A LEAP OR A WALK
2 Corinthians 5:6-8
Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight— 8 but we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
I grew up deer hunting in one of our family's traditional areas. We had a few small areas we hunted and we worked hard at it. The hunting was good and we were very successful in how and where we hunted.
In my mid twenties I decided I wanted to check out something new. It wasn't too far away, just a half hours drive, but I love to see what's "just over the next hill", so I checked it out. It could have been a bust, but it turned out to be the best local deer hunting we ever had. For me that was a small leap fo faith, but it paid off.
We all come to places in our lives where we see something different than we've always known and we wonder, "What if?" It takes some faith to make a change in life, to take a big chance at times. Some what call this a "leap of faith".
For humans it isn't often that we take a leap that could cost us our lives. But in nature it happens all the time. Animals find themselves in places where they have no options but to leap. Take the wild goats that live rugged peaks and cliffs around the world. These vertical cliffs are very unforgiving and one slip and you're dead. Yet the mountain goats take a leap of faith many times a day to get to food or shelter. After a while, it's not a leap of faith so much as it is a walk of faith or a life of faith.
Biblically speaking, consider the life of Daniel. When the decree went out that everyone was to worship and pray to the king and no one else. Daniel continued to pray to the one true God despite threats from the powerful king. Even though there was the danger of hungry lions to face, Daniel kept his faith. That appears to you and I to be a leap of faith, a risk, but if we think it, Daniel had been walking in faith all along. This was another step in that walk.
You and I might not face falling from a cliff or getting eaten by lions, but we must have faith to make it through life. It's dangerous to come to those places over and over again. When we learn to walk in faith day to day, then begin living in faith and the leaps of faith aren't so often or so worrisome.
Psalms 32:8 tells us that God will keep us in His sight and we need not worry when we come to a challenging place in life. We don't need to leap... just walk in faith
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go;
I will advise you with My eye upon you." (Psalms 33:8)
If we learn to walk and live in faith we will not come to the place where we have to leap in faith.
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