This was my office desk back in May, 2007. I smile looking at the first presentation I ever put together on our due diligence process at Woodthorpe Petroleum Ltd., a world bank report, an oil and gas prospectus, and a schematic revealing the infrastructure of one particular nation we were researching (water tables and tectonics I think).

Now, (after writing and publishing Clairvaux Manifesto in 2009) I’m back at it, planning for the future success of an oil company, fighting along side my friends. For example, earlier today we put in two bids equaling nearly 10 million dollars of potential work.

In time, as we secure more key investors, board and team members, we’ll be making deals like these regularly; growing exponentially along the way. In the meantime, we need the first few pennies to drop to get us started. Until we break through, everything is on the line…

I’ll put it this way: you can only manage risk so far, but it’s still called risk, or it’s not risk, it’s something else… and if it is something else, then it feels like something else, you know it’s something else other than risk. If it’s risk, it feels like the wind, it draws your mental faculties and senses into focus; the dialectic of rational empiricism which leverages this thing we call faith.

If it’s not risk, but mimics and parody’s risk, then it spews ambiguous language, stages cardboard props, and over-delivers empty promises… excuses really, poetic license with no applause, guns with no ammo, roses with no petals. If it’s not risk, but pretends to be, it’s awfully cheap and deserves to be judged rightly and held to account for what it is, moral laziness.

I am here in this office risking it all for love. For those who don’t know me, I have a message for you: I’m not standing around waiting for your applause or approval. I don’t need a pulpit to hold on to or a microphone to be heard. I’m helping widows and orphans in their distress. I’m building a solid foundation discovering, developing and deploying an armada of global change agents. I’m doing this for my family and friends. And one last thing, I’m doing this while proclaiming all the words and deeds of Jesus Christ; my Lord and my God.

The greatest risk human beings can ever take is to transfer their full allegiance over to Jesus Christ.