This past week a guy named Nik Wallenda walked a tightwire stretched across a canyon. Not THE Grand Canyon, but that’s a rather minute detail when you’re talking about 40MPH winds and a drop far enough that the number of feet really doesn’t matter. I found a pretty good highlight video here:

(If the video won’t play in your browser, here’s the direct link.)

I’m no daredevil. This isn’t on my bucket list. Nothing like it is anywhere close to something I’d like to do during my lifetime. But what I do like is this guy’s take on faith. Check out this from an interview with Christianity Today:

When asked, “What role does faith play in your life,” here was Nik’s response:

My faith plays a huge role in my life, and I am very blessed to be where I am. One of the questions I always get is, “Are you testing your faith / are you testing God?” I don’t see it like that at all. I don’t believe God keeps me on the wire. I believe God gives me a unique ability to walk the wire, but it’s up to me whether I train properly. There’s a lot of people that have amazing relationships with Christ that lose their lives in a car accident. Does that mean they didn’t have a good enough relationship with Jesus? No. Life happens and God created us all in his image, but we’re all our own people. We’re not robots. We make decisions.

 

What I like about this the most is where he said, “I don’t believe God keeps me on the wire.” Combine that with the video, where you here him carrying on a conversation with God, and you’ll see a difference from the lives of many Christians, myself included some days. He wasn’t up there praying, “Oh God, keep me safe,” or “Lord, please cause these winds to die down.” He was THANKING Jesus. PRAISING God. Fear didn’t have a chance. This guy was trained up and ready to rock this challenge.

And here we go, praying for another safe commute to work after a night of too little sleep. Praying for God to help us do well on a test we’re completely unprepared for. Pleading for God to show us how to start a conversation with a stranger when we refuse to have a casual conversation with the neighbor next door.

Rather than asking God to do a miracle in our life, why don’t we just go DO that miracle? Train. Prepare. Expect. And then DO.