Adventure
stories shaped my journey to adulthood. I loved watching Indiana Jones and the
A-Team. I read books where dragons were vanquished and quests completed; I simply
refused to put the books down until I read the very last victorious word. I
desperately longed to be part of an adventure. Imagine my devastation when I
realized that I was no knight, nor was I a force-equipped Jedi in a galaxy far,
far away. There were no dragons for me to vanquish.
As
I grew up, it became clear to me that some of my friends were having different
kinds of adventures. They were living wonder-full lives: the
I-wonder-how-funny-getting-absolutely-wasted-can-get life, the I-wonder-what-happened-last-night
life, the I-wonder-what-sex-is-like life, and of course the
it’s-a-wonder-I’m-still-alive life. On the other hand, I was living the good
Christian life, and it felt boring and bland. I craved the life of wonder I
read about in the novels I kept close to my bed.
I
can’t pinpoint the exact time this realization hit me; it might have been a
gradual revelation as I started paying attention to the stories in the Bible.
The Sunday School stories I easily disregarded as being uneventful and boring
came alive, and I understood that the Bible tells of adventure after adventure,
of thrilling quests and heroes facing extreme dangers. It even tells about
vanquishing a dragon!
A
Bible story that is near and dear to my heart is about three teenage boys,
captured and exiled to a foreign land and forced to worship the king who
conquered their home. Their famous answer to the king would match any line in
an adventure novel.
Such
conviction was met with wonders even more than my novels can offer. The young
men were thrown into a fiery furnace but were miraculously saved. Their lives
bear witness of the living God they serve.
Followers
of Christ are called to a full life,
one of adventure and wonder beyond imagination. In his account, Luke penned
some of Jesus’ last words on earth,
The
Christian life we are called to is an adventure, so it’s about time we stop
acting like we’re boring, dull, and bland. Life as a witness is an adventure! It’s time to embrace the call to adventure
and live fully empowered. In
our daily lives, we see no dragon, hold no swords, and experience no battles.
We do, however, interact with tasks and people every single day. (If we’re
honest, interactions with some people can leave us feeling as if we just did
battle with a dozen fire-breathing dragons.) We have the choice to live the way
we are intended to live.
Choose
God-sized goals.
God
called Moses to do the impossible: get God’s people out of slavery in the most
powerful nation on earth and deliver them to the promised land that was
inhabited by giants. Moses could have chosen to walk away from the burning bush
and live the life of a common shepherd.
But
he didn’t.
Sometimes,
we are faced with the option to do the impossible. Whether it’s going on a
missions trip to a place without internet and decent coffee, or whether it is
forsaking coffee for a month to sponsor a child. (In all honesty, those two
endeavors might be just as hard to a coffee-holic like me.) As Mark Batterson
wrote, “Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.”
Choose
to love fearlessly.
The best example of this is Jesus. For God so loved the
world… he braced death for us. Then he challenged us, if we love others we
must also be willing to lay down our lives for them. Will we choose to love the
awkward and annoying person in the cubicle next to ours?
Choose
to stand up and speak up.
Esther was placed in a position of power and
influence. If she had stayed quiet, she would have been spared, being the Queen
of Persia and all. Esther chose to speak up and save lives. Injustice happens
around us every day.
Choose
joy, even in the unexpected.
Being happy because everything that can go right in
our lives going right is not extraordinary. Having the joy to sing and shout
while awaiting sentence deep in the heart of a Greco-Roman jail has everything
to do with the Holy Spirit’s extraordinary power. The same power that was in
Paul and Silas is in us.
Always
choose grace. Grace
gave us the lives we have now. While we were unworthy, rolling around in deep
filth, Christ died for us. We are now part of his family, children of the Most
High King. Our family trait is this
grace. In adventure stories, the strength of a hero is in his convictions.
In our story, our strength is in our grace. When we have both the choice and
the right to deny favor, but we choose to give it despite of the damning
evidence… that is grace.
Every
morning, I wake up and have to choose what kind of life I will live. It’s a
daily thing. The lives of witnesses of Christ are lives of power and adventure,
but we need to be willing. We need to
choose the adventure. I challenge you to choose the full life. Choose
God-sized goals. Choose to love others. Choose to make a stand. Choose joy.
Choose to be gracious.
ABOUT TIRZA
I am a youth pastor at an international church in Jakarta. I enjoy writing, watching movies, reading, and traveling to new places. I consider having conversations about life over a good cup of coffee a part of my life calling.
Connect with Tirza on Instagram (@tmagdiel).
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