Imagine you’re standing at the top of a tall pole. It’s quite a bit higher off the ground than you are comfortable with. A few feet in front of you is a bar. Your task is to jump out off of the pole and grab the bar. If you miss the bar you’ll fall. It sounds scary, doesn’t it? But here’s the catch. You’re wearing a harness and you are hooked up to a rope system. If you miss the bar, you may fall a few inches, but the ropes will hold you. You will be perfectly safe. You can jump with the confidence of knowing that whatever happens, you won’t fall.
Maybe this jump sounds familiar to you. It’s a common activity at Christian camps. I’ve heard it referred to often as the leap of faith. whenever I attend a camp that has one of these jumps I have always been the type to avoid the jump with all that is in me. my main excuse being, why would anyone want to do something that scares them? What’s the purpose of it? Well, I have been thinking a lot about this idea of jumping off of a ledge into something we are scared of and I actually think there are a lot of great connections that can be made from this idea of jumping out in faith.
You’re Connected to God
Did you know that if you are a child of God, you have a rope system connecting you to Him. It’s just like the harness you wear when you are climbing that connects you to a rope. On the other end of that rope is someone who you can trust who is holding that rope tight and is ready to catch you if you fall. As you follow God down (or up) the many paths of life, and especially on the paths that require faith, you can be assured that God is there with you, and he won’t let you fail.
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10
Jumping into fear is something that is not easy to do. It requires great amounts of faith and trust. I think God often asks us to make these kinds of leaps because he wants us to learn how to trust Him completely in our life. When we choose to jump and follow God into the scary unknown, we may be successful in conquering our fear and grabbing that bar, or maybe we will take that jump into fear only to fall a few inches. But whether we grab it or not, God is always going to be with us. God is holding us and keeping us safe. He is the rope that keeps us from crashing down to the ground in defeat. God can be trusted completely to protect you as you take your leap of faith.
Take Your Leap of Faith!
Whatever you find yourself facing in life, always remember that God is with you. There is a rope around you that connects you to God. You can take that leap of faith in confidence that God will hold you. If God is asking you to do something you are scared of doing, God promises to never let you go. Even if you miss and fall God still promises to hold you.
Now, if you’ve been to our camp before you may have realized that our camp does not have one of these jumps that I described in this post. But at our camp, we definitely have our share of jumps requiring faith. Whether it’s jumping off rocks into the river or scaling up a boulder, these are scary activities that cause us to come face to face with our fear. And these activities are meant to remind us that that we can trust God to always take care of us. It is during these moments when we jump into our fears that we learn that our Saviour truly is someone we can trust. God will never ever let his children fall, you can rest in that truth today.
“Though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand.” Psalm 37:24
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