I was listening to an old PODcast from Holy Trinity Brampton today, and
Mike Pilavachi was speaking.  He was describing how he views faith.
(This is a paraphrase, but you get the idea.) Faith is standing on the
diving board of a pool and realizing that there is no water in the
pool.  I would stop and say to God, "God, fill the pool with water and
I will dive in."  But God replies, "Dive into the pool and trust that
by the time you get there, I will have filled the pool with water." 
Faith is always a risky business.  I must trust that God will always do
what He says He will do.  That is easy to do as long as you are only
talking about it.  It becomes hard when the rubber meets the road and
one must DO it.  In 1 Kings there is an account of a time of famine in
Israel.  God told Elijah to go to Zarephath and there was a woman there who would sustain him throughout the famine.  So Elijah went to Zarephath.  He asks the woman to bring him a little cake that she herself has made.  Her reply was, "And
she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful
of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am
gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son,
that we may eat it, and die."  She had nothing left.  She had just
enough to make 2 very small cakes, one for her and one for her son. 
But Elijah told her to make him a cake first, then make one for her and
her son.  He didn't say, that God had already filled her containers
with meal and oil, but told her to make him something with the little
that she had left.  For her, faith meant giving all that she had to
take care of the man of God before she even thought of herself.  If you
read the account in 1 Kings 17, she did as Elijah asked and her oil and
meal never ran out for the duration of the famine.   She had to spell
faith, r-i-s-k for sure.  It was really risky for her.  She had to give
all that she had first.  Then trust that God would take care of her. 

How
does this translate to me?  I need to learn to trust God and dive into
the pool and trust that He will fill it before I hit bottom.  If He
fills it first, then it isn't faith…it is mercy.    Am I a risk taker? 
Am I willing to take the risk of faith in my own life? Or do I just
want God's mercy to take care of it for me?  I know what I would say, I
want to be a risk taker.  But saying it and doing it are two different
things. Sort of like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
where he has to step onto the bridge.  He has to trust that it is there
and step out onto it, even though he can't see it.  We need to step out
into what God has called us into and just trust that He will provide. 

So let us do as the old Nike commercials said, "Just Do It."  We won't learn it by talking about it, only by doing it.