Adventure isn't found where you are . . . but it is found in who you are called to be and who you are called to become
Our interpretation of our lives can sometimes be so far off from what is accurate that we can become envious of the lives others are leading thinking they are somehow exempt from unhappiness. We aren't meant to live in dissatisfaction towards our lives, but sometimes we get to that point through time and trial.
For me being single, it is easy to look at someone else’s career or wife and family and think to myself, “They must be insanely happy . . . and I hope I get there one day.”
That is the dangerous place I speak of . . . the place where we find ourselves taking for granted the lives we have been given and looking elsewhere for something more. We may take a glance at our every-day routine and wonder where the adventure is. Frustration is sure to follow if we allow those thoughts to fester down a small path of discontent.
What if we could see our lives right now as the adventure we have been longing for?
What if we could make sense of all the navigating we have to do each day? What if there was a greater purpose to all the unexpected challenges and life's demands that seem to completely miss what we truly want?
I hope there is a clear picture being painted here, a picture of the misplacement of our desires and materializing at least in our imaginations what we want for our lives because we have believed the lie that if only our circumstances changed, we would then be happier than we are right now.
The truest of adventures doesn't come from circumstances . . . adventure comes from God. If He is dwelling in us, then true adventure comes within ourselves.
You were meant to live form your heart . . . "for everything you do flows from it." God created us this way . . . not to determine our fulfillment from the grander circumstance but by His eternal life flowing through us, constantly. (Proverbs 4:23)
I have seen many men, including myself, who have taken on the campaign of trying to be "good Christian men" according to their own idea of what it should look like, or worse, what others think it should be.
Yet, all the while we were only suppressing our desire and passion that is the actual person God created us to be. That is as successful as caging a horse and demanding it to be strong enough to take on days of hiking through rugged terrain. It is no wonder so many men are lacking passion and just plain aliveness in their souls. You do that and you are setting yourself up for depression from suppression. We aren't meant to live that way. We are made in His image, bearing the fullness of passionate life flowing through the underbelly of our soul's rhythm as it was meant to be synchronized with His.
Think about this: Would you want someone to pay for your meal?
Sure, we all would . . . but would it matter if that person really wanted to do it?
If they told you, “I really don’t want to pay for your meal right now but I know it is the right thing to do so that makes me feel obligated and I would rather bite the bullet of buying your meal than feeling the agonizing guilt from my own conceptual principles I have built that tell me this is what being a ‘good man’ looks like.”
I would probably have stopped that dude at “I really don’t want to pay for your meal.”
Sound familiar?
We do it all the time. One decision after another, all in a desperate attempt to either escape feeling guilty or coming from some sort of self-inflicted sense of duty and obligation. I am not saying doing what we know is right is wrong, but apart from God leading us in what is right, how can we be sure we know what in fact is right in the countless situations we are in? He knows our hearts and most of the time, we are pretty aware of where we are too. So even though we can get away with choosing something that looks good, deep down it isn't where our hearts actually are . . . and to God, they are one of the same.
The problem is it will make us look good in front of others and it's a problem because after a while, we begin to believe that too . . . that we are that good.
>>Mathew 15:8 comes to mind here as we search the trenches of our own stench.
Another scripture that comes to mind is when we see God’s heart in 1 Samuel 15 where He desires obedience for our sake rather than sacrifice for ours. God wants us to do what Adam did not in the garden of Eden. He wants us to be naked before Him, not hiding ourselves but letting it all hang out. I believe it is a form of almost punishing ourselves as we seem to incessantly strive to earn His favor through good deeds as to look good in front of others as well as thinking it pleases God.
We desperately need a perspective change.
For some it is hard to swallow that sometimes He doesn’t want us to do the “good” things we think we should.
We must be careful the systems we have created to define for ourselves what is good and what is wrong, for we may miss God completely pursuing our own devices of truth. Indeed that is what our Creator never intended for us to be the judge of, the one calling what is in fact right or wrong. Remembering the temptation from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and becoming "like God" ring a bell?
Again, we desperately need Him to change our perspectives into seeing ourselves and our lives differently void of what we think.
This is our only hope, that God can show us what we are not seeing. He can walk us through those wildly uncharted places each day seems to bring.
We have a heavenly Father who doesn’t want our good deeds . . . He wants our hearts.
The “good things” we want to do to please Him come from us spending time with Him and having Him change our perspective to see His. They come from that place of spending time with Him like fruit comes from a well nourished tree in the Spring time. This is where our view of our lives becomes redeemed.
I just spent some time with a good friend on a trip in Montana around where he grew up. We both live in Texas, so needless to say, there is not nearly the same sort of breathtaking beauty we had just witnessed in places like the Paradise Valley and Yellowstone as we find in the lonestar state.
On the flight headed home as we were passing the Grand Tetons and soaking up the last remaining glimpses of the mountains, I leaned over and asked him playfully, “How are we going to go back home after seeing all this?” He laughed out loud and I smirked as we stared out of the window. It sort of hit both of us I think, the reality of our lives being back home in Texas no matter how bad we may have wanted to make a permanent stay in beautiful Montana.
The truth was we were ready for home . . . ready for our families and friends . . . ready for the life we had been given.
Why is that?
How could we be ready somehow to leave such a vast adventure in the raw markings from its Creator we had just experienced?
The answer was simple to us.
Our truest adventure wasn’t out on those mountains or down in the rivers. It was inside of us. It was anywhere God led us and gave us the opportunity to go because in us we carried the truest adventure of all.
We carry Him.
Adventure isn’t found where you are . . . but it is found in who you are called to be and who you are called to become.
I have found adventure in a conversation with my Mom as we talk passionately about what God is doing in our lives.
I have found adventure spending time with my Dad and brother as we pursue large-mouth bass out of a local river.
I have found adventure in encouraging one of my young students as I pour into them the wisdom that has come from my Father, so I bring it to their hearts.
I have found adventure in walking through something painful and hard while cleaving desperately to God because He is my only hope of making it through to the next step.
Each moment . . . each opportunity . . . whether to us seems big or small offers glimpses of an adventure that we actually desire. They may not look like it in the same way one puzzle piece looks nothing like what the completed puzzle should. That is our lives. Adventure doesn’t come in one big piece. The adventure God offers us comes in pieces, and it is God’s place to arrange them just so.
If we go chasing our cravings of adventure into the lie that it is where we are, we will be gravely disappointed. I have been all over this country and have seen the kind of awe-inspiring beauty that almost gives you an ache in your soul because you know you cannot take it with you in your pocket or freeze the moment forever. Yet, no matter where I have been, nothing compares to the fulfillment in being who God has called me to be, wherever that leads me to go.
Wherever the adventure takes me, I know that the places aren’t what the adventure actually is. We can think of the places we go as sort of a backdrop in our lives for the things God calls us to but the main event is who He has called us to be.
Take some time right now and sort through things that have been disappointments in your life. It could be in a relationship or circumstance or even simply something you have been wanting to do that just hasn’t happened yet.
Ask God the hard questions weighing on your soul and digging valleys in your heart. Ask Him to change your perspective to see the adventure that is now . . . that is your life.
Now listen to what He says . . . draw near and lean in to His voice. He may show you pictures in your thoughts or you may need to write down some whispers He is telling you.
The key here is to spend time right now and allow Him to change your perspective. Allow Him right now to exchange the small puzzle pieces you see around you for the much grander big picture that is actually your life.
(Photos: taken in Ousel Falls Park, Montana and Yellowstone National Park)
