Will You Say Yes To God's Adventure?

I have come to find that one of the best ways to experience fulfillment is to say yes to God’s call to adventure.

When you think of God inviting you to share in His adventure, what do you think of? Do you imagine a distant God? An angry God? A God of empty promises? Or do you think of a joy-filled God? A trustworthy, always-working, faithful God?

Depending on your answer, the word “adventure” may be disturbing. Thoughts of obstacles, struggles and discomfort race to mind, and for some of you, the instinct to decline the invitation may appear to be the best option.

Take Bilbo Baggins from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, for example. In the opening pages, Gandalf challenges him to join him “in an adventure that I am arranging.” Bilbo quickly replies, “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”

Sound like you?

I cannot assure you that answering God’s call to adventure will not inevitably, at some point, bring you face to face with risk and sacrifice and pain. It will. But God is in fact full of joy, and the reality of your adventure with God shifts dramatically when you change your perspective to focus on this truth.

I love the apostle Paul’s description of the good news about Jesus as the “gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God.” One translation says “the glorious gospel of the blissful God” and another “the glory of the happy God.” As the blessed God, He is inexplicably content and lives in an eternal condition of joyous well-being.

God is a happy God who invites us into what He is doing with great pleasure because, even in spite of the present reality of our broken and damaged world, He is working out His purposes. He created this planet and human beings with outrageous love and grand purposes.

And guess what? He hasn’t changed His mind.

God’s dream is still to have in the end what He planned in the beginning, but here’s the catch: His dream for us is that we will join Him in making that dream come to pass; that we will say yes to His call to adventure.

When we understand that God’s dreams for our lives — for us to experience true partnership with Him — are inextricably connected to His dreams for the world and we say yes to partnering with Him in bringing His Kingdom to earth, we will experience true fulfillment.

Again, this is no proverbial walk in the park. It is a journey filled with risk and sacrifice and pain. But it is here — where we are working in partnership with God to bring things together the way God had originally intended — that true purpose meets us.

And despite God’s adventure being full of challenges, you’ll simultaneously experience the wonderful pleasures of partnership with a joy-filled God.

I’d love to hear your story about saying yes to God’s call to adventure. How has it brought you true fulfillment in your life? Leave a comment to inspire others to say “yes!”