1. an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.
2. daring and exciting activity calling for enterprise and enthusiasm.
From the Latin adventurus, meaning “about to happen”
Instead of coming up with New Year’s resolutions, my team talked about words we’d like to focus on this year. I wasn’t going to choose one, but this word just kept coming up in my journaling on the first morning of 2015.
Laura, Seth, and I did ministry one day at a church in Quito. On our way there, we talked about many things, including the way we view God. I tend to view God as a loving God, yes, but loving in a distant sense. I know He has plans for me and He will work for the good of those who love Him and all those verses that we cling to. In my head, He is sovereign and way above anything I could ever comprehend. He is to be submitted to. He is to be feared. When I pray, I hedge all my prayers with “if it’s your will” and I pray a lot for my own heart to change.
These are all true things! These are all good things! But I think I’m putting God in a box. I don’t want to limit the way He speaks and works in my life. I want to be able to recognize His voice like the sheep recognize their shepherd’s voice (John 10). I want to ask God for things and have faith that He wants to give good gifts to His children. I want to be able to be honest about my feelings and desires with Him like the Psalmists were. (If you haven’t read the Psalms lately, go read a few. There’s a lot of pain and joy and sorrow and awe in there.)
Seth compared a relationship with God to a relationship with a father. After all, God is our Heavenly Father. If you’re eating dinner with your dad, you’re probably not going to sit there and wait for his every instruction. He isn’t going to tell you, “First drink this glass of water. Then use this fork to eat this salad. Then cut a chunk off this piece of steak and put it in your mouth.” He’d probably rather let you order what you want and enjoy it, and have a conversation with you over your meal. You’d probably get a say in the conversation too.
This is a new way of experiencing God’s love for me. I’m not comfortable with the informality and the honesty and the childlikeness of telling God what I want. It’s such a simple thing, but it confuses me. It feels selfish to me when I ask for things that would make me happy. But maybe God does want to listen to me. Maybe it’s okay to have fears and desires and hopes that extend beyond Christiany things like “your kingdom come, your will be done.” That’s what makes us human, I think, and didn’t God make us human and also in His image? Something I’ve been hearing over and over for the last few months is that our deepest human desire is to be loved and known and heard. Maybe that’s one of the ways God wants to love us: to know us and hear us just like we want to know Him and hear Him.
So I asked God to take me on adventures this year, and I want to follow Him where He takes me. They could be (and have been) physically challenging adventures like hiking up a volcano crater or ziplining upside down, but more than that, I want adventures that challenge me spiritually. I want to know Him more deeply and intimately in a way that is exciting and even daring. I want to challenge my understanding of Him, and I want to know more sides of Him than I’ve seen before. I want to ask the hard questions and search for answers. I want to seek Him with all my heart and know Him as my true Heavenly Father.
