As a young believer, I often wondered how it felt in the middle of the story for people like Bill Bright who were trusting God for a huge sum of money; for instance, for the purchase of the headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ at “Arrowhead Springs”. (It was wonderful at the end of the story - but what was it like in the middle…???)

While not anywhere near that league, one of the great privileges that Ann and I have had in life was to know Dr. Bright personally. I wish he were still here… because I would like to talk to him and pray with him. I now know how it feels: scary! But there is also an amazingly exhilarating sense of being moved along by the Spirit of God and “risking it all” for Him. John Ortberg put it succinctly: “You can’t walk on the water if you don’t get out of the boat!”

At the beginning of the last century, C. T. Studd, one of history’s great missionary pioneers, used a different metaphor in his thoughts about the gold-rush in Africa: “Last June at the mouth of the Congo there awaited a thousand prospectors, traders, merchants and gold seekers, waiting to rush into these regions as soon as the government opened the door to them, for rumor declared that there is an abundance of gold. If such men hear so loudly the call of gold and obey it, can it be that the ears of Christ’s soldiers are deaf to the call of God? Are gamblers for gold so many, and gamblers for God so few?”

That’s what it feels like! I can almost hear Bill Bright and C. T. Studd cheering from the reviewing stand in heaven: “Risk it all for Jesus! Don’t give up! Keep going! God can do it! Keep trusting Him!”

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great
cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders
and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with
perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our
eyes on Jesus…” Hebrews 12:1-2 (NIV)

There really is an unseen world and the men and women of faith who have gone before are our witnesses. There is also a specific race “marked out” for each of us - and the challenge of living for Jesus is to keep our eyes fixed forward, not on those running in front, beside, or behind us.