What comes to your mind when you think of risk and adventure?  When I think of this, there are often images of being a kid, jumping on the bike and riding around town, through the woods down trails, and exploring everything.  When your a kid, everything seems to be an adventure as you are starting to try new things.  You’re willing to get out there and try new things, go new places unsure about what lies ahead, but still you want to go.  For my kids, they love to get out and explore.  We have a river that runs along our neighborhood and they will get out there and explore through the woods, even stretching the limits to follow the river to see where it goes.  That’s a part of being a kid.  God set in us the desire to explore and take on adventure. The desire for adventure.

Something happens though.  We grow older.  We become tainted by the world and we lose the adventure.  Some become stranded in adolescence and try to keep it going, while many of us grow older and begin to do what the world expects of us.  We begin to lose the adventure.  We fall into complacency in our lives and start to do ‘the right thing.’  For me, I know that is definitely the case.  I’ve mentioned this a bunch, but I went college have multiple degrees in areas I really didn’t have a passion for, but thought, “Hey, that’s how to make more money and be successful.”  I thought that was what mattered.

Sitting in our men’s study this week I was reminded of things I learned reading through Wild At Heart and at the Boot Camp last year.  We all have an adventure to live.  As I mentioned before, God set adventure in our hearts.  The desire to risk and follow the desires of our hearts.  I was listening to a recording with Bart Hansen from Ransomed Heart where he talked about the adventure and risk.  Something he shared with us a Boot Camp.  Psalm 37:4, which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Life is meant to be lived as an adventure.  This comes with living with faith in where God is leading us and being willing to follow wherever He is leading.  I read this in Wild at Heart, but at first didn’t know what this meant to me.  Risk. That’s a scary word for many.  It was for me.  I was so complacent and comfortable for so long.  I felt I was doing what I was supposed to and was able to provide adequately for my family.  We started so young, Amber and I, and I wanted to prove I could do it.

I realized that God had another plan for me though.  I had been feeling this calling on my heart for a while, that there was something more I needed to do.  I didn’t know what that was.  I began writing on this blog.  I knew I was being called to help people in someway, but didn’t know how.  Ideas came and went.  Then it all happened last year.  I realized that God was calling me deeper to help seek the lost and help them find breakthrough and restoration as I did.  This led to counseling.

When this first came up, I really looked at it like, “Really God?  Counseling?”  He affirmed this, not only in my heart, but in the conversations I later had with Amber and then with my pastor and friend, Tim, as well as others.  So I did it.  I jumped in.  It was time to go on an adventure.

Bart Hansen shared something significant when it comes to adventure and risk.  We can risk all day long, but if we don’t follow God in faith through it, we will have nothing.  Also, we can spend our days trying to follow God and putting in the study and work, but if we don’t jump out and risk when He is calling us to adventure, then we are left with nothing as well. Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Follow God, no matter where He is leading.  Follow in faith. Be willing to risk it all, but to risk it all for Him and Him alone.  That’s the kicker.

In Wild At Heart, John Eldredge wrote, “Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an adventure to be lived. That’s the nature of it and has been since the beginning when God set the dangerious stage for this high-stakes drama and called the whole wild enterprise GOOD. He rigged the world in such a way that it only works when we embrace risk as the theme of our lives, which is to say, only when we live by faith. A man just won’t be happy until he’s got adventure in his work, in his love, and in his spiritual life.”

The drama that is playing out in front of us in God’s epic story is full of danger.  Risk is ingrained in our every being.  Every part of us.  We are meant to live a life in faith that is willing to follow God, to follow Christ, no matter the cost.

I still look at the work that lies ahead of me.  I don’t know what God will have in store as time moves forward and as I complete my studies.  I know there is a tremendous amount of risk and change that will come our way.  The difference however, and Amber and I both see it this way, we are now following what God’s call is for us.  We are willing to go on this adventure, because we know following Him is what we are meant to do.  It’s what all of us are meant to do, but sadly only a few do it.  It took us until our mid-30s to figure it out, but that’s how He worked it out.

If you trust Him, He will lay the path before you.  Jesus calls us to follow Him.  Living a life that is unscripted and lived by faith, is the only life worth living.  As John Eldredge wrote in Fathered by God, “This is the time for a young man to stop saying, ‘Why is life so hard?’ He takes the hardness as the call to fight, to rise up, to take it on.”  

It’s time to stop standing still.  Time to stop letting the world dictate what you do and how you live.  Rather, it’s time to start following the desires of your heart which is where God is leading.  Follow Him on the adventure that is being laid out in front of you.   Be willing to risk it all for Jesus.  It won’t always be easy, but the cost will be worth it.