Adventure

I’ve been on lots of adventures, traveling the globe as a child. I’ve hiked through the forests of the Dominican Republic to get to remote villages, snorkeled in the warm waters of the Bahamas, and in Jamaica slept on floors in rooms where bats were flying around the rafters and diving down so close to me I’d hide in my sleeping bag. I’ve had the privilege of seeing the tremendous volcanic mountain in the Canary Islands, and the breathtaking landscape of the Faroe Islands. I’ve sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, been in the Baltic sea, and gone through the Panama Canal. I’ve been in calm seas and rough seas. In such rough seas, our vessel’s propellers would shoot so far out of the water they would shake the whole ship before crashing back under the waves. I would lay in my bunk almost feeling my body go vertical as if the ship was going to flip upside down. I visited Auschwitz, the largest German Nazi concentration camp. I visited remote villages in Africa, accessible only by boat where we got to meet the most amazing people who welcomed us with such incredible kindness. We would eat together, they would dance for us, and there was a sharing of their culture with us. There was such beauty and love. There was also unrest, civil war, disease, and hunger.

Adventures can be wondrous, perilous, beautiful, and scary all wrapped into one. 

Then I realize, that as we get older and experience life, another phrase comes out of people, “I’m just not the adventurous type”. This word we call “adventure” causes a reaction in people. 

I looked up the word adventure in the thesaurus. I was shocked at what I found. Words that were supposed to be similar listed words like endangerment, jeopardy, peril, and hazard. So I decided to look up antonyms. To my surprise words like safety, protection, stillness, assurance, and to my greatest surprise, the word truth appeared. I sit here and wonder, why on earth is the word truth standing in opposition to adventure?

If Jesus is the living breathing representation of the truth, He seems to also be the living breathing representation of a life of adventure. His life on earth was full of beauty, surprise, creativity, compassion, and love. But also full of betrayal, pain, and horrific things He chose to endure, even death. And He did it all for us. 

As many adventures as I’ve been on, the ones that are unmatched are not places visited but the people in those places. Where the Holy Spirit leads and moves in ways that are only explained through the supernatural. The landscapes are beautiful of course, He created them. But the people, He created in his own image.  So that makes mankind the most beautiful in all of creation. And we must see ourselves and others as such. 

I believe that if we call ourselves a follower of Jesus Christ, we need to be people of adventure. We must choose to step out and be willing to risk our safety because He who called us is faithful. We have been given very specific blueprints of who we should emulate and it is not the most popular pastors on social media. Crosscheck It. Paul wrote,

Paul was a living example of what adventure could look like and it was more often perilous, and painful than what we would define as beautiful and wonderous. I think they are all wrapped up together, especially when we are walking in obedience to our Heavenly Father. It’s worth the pain and trauma because we know He’s working and will bring beauty and wonder no matter what we experience in the natural.

We must stop believing what the world throws at us, and can also be what other believers say to us. We must first start listening to the very specific instructions the Holy Spirit will lead us into. We must have faith and act. He will show us surprises we would never uncover on our own, paths we would never find on our own, and people we would never meet on our own. We are world changers because we carry the very Spirit of Jesus Christ. We are privileged to be carriers of His Spirit. That means we bring love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. What an honor! Do you understand that? We don’t deserve any of it, but our Father, the Lord of all creation, Holy, Righteous, King of Kings loves us despite us. We need to be people who rely on Him alone and let go of our selfish desires and ambition. Let go of the things of this world and grab a hold of the sword of the Spirit that is the Word of God. I don’t know about you but what a different world we would see if we would drop offense, bitterness, unforgiveness, the love of money, and especially our “rights” to anything but that which reflects the very character of Jesus Christ. Nothing else matters except that which is eternal. We live in a dark world. We live in a dark time. We live in a world that desperately needs Him. Crosscheck It, He sent out the disciples with these instructions,

He has adventures waiting for us. They won’t be easy, as Jesus maps out plainly in the remainder of chapter ten. But we have the most amazing Father whispering in our ear each morning, if we will listen, “Child get up, we’re going on an adventure today”. 

Simon went on an adventure with Jesus. It went against everything he knew as a master of his trade, it went against everything culture would have told him. It went against everything he had been taught. But, he knew there was something different about Jesus. He didn’t know how it would turn out, but more importantly, He did what Jesus asked. With that obedience, Simon embarked on the most amazing adventures he would ever know. Together, they would change the world.

Crosscheck It. Don’t roll over and go back to sleep. Wake up, listen, get ready and then head out for what could be the most amazing adventure of your life.