“Can you discover everything there is to know about God?” Job 11:7 NLT
“If ever you lose your passion for more of God, you’ve lost the adventure of a lifetime.”
My thoughts today are about “the great adventure.”
Today, we have extreme sports of every kind; people living on adrenalin rushes – pushing against previous limits, stretching accepted boundaries, seeking new challenges – extreme skiing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and skydiving. Maybe that’s a little much, but your life should be an adventure, yet most people spend their years leaving out the adventure part – avoiding risk, taking the safe paths, and preferring predictability. How about you? How adventurous are you willing to be? Sometimes the better things in life are found in out of the way places, while exploring experiences off the beaten path. You may discover important things about yourself in adventures.
Now, take my wife – please! No, that’s a comedian’s old joke. Gayle, she’s an adventurer – a happy wanderer – who never is lost; she’s just finding a place she hasn’t been before. She never meets a stranger; she just happily finds a new friend she didn’t meet until now. I confess that I am not inclined to being greatly adventurous. I feel better within the boundaries of what I know and where I have been. That’s my cautious and conservative nature, I guess.
The most adventurous thing I can recall doing as an adult was white-water rafting in Colorado with a couple of friends for my 44th birthday – and even that was done only at their insistence. As a child, maybe I got too much adventure with my Dad in his single engine plane. That was in the late 40’s and early 50’s. We got caught in an unexpected storm that turned out to be worse than could have been anticipated. Thankfully, my Dad was an avid and skilled pilot. When my side window in that small two-seater plane was sucked out by the storm, I held the baggage cover there while he navigated a very bumpy, blustery flight to the nearest airport. He loved to fly. His greatest disappointment was when health concerns prevented the renewal of his pilot’s license.
But my thoughts today are not so much on the natural adventures of what you do or where you go; it is about the exploration of the spiritual and supernatural in everyday life. This is one adventure I can get into whole-heartedly – the exciting and life-enriching adventure of knowing God! That adventure is all reward with very little risk, unless you count the occasional discomfort of following Jesus wherever He leads and doing whatever He asks.
The Bible describes this spiritual adventure in these words: “Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever! Amen.” Romans 11:33-36 NLT/NIV.
Lloyd Ogilvie, 61st Chaplain of the Senate (1995 – 2004) and author of 44 books, penned a single, simple statement that has challenged my life and ministry for many years, “The God of your experience will always be greater than your experience of God.” No matter what you know about God, no matter how long or well you have known Him, there is so much more waiting for you to discover. If ever you lose your passion for more of God, you’ll miss the great adventure of a lifetime. The more you discover about Him, the more you will love Him, the more you will rejoice in serving Him, and the more gladly you will share Him with others. Read Philippians 3:10 NIV/Ephesians 4:13 NKJV/ 2 Peter 1:2 NIV.
My prayer for you today is: never be satisfied with yesterday’s experience of God.