2 Ways to Answer Your Heart’s Cry for Adventure

Is your life meaningful? Are you excited to wake up each day? Do you feel like you are making a difference in the world? Does your life feel like an adventure? Last week I shared some challenging words from my heart in my post 3 Reasons Why I’m Mad at the American Church, and I got a lot of good feedback from that. This week I want to share a more positive message that I’m just as passionate about. Here are two ways to answer your heart’s cry for adventure.

Does God Call us to a Life of Adventure?

Before I answer how, I want to make it clear that God does desire to lead us on adventures.

We watch movies and see people do incredible things and fight for things bigger than themselves. We hear inspiring speeches that spread goosebumps across our skin. Are these lives only possible in fictional worlds? It seems like it, doesn’t it? But what if that weren’t the case?

Look at the lives of the apostles. Look at the lives of Abraham, Joseph, Noah, Sampson, Moses, Joshua, and all the judges and prophets. If God could use them in incredible ways, can’t he do the same for us?

I believe he can. The problem is that following him down these paths is scary. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s so good.

It breaks my heart to see people live unfulfilling lives. Instead of living with true joy, they settle for an easy and comfortable life that doesn’t have any meaning or satisfaction. Life to them is an endless routine.

It’s a trap!

God has amazing plans for all of us. He wants to lead us on incredible adventures and change the world through us.

Ephesians 2:10 says “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God desires to do good works through you. How could God not desire to change people’s lives through you?

I talk more about God’s calling for believers and how he desires to fulfill the desires he’s set in your heart in my book Discovering God’s Calling. You can get an e-version of this book for free when you sign up for my email list.

If God has this great calling, then how do we answer our hearts cry for adventure?

#1 Fight Fear

When you step out to follow God on a grand adventure, you will almost always be afraid. In this case, you need to fight this fear. But, not all fear is bad. Some times we have a healthy fear that causes us to re-evaluate something dangerous. However, some times we just need to trust God.

Fear, concern, and doubt plagued me during my whole preparation process to go to the Middle East for two years. I never left the US before I moved to the Middle East nor did I have any good friends going with me. I had a team, but I didn’t know them until I left.

Sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep until late at night after several hours of laying in my bed trying to calm myself down. Sometimes my body shook. I often distracted myself and tried to forget what I was prepping to do.

You will never be fearless, but you can fight fear and not let it control you. Sometimes this just means not listening to fear.

I knew God called me to go, and that’s what helped me push through the fear. I had to trust that God would take care of me just as he had every other time.

The more fear attacked me, the more I pressed into God and reminded myself that he called me. The more you press into God the less fear controls you.

#2 Take A Risk

Don’t let people tell you what you can or cannot do. Don’t even let yourself tell you what you can’t do. God’s placed dreams and desires within us that he wants to fulfill. Sometimes these dreams sound impossible.

Numerous surveys show that people in their 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s don’t regret what they did, they regret what they didn’t do.

God’s given me the desire to write and be published for the sake of encouraging others. I often don’t believe I have what it takes. But, God keeps pushing me onward. He keeps encouraging me to take one small step after another. Will I ever get there? Only God knows.

What I do know is that there are thousands of people out there who need the books God’s inspired me to write. How dare I give up on them.

The same is true for you. How many people out there need you to follow God? How many of them need you to take this risk and follow the dream God’s set in your heart? Don’t you dare give up on them.

Assuming these are indeed God-given dreams in your heart. They are there for a reason. Take that risk. Don’t worry about failing. If it all falls apart, big deal. At least you tried. Numerous surveys show that people in their 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s don’t regret what they did, they regret what they didn’t do.

If you don’t know for sure that this is what God is calling you to, I’d encourage you to check out my blog posts: How does God Speak to Us? and Hearing God’s Voice.

So take that risk. Trust God. If it fails, get up and try again.

Answer Your Heart’s Cry for Adventure

Don’t let fear hold you back, and take that risk.

Whenever someone tells me to be safe on one of our mission trips to dangerous countries, I respond with “I won’t be safe, but I will be smart.”

God never called us to safety or comfort. He calls us to a life of adventure. Our job is to follow God faithfully with every moment and make the smartest decisions we can. We can trust that—as we follow God—we won’t die a minute before or after God decides to bring us home.

Friends, let’s live wilder.

 

If you don’t know what God has called you to, I’d encourage you to sign up for my email list so you can get a free copy of Discovering God’s Calling when it is released in the next month.

If you want to learn more about how you can push past your fears, check out my blog post Life Beyond Fear