The Unpredictable Adventure of Following God

by: Newbie

            I find that when I step back and look at my life, especially my spiritual life, my prayers are almost always the same. “God, I want to know you, feel you, experience you, know your will for my life, and sense your calling”. That’s the deepest and realest hunger in my heart. I’m still waiting for a reply to that email. And I sense as I encounter more authentic journeyers that I am not alone in the hunger

            I find a common thread in my heart shared by many men.  We have hungered for adventure since we were boys. We did the sports ‘thing’ like all of our gender were supposed to do when we were young. Some of us succeeded, some of us didn’t. Some of us decided that playing the tuba might be a little more our style. I turned out to be an adventure addict when I was young. I started hang gliding at 14. I hot air ballooned at 17 and parachuted at 19. I Whitewater rafted and cross country skied and climbed the highest mountain in the lower 48 states – three times.

            Many of us have found in the spiritual part of our journey that all the adventures of this world don’t compare with the adventure of knowing and following God. And many of us have found that the adventure hasn’t always been a fun one. We have found that the thrill has taken a very different course than we planned. If we were to be really honest, the adventure has been more like a long march with a blind fold on at times. It has been the journey into learning to love God without the path being clear in any form, and repeatedly lined with failed attempts to do his will. Sure, we have had successes, but the failures still seem to outnumber them.

            One of the essential ingredients in the call to adventure is the necessary ingredient of failure. That’s what makes it an adventure and not a sure thing. It sounds good when you read about it in a book, but the reality is a little harder. We take the step and launch the business we have dreamed of for years, only to have that adventure end in failure and humiliation and loss of confidence. It feels like God has led us out on to a plank, and then sawed the plank off. What happened to the doctrine that says if we are boldly stepping into what we are sure He has called us to, He will surely bless it?

            Some have followed God, regardless of the cost, and it has lead them off the plank and into shark infested waters. The great adventure of following hasn’t been that great. Sure, we could talk to dozens of brothers who would gladly remind us that God only gives good gifts, and surely our situation was because of our sin and nothing more. But then that means that we are more powerful than God, since we are able to thwart his plans. I find that hard to swallow.

            I have found that the adventure, the real adventure, has been learning to love and trust God even though it seems like he hasn’t done anything for me. The question has risen “will I follow even though He benefits me naught?” (Sorry, I just had to get some KJV in there somehow). Answering it with an honest heart has been somewhat challenging. And finding answers, let alone easy ones, has been all but impossible. But there have been truths that have surfaced in the ocean around me that have helped make the way a little more manageable.

            Since we Americans like easy answers and convenient packages, here’s some hard truths I’ve had to learn in this journey;

            1. God doesn’t owe us anything. I hear so much in church today about what we want God to do, what God needs to do, or false teaching about what He will do for us, all of which have ‘me’ at the center of the universe, not Him. A truth existing from the very foundations of eternity past is this; there is a God – you are not Him.

            2. Life may not go just the way we want, but God is still God. Whether we like it or not, He drives the car, not us, and the road may take us to the very places we work so diligently to steer around. The question arises “Will I still follow?”

            3. God just might be more interested in relationship with us than He is in making our lives better, our paychecks bigger, and our wives sexier. He might have a wholly different agenda, always motivated out of love that we might be totally missing. It might be that He isn’t really that interested in us having it safe and easy and smooth this side of heaven. Maybe He is interested in us taking his hand, come hell or high water, on the way there.

            None of us knows what the road ahead holds. We can keep telling ourselves that it couldn’t get worse. But then it does. Sometimes it gets to the point where we begin to accept loss and disappointment and set backs as the norm rather than the exception. But I have a sneaking suspicion that God isn’t done writing the rest of the book. In fact, who knows how many chapters there are left to write, and where the plot might go next. The twists and turns are His to negotiate, not ours. We might just wake up one day and notice that something new is growing there, especially in the areas we hadn’t noticed anything growing in, where ground had been left fallow. New growth comes first as weeds in an old field. After awhile there are as many weeds and old crops. Seeing which plants he pulls up and which he fertilizes is the adventure of following a confusing, wonderful, and always loving God.

© 2007 Mike and Laura Ege, OutsideEdgeCoaching.com

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