by Bowen Lochman What do you think of when you hear the word “adventure?” When I think of adventure, I imagine something that gets my blood flowing, something that opens my eyes to things around me, something that awakens me to things I miss on a regular day and makes my soul feel exhilarated. This picture is the first thing that comes to mind. Yet, if we dig a little deeper into this word’s meaning, we find something very interesting. In the book Adventure and the Way of Jesus, Greg Robinson defines adventure as: “An experience where the outcome is unknown” (Robinson). This definition has challenged my previous view and expanded the concept of “adventure” for me. I decided to explore the word’s origin and found that it is derived from the Roman middle-class Latin word adventūra, meaning "what will happen." I find this meaning fascinating because isn’t there so much in our lives that we ask this question about? We stress and we worry. We overanalyze, and the whole time we ask just one simple question: What will happen? Our very lives are an adventure, but without the Lord to depend on, life can be full of stress, worry, anxiety, and despair. Stepping into the adventure that God has for us is only truly possible when we give up our sense of control over the outcome and surrender it to the Lord. In order to truly live in this state of adventure, we cannot keep taking the reins out of God’s hands. We must continually live in the mystery of the unknown while still having the knowledge and trust that God has everything in His hands. Living our lives in the midst of adventure is not as easy as it sounds. Letting go of our worry and stress is not easy. Giving control to God is challenging! Here at DM, it often seems things are constantly going wrong, and it can be easy to get sucked into grasping for control, only to find oneself worried and stressed. The past few weeks here have been extra challenging; all sorts of things have gone wrong:
With these worries weighing down our staff and each of us feeling the stress and burden that accompanies such things, we dragged ourselves into our weekly staff meeting and looked at each other, noticing how tired and bogged down all of us looked and how weary we felt. We went around and shared the things that were heavy on our hearts, and together we cried out to the Lord through prayer. Then we opened our songbooks and sang… “Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering; though there's pain in the offering blessed be Your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be Your glorious name!”  When we had finished worshipping, we looked around the room with tears spilling down our cheeks. We had poured out our worries, stress, weariness, and struggles on Jesus. We smiled at each other and felt the Lord’s presence among us, lifting each of our faces with His hand and comforting us. We no longer had to carry the worry that the enemy was using to deceive us into thinking we needed control. Instead, we threw off the weight of stress and worrying about things we couldn’t control, and we stepped into the adventure that God held before us. We took a leap of trust, and while it didn’t instantly take away all of the things that had gone wrong, it did take away the pressure we were placing on ourselves to control everything. From that moment on, we were able to fully experience and enjoy the unknown, knowing and trusting that God would handle it—maybe not in our way but in His way. That, my friends, is adventure! In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says… We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9  The enemy is working hard to beat us down. He is placing worry in our laps and making it so easy to want to grab control and steer the ship. In truth, we only have the illusion of control of our lives, but what we can control are our attitudes and our posture. Let us choose an attitude of joy and a posture of praise that we may lift our voices to heaven and rejoice, placing our worries on Him and entering into the adventure of a lifetime! Over the few weeks since that meeting, I have seen prayer after prayer answered, some in small ways some in big ways, and for some answers we still wait. Currently, though…
And this piece of scripture has continued to encourage me: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Our lives are a mystery, always asking what will happen—an adventure! Each day we get to choose if we will worry and stress about that which we cannot control or if we will lift our eyes to heaven and give all our questions over to Jesus. What would happen if we truly lived each day as an adventure, trusting the Lord with the outcome and giving our worries and cares to Him? How would this change our relationship with God? I think it is worth trying and finding out. Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.
2 Corinthians 4:1
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