When Taking a Risk is the Only Way to Be Safe by Guest Blogger Rebekah Bronn

“Mum, Mum!” six-year-old Michael was bouncing up and down on his chair at the dinner table in excitement. “Max is on the radio!”

His mum, Gwenda Johnson, stared at the little radio that sat on the sideboard. Her mouth hung open in shock, and her fork was suspended in mid-air as a voice announced that her sixteen-year-old son was the first person to climb the three central mountains in the North Island of New Zealand.

Gwenda shook her head, half in disbelief and half in despair. What was she going to do with this son of hers? The natural caution that most people are born with just didn’t seem to be a part of her boy’s DNA. This mountain climbing feat was not the first time Max had taken huge risks and she was sure that it wouldn’t be the last. But what could she do? It was just who he was.

My Greatgrandmother Gwenda had a right to feel worried about some of the downright hair-raising exploits of my eccentric Great Uncle, her son Max. Like the time he barely survived an avalanche at the top of New Zealand’s highest mountain, or when he parachuted in the North Pole with a special military expedition—not to mention his encounter with a great white shark!

According to Psychology Today, some people are born with the drive to push the boundaries and experience the thrill that comes when looking danger directly in the face. The article explains that these risk-takers, “have a distinctive personality makeup that is the product of both genes and experience.” Such people can be reckless and sometimes a menace to society with their endless need for thrills. At the extreme, their lack of fear in the face of danger can be apparent in a destructive way. And yet, the article goes on to say, “regardless of this they personify—perhaps magnify is more precise—a human trait that is very much responsible for our survival as a species.”

In other words, taking risks isn’t always a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary. Think about it like this. Without the Uncle Maxes and risk-takers of the world, there would be no new lands discovered, no risky but lifesaving medical procedures perfected, and no mountains summited. Risk-taking is an important path to growth for the human race and I believe that it is also an important part of personal growth. 

 “The comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” -Unknown

Haven’t you found that to be true? Who wants to leave their comfort zone—after all, it’s comfortable! 

Frankly, leaving my comfort zone goes against my nature. I have to ask myself, what is it that would push me to take risks in order to grow? What risks are worth taking? 

Have you ever asked yourself that? Maybe you have when it comes to your career or dating or marriage or even trying a new hobby. But have you ever considered what risks are worth taking when it comes to spiritual life and health? How willing would you be to question your fundamental beliefs about something you’ve automatically accepted as true? Could you face the risk of being wrong?

For many Jewish people, it would mean taking a great risk to truly explore who Jesus is. Some of us don’t know that he claimed to be the way to have life and peace with God, others may have a vague sense that he said that, without knowing why. It is easy to assume that we don’t need Jesus if there’s a shared sense within our community that he is not for us. 

If we question that assumption, we could be faced with countless consequences depending on our conclusions. Yet if we truly cared about our spiritual life and health, we would realize that no matter how “comfortable” our comfort zone is, it is not safe to stay there. Is it possible that we could be missing something that we actually need for spiritual life and health? If so, it’s reasonable that such a possibility would spur us on to step out of our comfort zone and really test our beliefs. 

I personally believe that when a risk is the only way to discover what we need to know, then that risk is not only worth taking, but it’s the safest possible option. 

Perhaps you are ready to take a risk today and explore who Messianic Jews believe Jesus is? Is it possible that there are good reasons to believe he is the Messiah and the key to spiritual life and health?

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have...It’s worth the risk!

THIS BLOG WAS GUEST WRITTEN BY REBEKAH BRONN from NEW ZEALAND

Starting well; ending well

The biblical book of Judges ends with this sentence: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." (21.25) You could read that everyone did the right thing, but that's not the language of the Book. It's actually a description of waywardness, that people were setting up their own morality in direct contradiction to the morality of the Almighty. It certainly sounds like our days.

Michael Youssef wrote this last year, "Life in that society was not so different from life in our own postmodern, post-Christian, anything-goes society. These days, people avoid words like sin or disobedience. They prefer to justify their actions with phrases like, "Everybody does it," or, "The old rules don't apply anymore," or, "Times have changed." It's true that times have changed, and not for the better. But God hasn't changed. He still says to us, "You cannot receive blessings from Me while you live in disobedience. You can't have it both ways." (https://au.ltw.org/read/my-devotional/2018/04/doing-whats-right-in-gods-eyes)

The book of Judges has a wonderful description of good people and some not-so-good folks who made history in Israel in those days. My thought from this reading: What will the end of your days look like? What would someone (else) use to describe your endings? In other words, it's not how we start that makes us different, but how we end. 

