When a foreign  student who’s new to English and to Christianity heard me mention “Leap Of Faith” the other Sunday she whispered to her American friend sitting next to her, “Is ‘leap of faith’ a person?”

I got a kick out of that. She must’ve imagined some super hero dude flying around doing all sorts of crazy things for us.  “…Look up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Leap Of Faith Guy!”

But the more I thought about it, I realized she wasn’t that far off.  Sure, Leap Of Faith is a 40 day prayer experiment we’re doing together that will egg us on to pray for some faith-stretching things, but it’s also a leap into the arms of someone very special.

In Hebrews, Jesus is presented as a kind of inventor-architech- engineer-test pilot of this thing we call “faith”. (see Hebrews 12:2). As scary and risky as faith may be for us, we’re not doing something Jesus hasn’t himself road tested. We can’t say, “Sure, taking that leap was easy for Jesus, afterall he was a superstar, but I can’t do it – I’m a wimp”, because he took wimpy humanity upon himself and showed us how faith actually works.
Faith for the human being Jesus wasn’t a piece of cake. It took faith. “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned (trusting) obedience (ie. faith) from what he suffered…” (Hebrews 5:7-8) He didn’t have any advantages and he didn’t take any short-cuts. Faith was as much a leap for him as it is for us (maybe more). Yet he demonstrated that even though faith at times can be hard and even scary, it works because its not a blind leap into our own wish dreams, it’s a leap into the arms of a loving and powerful God who has a plan for a better life for us.  And in the end that’s our objective for Leap of Faith – working out a faith that leads to a better life.

Leap of Faith has now started… so come on, ready… set… leap!

See you Sunday
Mike T