What does to stake all on GOD? It simple means trusting God completely, obeying God completely and living wholly for God. Being a Christian is a special vocation. It is a call for mission that demands total surrender and a total yes to God. It calls for love of God and love of neighbor expressed in total obedience to God. It is a vocation of complete trust and faith in God and complete obedience to him. This is what we express when we pray, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty”.
We trust in him because he can take care of us; even if he crushes us, have will restore us, for alive or dead, we belong to him Rom 14:8. We believe in God because all that he has revealed is true. We obey him completely because he does not ask of us what is impossible.
God has always manifested himself in those who co-operate with his grace. They reflect his glory, they experience his blessings and become channels of these blessings. They are called the same way every other person is called. Each of them has a difficult mission from the Father and trials to undergo. We have examples of such people from among the Saints. In Gen 12, God called Abraham for the mission of separating worshippers of one true God from idol worshippers. God told Abraham that he will be a blessing. Abraham obeyed and abandoned his kinsmen and women for an unknown land. Further, in Gen. 17, God made a covenant with Abraham. God promised to multiply his descendants and asked Abraham was living with the trial of having no child. It was a difficult cross as Abraham expressed in Gen. 17:17-18, but God re-assured him and he remained faithful. In Gen. 22, God asked Abraham of a sacrifice of the son of the covenant. Abraham obeyed. God multiplied his blessings.
The mission of Moses was difficult too. He had to meet with Pharaoh and carried the people on his shoulders. By signs and wonders God subdued Pharaoh through the plagues (Exo. 7:11), divided the Red Sea, gave them water from the rock, gave them manner from Heaven, gave them quails for meat and defeated their enemies.
Elijah had the mission of fighting idolatry of his time. Finally, God won victory in the fiery conquest over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 King 18). He had to flee from the enemy to Mount Horeb to meet the Lord. There he declared “I am consumed with a jealous zeal for the Lord God of Hosts (1 King 19:10).
The Blessed Virgin Mary embraced her mission if being the Mother if the Redeemer with her fiat. Her soul was pierced with a sword when she stood at the foot of the cross (Luke 2:35; John 19:25-26). Now she is Mediatrix of all graces because she is full of grace.
Peter, other Apostles and other Saints of the early Christians suffered martyrdom. Other men and women who had the faith to stake their all on God include Francis of Assisi, Franceis Xavier, Ignatius of Loyola, John Baptist De La Salle, Theresa of Avila, Theresa of the Child Jesus, Theresa of Calcuta, Justin Martyr and many others. God manifested his glory in their lives and made them channels of his blessings.