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by Charlie Wolcott

[This blog post is part of a series. The next post is here.]

How many of you have wanted to go on adventure, especially as children? Knights fighting dragons. Searching for a holy relic. Uncovering a mystery. Most of us love a good adventure. That’s why we go to the movies to watch the superhero films and read the books about knights, magic, fantasy worlds, exploration, innovation, and more. We want something more than just the day-to-day mundane. We want an adventure.

What makes a hero in all these stories? How are the superheroes born as heroes? How are the protagonists in our stories summoned to their adventure? It starts with a villain. Someone comes and causes havoc. Luke has his Darth Vader. Batman has his Joker. Harry Potter has Voldemort. Mr. Incredible has Syndrome. In all these stories, when the villain shows up, a hero is summoned to rise up and face him.

However, so few people want to be the hero. Why? Many do not want to leave their comfortable lives. They would rather live in captivity under the villain than risk stirring him against them. After all, the villain is powerful; to cross him comes with a cost of comfort, popularity, friendships, family, hardships, challenges. So we’d rather lay low and say nothing. We remain oppressed, starved, limited. We still dislike those who rule over us, but we’d take their rule over them taking our lives. We need a hero. We need someone to rise up and face that villain.

I want to point you to two such heroes in the Bible: Gideon and Moses. The angel of the Lord appeared to each of them, to Gideon in person and to Moses in a burning bush. Both of them, very interestingly, had a similar response: “NOT ME!” Gideon was the least of his father’s house. He was a nobody. He had no strength, no power. No one would listen to him. He was like, “No way!” Moses used to be the prince of Egypt. He was a top guy, but he laid his title down to be as one of his own people: a slave. Then after he murdered an Egyptian, he fled into the desert where he lived for 40 years. He was a wanted man where God was going to send him. He was like, “No way!”

Yet God continued to say: “YOU!” In The Hobbit, Bilbo refused Gandalf’s call to join the dwarves on an adventure and Gandalf continued to press Bilbo to go, without forcing him to. Eventually, he caved and joined the dwarves. Both Gideon and Moses resisted God’s call to adventure, and for good reason. Gideon and Israel were so oppressed by the Midianites that Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press to hide it. Moses was being sent to the most powerful nation in the world at the time to take away their labor force. But each resisted in different ways. Gideon kept asking for confirmation, confirmation, confirmation. (I will get into that in a few weeks as our study of Judges continues with Gideon and his fleece.) But Moses, on the other hand, kept looking for excuse after excuse after excuse to not do it. With each person, God showed miracles to prove to both that he indeed was God and was indeed calling them for an adventure with him. With God at the lead, Gideon would defeat the Midianites and Moses would smite the Egyptians.

What about you? What about me? Is God calling us to an adventure? The answer is a resounding, “YES!” God wants to have a relationship with us and the walk with Jesus is an adventure. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ to be my Savior when I was seven years old. I was born again that day, and it has been a great adventure since. But the last two and a half years have been an even greater adventure. Three years ago, my church did a Wednesday night summer service series and I got to wrap it up with a fencing demonstration, preaching about the Israelite War Cry: Rak Chazak. That night, I was baptized as an adult (I had already been baptized as a child, signifying my acceptance of Christ), signifying a new calling God had for me. Later that fall, God connected me with Worldview Warriors and I got accepted to join the Cadre at the Creation Truth Foundation. That January, the new adventure began.

My walk with Christ has grown more in the last 2 ½ years than it had in the previous near 25 years. It would not have happened apart from all those years building the foundation, but I have matured more in these last 2 ½ years than I had any clue I could. It has not been without hardships. It has not been without challenges. It has not been without getting beat up and bruised. But it has been fun overall and I would not take it back for the life of me.

God has called me to another adventure in the last month. This is like a detour of my current one, and one that is absolutely necessary for me to take. One area where my life has flat out not been great is a prayer life. If I had a weakest area of my Christian walk, having that one-on-one personal time with God would be it. I have been reading the Bible all but every day for the last couple years. I am on my third straight through reading of the Bible right now. But reading the Bible and praying have not exactly gone together. This summer when my church started a study series on prayer, God put his finger on my heart and did not let up. I had to work on that area… and very likely, I need to get this in good discipline and consistency before he can take me further on this adventure. Like Gideon and Moses, I too have resisted this call to adventure, but like with Gideon and Moses, I was going either willingly or kicking and screaming.

So I have been working on what to pray about, how to pray, and what I need to do in order to pray. The other night, God put a lot of pieces together that have been in my dreams and visions and desires. I have been wondering what my calling of full time ministry with youth is to look like. The other night, God may have shown me the final destination. I may share more about this vision next week.

My challenge to you is this: will you join me in this call to adventure about prayer? Will you take your walk with God to the next level and learn how to pray as God teaches me how to pray? For the next 3-4 months, I will be doing a series on prayer: what it is, how we are to pray, and how we avoid wrong or misleading prayers. I will be learning about prayer as I write about it and seeking to put what I write into practice. I am tired of talking about prayer. I am tired of admiring the great heroes who truly walked the walk of the Christian. I no longer want to sit in the stands. I want to play in the game. Will you join me as I train and practice so when the real game begins, I could be one of God’s starters? So you too can be one of God’s starters? There can be no greater adventure than a journey with God. The battles we fight in prayer are far greater and more epic than any battle we could face in the physical. God is calling us to take an adventure. And I am going. Are you?

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