N: "I've seen the music video "The Great Adventure" by Steven Curtis Chapman. There is a scene in the video where he is sitting on his bed, surrounded by four walls, life is kind of mundane, the "nothing is all that exciting or impressive" kind of life; the walls are gray, there are no pictures on them, the lamp is kind of dim - just a dismal, small cubicle. One of the phrases in the song is, "I opened up my Bible and I read about me." That phrase has always leapt out at me of that perspective of "this isn't for someone else, somewhere else, some other time." It says, "I opened up my Bible and I read about ME."
As the video unfolds, those four walls fall out in all directions; there are mountains in the background and he calls everyone to come take this great adventure of following God and to get off the treadmill of religion, out of the boring four walls and to take things personally and to move forward.
* * *
"I opened up my Bible and I read about me; not somebody else, someone else, some other time..." but viewing life with a current relationship with God, as sons of Abraham who are current followers, listening for God's voice and following Him, not somebody else, some other time, some other place, but me, now.
"I opened up my Bible and I read about me..." I read about ME, today, this hour, this instant, this day - I read about me, and I'm gonna follow the Lamb wherever He goes. Today.
The Great Adventure
by Steven Curtis Chapman
Saddle up your horses!
Started
out this morning in the usual way
Chasing thoughts
inside my head
of all I
had to do today
Another time
around the circle
Try to make
it better than the last
I opened
up the Bible
And I read
about me.
Said I'd been a
prisoner,
And God's
grace had set me free
And somewhere
between the pages
It hit me
like a lightnin' bolt
I saw a big
frontier in front of me
And I heard
somebody say
Let's Go!
Saddle
up your horses!
We got a
trail to blaze
Through the
wild blue yonder
Of God's
amazin' grace
Let's follow
our leader into the glorious unknown
This is a
life like no other
Whoa! This
is the Great Adventure
Come
on! Get ready for the ride of your life
Gonna leave
long-faced religion
In a cloud
of dust behind
Discover
all the new horizons
Just waitin'
to be explored
This is what
we were created for
CHORUS
This
is the great adventure
We'll travel
over mountains so high
We'll go
through valleys below
Still through
it all
We'll find
that
This is the
greatest journey
That the
human heart will ever see
The love
of God will take us far
beyond our
wildest dreams
K: It's not that sense of escaping, like "I've got to get away from this life and go ride a horse over the horizon," or something like that. It's not that at all. It will be in our everyday lives. It will look pretty ordinary - no beauty or majesty, but spiritually speaking it is a little bit like going out to capture some ground that has never been captured before. There will be moments...if you imagine that analogy of getting on a horse and trying to settle some land, it might be a sunny day, the weather's just right, people are happy, and what a "great adventure" we are on our way to do - it's a happy, joyful time, but when it's time to start settling the land there are a whole lot of inconveniences - you don't have all the stuff you had in the city. There was a predictability, there was ease, there was convenience, which all of a sudden no longer exists when you are trying to figure out how to pitch your tent, to settle. There are just lots of things that aren't there for you already that you have to face. There are challenges everywhere you look. But to be willing to take on those challenges and difficulties because it's worth it. Because it's God's call on our lives, and because the benefits far, far, far outweigh staying in the city. And it would be disobedience to stay in the city if He is specifically calling us to move forth and take some ground.
There will be some days where it's just glorious - some days it's just great to be outside, in the springtime, when it first gets to be nice weather....then it gets to be December and January and it's not so nice to be outside any longer. That's the nature of it, but I think the thing God is looking for is that when you look back over your shoulder a year, two years, five years, ten years down the road and each step of the way nothing's been all that perceptible, but if we are faithful to God's call, then you look back over your shoulder and there are new cities, a new settlement, something that had never before existed, that's unique, that is unlike what we came out of, and it's special, and it somehow has God's hand in the whole thing. You can take joy in that, just as the Hebrews could take joy in the city of Jerusalem, the kingdom being established. I think that's a perspective we can have on the whole thing, that God would be building the whole time...
L: ....Jesus does take us places beyond our wildest dreams and as we join our hearts to Him and yield to Him and walk it out with other people and Him, it is a Great Adventure. He will take us to places we've never been before.