We are addicted to our screens. Just observe those around you at the airport, the restaurant, or your kitchen table. We’re constantly gazing into our screens, scrolling through endless data and images yet never finding whatever we think will fill our souls.

Where are the modern prophets, poets, and storytellers for today’s world? It’s a really good question. The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings novels have stood the test of time…but it’s been almost 70 years since those series were completed. Where are the new stories that we can place on the shelf next to these classics?

We are expected to take our cues from social media, blindly embracing whatever agenda the entertainment, business, educational, and political leaders tell us is important. It’s full-on indoctrination that demands full allegiance to an upside-down world where wrong is right, evil is good, and false is held up as true. Veer from that script and your voice will be mocked or silenced.

Imagine you’re sitting around a crackling fire with a handful of kindred spirits in the forest. The mountain air is fresh and the sky is ablaze with stars.

As you risk well for what matters most with God, you will face opposition. Count on it.

If you’ve ever had young kids or were one (see what I did there?), you’ll relate to this scenario. It’s 6:30 a.m. and your child needs to get up for school. Their alarm blares, then goes off. This is followed by prolonged silence. After a few minutes, you stick your head in their room.

The goal isn’t simply to begin risking more...or less. But to learn how to risk better. Wiser. How to go into each decision with God. To risk for his heart. To be all in. From a place of love. When we do, we begin to risk as Jesus did.

This month, we’re looking at risk with kingdom eyes. Understanding the five tenets of risk can lead to immense breakthrough—but only for those who make the shift from knowing about it to practicing it.

We risk the most for what we most love.

We now come to the final and highest way to view risk. In a world fueled by fear, God continually and defiantly reminds us that love matters more than anything else. It lasts forever and is greater than even faith or hope.

Explorers to dangerous lands knew that when things got hard, the crew would be tempted to sail home. To prevent that possibility, the captain would burn the boats. Because once that happened, leaving was no longer an option. Everyone was all in.

Tenet 4: Safe Risk Is All In; Unsafe Risk Keeps All Options Open

From childhood, we’re taught to keep our options open. Don’t put all your apples in one cart. Diversify. Always have a back-up, back-door plan.

A high-school senior recently stated how she was trying to figure out which college to attend. I was about to offer a few thoughts on how she might approach the decision with God when she quickly added, “It’s fine. I’ve got lots of options and no wrong choices.”

Tenet 3: Smart Risk Counts the Cost; Foolish Risk Rushes In

When we risk with God rather than in our own strength, he goes with us, before us, and beyond us. Even then, there’s no predictable outcome or guaranteed immediate result to our risk. This is how the kingdom works. And this is how our faith grows. It requires us to hope in things not yet seen. To trust him with outcomes that seem impossible.

We will face risk. We will take risks. That’s why I came up with five tenets of risk to help us understand and navigate risk with God.

Our culture is fascinated by new ideas, especially when it comes to interpreting our lives. Rarely do we see the danger in embracing the next bright, shiny offering for how we see ourselves, God, or the story we find ourselves in.

Even in Paradise, Adam and Eve couldn’t avoid risk. They would either risk trusting God or they would risk the serpent’s promise that they could become gods. The problem wasn’t with risk itself...but with whom they would trust and how they would proceed.

The fact that we’re continually caught off guard when turbulence hits reveals our expectation that each day should go smoothly. We base our schedule on best-case scenarios and then are shocked when anything derails our perfectly laid plans.