Life is too short to Play it Safe.

Sometimes, safety becomes the primary concern of our lives. We just want to make sure we don't mess-up, we don't get hurt, or we avoid the stress of difficulty. We want to be comfortable. But you know what ... that's no way to live.

In fact, too much comfort or ease in your life is dangerous.

Years ago, researchers at the University of California at Berkley did an experiment that involved introducing an amoeba into a stress-free living environment. (Fascinating, but made me wonder, how much stress could there be for a single-celled organism?) Anyway, they created the perfect living conditions for the amoeba: ideal temperature, optimal moisture in the environment, constant food supply. The amoeba was stress free. The single-cell organism was not required to make any adjustments whatsoever. Perfection. Amoeba Nirvana.

So you would expect that it was one happy little amoeba. Whatever it is that gives amoeba's high blood pressure, ulcers, or stress was gone. But the strangest thing happened. Instead of flourishing in the stress-free world, it died.

Apparently there is something about all living creatures, amoebas included; that needs challenge, change, and risk. Comfort can kill us. Life is just too short to play it safe.

Have you listened to your prayers lately? Are you praying it safe? Too often our prayers revolve around the notion that we are asking God to "reduce the odds" in our life. We are hoping God just might "tip the scales" of life in our favor. Ours are prayers of "problem reduction"-Lord, take away this pain, that problem or this fear.

Even in our prayers, we play it safe. But what would happen if we decided we would no longer "PRAY it safe?"

• Maybe we would pray for Character instead of comfort.
• Maybe we would pray for Conviction rather than entertainment.
• Maybe we would pray for Strength instead of ease.
• Maybe we would pray that God would change us instead of changing circumstances or even people in our lives.

Listen; when we are praying it safe, did you ever consider that if God answered our safe prayers, He would be robbing us?

It is in the pain that we grow. It is in the struggle that we are strengthened.

My challenge for you today is that you would quit praying "safe prayers". GK Chesterton once wrote, "How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos." Would you pray that God would shatter your small-minded prayers with bold daring prayers that shatter your will, your sin, your world-until you no longer are playing it safe with God?