).” Creation, both spiritual and physical, is the result of the One God desiring to reveal Himself, have a relationship with His images and to have them be like Him. Not the same as but ‘like’ Him. This indicates just as He is unique, so they too are to be unique ‘like’ Him. You carry this out further and ‘to be like’ is to be loving, caring, looking forward to creating, seeing what a spiritual relationship is like when practiced with other images of Himself.   That’s daring.

 Belief in God as He is revealed in Jesus is daring to be human like Jesus was. When you start believing in God that is the point in life when each of us is daring to be human. To dare to be human is to dare to think like God the Father, to trust like Jesus, to act like the Holy Spirit. “Not my will but yours be done (Lk.22:42).” Life is no longer mine but God’s. Through Jesus what I thought was human I learn to lay down day by day and let Him be human through me. Through Jesus I see a humanity into which I grow spiritually. I see His uniqueness as the key to my uniqueness, His nature to embrace my nature, His sacrifice to be the pattern for my sacrifice, His love to be the power of all the relationships I enter and encourage.

 The Scripture is God’s relational manual given us to grow as human beings, as images of Him, as His spiritual children. It is a spiritual mirror, the Lord Jesus being the image we see that gives us a reflection of who we really are and what we are intended to be in Him. Scripture does three things. It reflects who we are, confronts us with where we have been and shows us the path forward. It calls us up short because we are sinners. It locates us where we are spiritually in every moment and calls us to live by faith as we approach every next event of life. Scripture is our ‘dare’ book, daring us to be honest with ourselves, honest about our spiritual need for Jesus to be our personal Savior and Lord to restore us to the Father and for the Holy Spirit to perfect our spirit to be creatively relational and loving. Being a disciple of Jesus is daring to be spiritually alive, daring to be spiritually relational, spiritually loving and spiritually adventurous.

 When Jesus called 12 men to be His disciples He was daring them to come with Him to see what it was to be human as His Father intended. Each of us is given the same calling. Follow Him and see. Every day is a new beginning to see Him and become a new human through Him.

 Remember, when man dares us, lonely pride and fear rule for a moment. When Jesus dares us, we share His eternity through faith and love.