“Playing it safe shrinks our lives, shrinks our faith, shrinks our impact, shrinks God and leaves us with shrunken up, shriveled hearts and then we die. And who wants to live like that?”

Ray Johnston is the pastor of Bayside Church in California. He has a passion for seeing Christians live like Jesus – and that includes taking risks to follow Him and share His message.

Ray’s church works with a ministry based in Cambodia that rescues girls from sex trafficking. One afternoon, he received a phone call from a ministry worker. The man on the other end was approached by a Cambodian general, who asked to start a swat team with this ministry of westerners and Cambodians who would arrest sex traffickers and free their victims.

The catch – the efforts would cost $250,000.

Ray hesitated, knowing what this man was asking. Would Ray help him raise the money for this venture? Ray responded with caution; he had just concluded a campaign in which his church had raised and given away several million dollars. He didn’t think it was a good idea to ask his members to give again so soon.

“Man, it just doesn’t feel safe right now to talk about money in my church. This is a bad time.”

But God wasn’t done with Ray. At their staff meeting a few days later, Ray and his coworkers decided to pitch it to their congregation. Ray stood up at Bayside’s Christmas Eve service and announced the special offering for Cambodia. To his delight, the church gave $400,000 to help the efforts in ending trafficking. To date, because of their financial generosity, over three hundred girls have been rescued out of trafficking, and sixty traffickers have been put in prison.

“And the entire thing almost didn’t happen for one reason – me.”

Ray shares his own near-miss as a lesson for the rest of us – step out in faith. If we chose to live with this level of excitement, joy, and purpose by walking with God, mountains would be moved in His name. Ask Him what He would have you do – and go do it!

You can find more of Ray’s story in his book, . All proceeds from this title go to ending human trafficking in Cambodia.

Key Scriptures: Philippians 1:6; Matthew 7

Featured Songs: Wonderful by Christy Nockels; Amen by Chris August; Awaken Us by Chris Tomlin

Highlight : Don’t live a shriveled-up faith

Reclaiming the church