Seize the Adventure

God has so many facets, but one of my favorites is God the Creator. I love how he is an expert creator, but he left room for his creation to create, too. He could have created cars, computers, and coffee from the beginning, but he knew they would come to exist. He lovingly left room for us to explore, adventure, and create in earth’s playground.

There are countless stories in the Bible that evidence God’s love for adventure in his creation. Joseph’s life story is full of adventure, and the entire Israelite account is a massive adventure with many small stories woven in throughout their journey from Egypt to Canaan.

When I think about how God uses adventure in my life, I can look back to a time when I just wasn’t interested. I wanted safety and consistency. I had a life plan, and I wanted to execute it! I laugh at twentysomething me now. I imagine God had a good chuckle over her plans, because he knew he’d capture her heart and she’d say yes to all the adventure he had in store for her.

Adventure When Things Are Scary

My twentysomething plan involved living in the Dallas area near my parents forever. I now live in Denver with my husband and three kids as we plant a church called Fringe. God has used the adventure of moving to Denver to illuminate for us the value of adventure inherent in all of life.

Our kids are thirteen, eleven, and seven years old, and we’ve always valued quality time as a family. They’re involved in minimal activities throughout the year to allow our family to be free to go skiing in the winter and camping in the summer. After living in Colorado for five years, we upgraded from our three-room tent to a lovely camper.

During our first season of “glamping” with the trailer, we were sitting around our campfire when the park ranger came by and said to get ready to evacuate. We could see smoke in the distance, but it looked far away. We lazily started packing things up, assuming the park ranger was being overly cautious. We were wrong.

We eventually understood the severity and packed everything up. We had to drive toward the smoke to get out of our campground, and it turned out the wildfire was right in our state park. We had to drive through sections that had fire raging on both sides of the road.

When things are not going well, it’s easy to give in to fear. Instinct would have told us to drive away from the fire, but there was no exit that way. We had to go through the fire to escape it. This is how God has led me through many of the trials in my life.

Adventure When Things Are Exciting

 We love exploring God’s creation. We live in a state with endless opportunities for exploration waiting for us, and we have only begun to see all it has to offer. We’ve taken the kids white water rafting, on high ropes courses, and we send them to an amazing sleepaway camp each summer.

Our kids are typical humans. As individuals, they sometimes don’t want to do something we have chosen to do as a family. But we are instilling the value that we say yes to adventure in our family. We ask them to try new things. Just as when things go wrong, new experiences can invoke fear. It’s scary to be on a ropes course, step out onto the rope, and see the ground many feet below. It’s scary to be in the raft, see the rapids approaching, and depend fully on your guide to get you through them without going swimming.

When we said yes to the adventure of church planting, we had no idea what it would look like. If we had said no, not only would Fringe not exist, but we would have missed the opportunity to trust God in the unknown. We would have missed the lessons he wanted to teach us through the process of church planting, and we would have missed the love of all of the people he has brought to Fringe.

Seize the Adventure

Are you chasing safety, or are you chasing adventure? It’s scary to let go of safety and control, but the irony is that we are never in control. We only have the illusion of it. Releasing our grip on control as we reach for the unknown of adventure brings us closer to our creator. It requires a blind trust for what he has in store. We’re not guaranteed it won’t be without fire, but we are guaranteed he will lead us through to the next adventure. God loves to see his creation learn and experience new things in the world he created.

Amy Wiebe is a Jesus follower, wife, mom of three, church planter, finance director, and lover of sarcasm and deep conversation with friends. She also loves camping, rafting, skiing, sewing, and having people over. Amy blogs with her husband at fringechurch.com.

Photograph © Dimitar Donovski, used with permission