Living Out an Extreme Faith

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, long hours …" This ad was placed in the early 1900s by the explorer Ernest Shackleton - he was looking for men to help him discover the South Pole. The ad drew 5,000 brave candidates.

If there is any sin that you and I are guilty of, it probably is that we play it too safe when it comes to our faith. Our world has been moved forward by its risk-takers - people who followed their convictions regardless of the odds, regardless of the danger. Call it, if you will, extreme faith.

Maybe what we moderate, middle-of-the-road Christians need today us a healthy does of extreme faith. We have made being a Christian so convenient and so comfortable that our faith has lost its edge. A faith that demands too little will not grab hold of the passion that many people need in their lives today.

People are risking their lives simply for the purpose of getting high. People are putting themselves in extreme danger just for a moment's thrill. And yet there is a world out there that still needs to be saved by men and women with adventurous spirits who are committed to Jesus Christ.

A missionary society wrote to David Livingstone deep in the heart of Africa and asked: "Have you found a good road to where you are? If so, we want to know how to send other men to join you". Livingstone wrote back: "If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all".

Jesus Christ is looking for men like that today. God is looking for men who have extreme faith.

Gary Nicolosi, Rector of St Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Poway, Calif.
Reprinted with permission from New Man (Nov/Dec 2001). Copyright Strang Communications Co.,