The Great Adventure

I had a choir director in high school that encouraged us to make “loud” mistakes. We were a timid, young group so many of us would hold back if we were unsure of a note, but he told us if we didn’t make our mistakes audible, it could never be corrected. Looking back on my choir days, I’ve found that this is an applicable lesson to real life.

Now, let me clarify, I’m NOT encouraging purposeful sinning. What I am encouraging is taking risks. I once heard that often times discovering God’s will means doing what you think is God’s will and when it falls flat, trying something else. God does sometimes reveal His will to us (and by will, I mean personal fulfillments of an individual’s role in the grand scheme of the Gospel story), but sometimes we need to just step out in faith and be proven, or disproven.

If you’re like me, the idea of taking risks sounds a bit, well…risky. Control is so much safer. But if you’re like me, you’ve learned that trying to personally control everything is tiring, overwhelming, and ineffective. It is so much more freeing to let go and allow the Creator of the universe to direct and guide your life. The song “Beautiful the Blood” by the worship band Fee makes the profound declaration, “I never knew surrender could feel so free.”

Christianity is not safe. God is not safe. In her song, “Wide Wide World”, Erin O’Donnell expresses that as humans we so often forget that God is not safe. We want to keep things safe and comfortable, but God is calling us to something outside of ourselves; something bigger, something greater. “I’ve got the shakes all over and I wanna turn around, but I’m twice as scared of missing the good that can be found.” God calls us to great things, and oftentimes extremely terrifying things. But the beauty is that God has the power and desire to make fearful people into fearless people.

In my own personal battle between comfortable, familiarity and experiencing the incredible adventure God is calling all of us to, I came to face the realization that in order to risk big, I have to first surrender. We cannot be reckless in our own lives; God commands us to be responsible financially, emotionally, physically, sexually, verbally, etc. But when it comes to doing what God has called us to in order to bring others into the kingdom, we must be willing to risk whatever it takes.

Let us desire to balance responsibility in our lives with a sense of adventure in regards to the things of God. Let us be able to let go of our need for control in experiencing the adventure of God and leave the responsibility for the unabandoned adventure of the spiritual in God's hands.