I've made both good and bad decisions in my life, but what am I doing today, and tomorrow? What will my ending be like? Did I 'do what was right in my own eyes'.... or will I do what God intends? May my ending be up to snuff.

Has Allianz settled the score?

Get ready for some serious head shaking.
Allianz is a German-based insurance company with offices worldwide.
During World War II, the company insured Auschwitz for the perpetrators of evil who ran the Holocaust. Yes, you read that right, Allianz insured the Nazis. 
But wait, there's much more.
The company also insured tens of thousands of German Jewish citizens.

In 2014, this article appeared during a golf tournament in South Florida. In it, Randall Lieberman, Staff Writer, quotes a White House number cruncher who says, "I figured out the worth of all the portfolios held by the European insurance companies. In today's value, Allianz's share of the Jewish claims would be about $2.5 billion, yet they've paid out only about $50 million."  Is that accurate? Who can make such claims and what is the company doing about those outstanding claims?  

Similarly in 2013, again as a result of the same golf tournament, this article was published. The life insurance policies taken by those Jewish Eastern Europeans might have only been worth $1,500 in those days in those dollars, but by today's standards, those unpaid amounts would be worth billions.

Other articles, from 1997 in the Wall Street Journal:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB865264312555475000

Even ESPN published this (2008) after the New York Giants and the New York Jets canceled negotiations with Allianz over naming rights to the new Meadowlands stadium:
https://www.espn.com.au/nfl/news/story?id=3584453

Have you shaken your head yet?
What's a company to do?
What's an individual to do for whom compensation should be forthcoming?

The writer of Proverbs in the Bible gave some financial and sagely advice which would have seriously helped Allianz stay ahead of the media shame.  They still can follow the advice.

"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it." (Proverbs 3.27)

We invite you to comment below.

The Scandal of Silence

I was asked recently if I had a 'word' for the church where I was going to speak. The pastor didn't use phrases like "prophecy" lightly, but that's what he wanted. I hadn't really prepared for such, but in a heartbeat, God gave me some words for that congregation, and I wonder if what I offered might not be useful for others globally. Thus I share some of those thoughts here.

Three times in the last year Australian Christians have been given a chance to speak. The plebiscite about same-sex marriage, the general national election in which Liberals won convincingly over Labor and the many other lesser parties, and the issue of Israel Folau and his being sacked by Rugby Australia over comments about certain people going to hell.

In each case, and with great fanfare and public notice, individual Christians were asked to speak out. I read it online; I saw it in the newspaper. I overheard it in church after church that individuals were charged to speak out. 

My friend Avi Snyder lives in Hungary, although he, like me, is also a US citizen. He often encounters Christian people in churches and even church leaders around the globe who have a reluctance to speak out on certain matters. Of course, everyone doesn't see eye-to-eye about all the moral issues of the day, and Avi and I are certainly accepting of that. 

There is something which bothers him the most, as he and I are both integrally linked in Jewish evangelism and the cause of bringing the Gospel to Jewish people.  Here's how Avi addresses this one when he finds Christians who are reluctant to speak to Jewish people about Jesus, because of the Holocaust. 

He asks, "What was the sin of the Church in 1940 in Germany?"
The person usually answers, "Silence."
Avi then points out that silence in these days, that is, not sharing Messiah with the Jewish people, is a similar evil or sin that the Church is committing now.

Some in the Catholic world are noticing the need to speak out about sexual abuses.

In April this year, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI broke six years of relative silence with the release of an outspoken letter on the clergy sex abuse scandal. Benedict's analysis differs significantly from that of his successor, Pope Francis, and thus leaves the world's Catholics with contrasting papal perspectives on the greatest crisis facing Roman Catholicism today.

In his 6,000-word essay, published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, with an English translation by the Catholic News Agency, Benedict blames the epidemic of clergy sex abuse largely on a collapse of moral standards in the 1960s and the subsequent failure of Catholic leaders to uphold traditional church teaching. 

"It could be said," Benedict writes, "that in the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, the previously normative standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely." Among the changes, in Benedict's view, was that pedophilia became seen as "allowed and appropriate," and pornography became widespread and accepted. The priesthood, meanwhile, fell into crisis.

I'm hoping that you join me in thinking about the answer I gave the pastor that morning. Yes, silence is an appropriate response when one doesn't know an answer. (Proverbs 18.13).  But when you or I know the answer, and when we should be declaring the truths of the Lord to a desperately needy world, shame on us if we are silent. That's the scandal I mentioned. 

Ezekiel the prophet said as much:

“Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. However, if you have warned the righteous man that the righteous should not sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; and you have delivered yourself.”

(Chapter 3, verses 17-21)

What is your response? Care to be silent or tell me what you really think? I'm (sometimes) all ears.