Review from last week: The metaphors we use for our lives reveal a great deal of how we feel about our lives at a given moment. Depending on the current circumstances of our lives the metaphors can change.  Sometimes life feels like a fight, sometimes like a great adventure, sometimes like a lost cause, sometimes like party, and sometimes like a long walk in a steady rain. 

 

I love it when life feels like a great adventure. I love it because I grew up moving continually and life often felt like an adventure to a new place. I love it because I am wired for adventure, for new frontiers, and for solving problems. I love it because I have had some very positive experiences in great adventures. I love it because I am an incurable story teller and I always need new and interesting material from great adventures for great stories. (Please get a second opinion on how “great” my stories are and how “new and interesting” my material is—but please do not get that opinion from my wife.)

 

Part of the issue with the metaphor of life as a great adventure is the question of how we define adventure. Captain Cook, after giving a lecture on polar exploration, was approached by a woman who said, “Captain Cook it must be wonderful going on all those adventures.” Cook replied by saying, “An adventure Madame is an expedition gone awry.” Or my dad’s favorite definition of an adventure: “An adventure is stark terror remembered from a comfortable setting.” Webster says that an adventure is, “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks, an exciting and remarkable experience.”

 

I guess that is the point of an adventure—there can be times of great excitement, achievement and discovery but there can also be times of danger and risk when things go awry and things get terrifying.

 

I understand that not everyone loves it when life feels like a great adventure. Some people are wired differently and prefer to not go on great adventures and to not even hear about great adventures. To them an adventure would be taking a different road to Austin. I would be bored to tears without some adventure in my life. But I also understand that I am not an “extreme adventure” person like those who circumnavigate the globe alone in a 16 foot sail boat. To some this is beautiful adventure—almost heaven. To me this is not adventure—it is insanity.

 

Wherever you fall on the “Adventure Spectrum” it is clear from the Bible that life is designed by God to be, among other things, “The Adventure of Faith.” Hebrews 11:1 and 6 say that, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. Without faith it is impossible to please God for those who come to Him must believe that He is and that He is the Rewarder of those who seek Him.” We do not know what is around the bend in our life path—not even what will happen in five minutes. But Hebrews 11 is full of God-lovers who lived the God adventure and who did it all while trusting Him. We are another generation of God-lovers living the adventure.

 

Remember that Webster says that an adventure is, “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks, an exciting and remarkable experience.”

 

What do we do when life feels like a great adventure? I am sure the answer to these questions would fill a book. I want to suggest three important choices when life feels like we are in uncharted territory with the certainty of risk but with the possibility of great impact.

 

First, be calm and lean on God. Panic bitterly complicates every situation—even those which would otherwise be benign. As we intentionally connect ourselves with the reality that God is with us we gain courage, sanity, and hope. The presence of God is far greater and far better than the absence of trials. In Exodus 33 God said that He would no longer go with His people because of their obstinate sin. He said that He would send an angel with them but He Himself would not go. The people of Israel were sad to the point of repentance. If God would not go they should not go. Precisely. If God will not go do not go. As you go on the adventure of faith always cultivate in your heart and mind the awareness of the presence of God and of the utter faithfulness of our God. Trust that God is always good and that He will be there with us in the times of terror and in the times when the expedition has gone awry. 

 

Second, be sensitive to what God is up to. God is an incessantly intentional Being. He is always up to something. Our challenge and our blessing is to be aware of what He is up to so that we can, in the words of Henry Blackaby, “join Him in what He is doing.” The great adventure is centrally joining God in what He is doing. The great mistake is to decide to do something, apart from the counsel and direction of God, and then ask God to bless what we decided to do. There is a great deal in the Bible that is clearly commanded and does not require further consultation with God—love Him, love others, be a witness, be gracious, be truthful, and about 800 other Bible commands. However the adventure also has nuisances that demand our attentiveness and insight. God might, at the most mundane and unexpected moment, give to us an opportunity for ministry to another person. In that moment He might do a great thing in someone’s life because we were paying spiritual attention.

 

Third, expect God to use you. Too often in my own adventure I expect that God will not use me. I expect that God actually showing up in a person’s life and using them greatly is what happens with other people and not with me. I decide that I am one of the people who was an “also ran” in the Christian adventure—I was on the adventure and I finished the race but I did not count for much. Clearly, God uses expectant people. If I believe, on a regular basis, that God will use me then He uses me. If you were God would you generally put a God-seeking unbeliever in an airplane seat next to an expectant and spiritually attentive believer or next to a non-expectant and spiritually unfocused believer? Those people I know who are most used of God are those people who think that being used of Him is the norm and the thing to expect.

 

Webster says that an adventure is, “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks, an exciting and remarkable experience.” Hebrews 11 says that for those who have trusted Christ life is “the adventure of faith.”

 

We have launched a great adventure here at Cypress in our “Building Bridges” initiative. We have great opportunities for simple and clear front-line investment in the lives of other people. It is risky but highly rewarding. The things we are doing together can be seen at Gearing Up for Fall. In addition, some of the greatest adventures we can experience are in walking across the office or across the driveway to build impactful relationships with those around us.

 

There can be no greater adventure than the adventure of faith—walking with God and working for God on a path that is exciting, dangerous, remarkable, and full of unknown risks. It is not a path that we take for the sake of getting “high on adventure.” It is a path we take for the sake of bringing greater honor to God and greater help to others. And along the way, as God walks with us, it can be thrilling. The level of our “adventure quotient” is not the issue. The issue is being expectant that God will use us and use us often.