Common and Custom Adventures

The Great Commandment is the adventure that starts them all, but there are many adventures God has for your life. These adventures fall into two categories: (1) the common adventures, the ones God invites everyone to take, and (2) the custom adventures, the ones God tailors just for you.

Here’s the deal. God wants to take you on custom adventures. You can be sure of that! You can’t expect to enjoy God’s custom adventures, however, until you have learned to obey His call into the common adventures.

Common Adventures

A common adventure is like the Great Commandment. Jesus’ call for us to love Him and to love people is an adventure for everyone. Don’t think of common adventures as less significant than a custom one. They are like the foundation to a home. No matter how awesome a home is, without a strong foundation the house is unstable.

In Matthew 7:24–27, Jesus told a big crowd that a person who adventures with Him by learning His Word and doing it was like a wise man who built his house on a solid foundation. The storms of life came, and that man stood strong. Jesus compared that to a person whose life was not build on obedience to God’s Word, a person whose life was not characterized by accepting God’s call to adventure with Him. That person had a poor foundation, and when the storms of life came, his life crumbled.

Your obedience to the common adventures will ensure your life has a strong and sturdy foundation that will last. Here’s a short list of the adventures God calls everyone on:

  Be great at living the Great Commandment to love God with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your strength, and to love people by giving to them at your own expense.

  Soon after making a firm personal commitment to follow Christ as your Friend and the only Leader of your life, show that in a public way by being baptized in water.

  Show God that you trust and honor Him to provide for all your needs by giving Him the first 10 percent of the money you earn or receive and living on the 90 percent that’s left.

  Let God strengthen your character by depending completely on His Holy Spirit to power your life with the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit.

  Become God’s ally in this world, syncing up your dreams and interests with God’s everlasting purposes.

The best part of these adventures is that they are not burdensome duties. They are intentionally big and challenging. These adventures can be scary and may be difficult at times. But after you start them, you begin to see what your faith and trust in God can do. When you enter these adventures with God, He starts to make changes in you that He cannot make any other way. Until you start and stick with these, you won’t understand. So go ahead, test it. Say good-bye to boring spirituality. God will supernaturally shape your life, and you will never feel more alive!

Real Life Adventures:

Talk with your pastors, parents, or mentors and ask them about people they know that live these adventures and how it has shaped their lives, and how these have shaped their own lives. Write some of these in the space below:

Custom Adventures

As you begin to grow in your adventures with God, He will call you into some unique situations. Sometimes, these adventures develop into careers like becoming bankers, politicians, salesmen, teachers, missionaries, pastors, evangelists, pilots, manufacturers, builders, architects, artists, actors, musicians, and too many others to name. As you follow Him in the common adventures, several events happen to prepare you for the custom adventures.

  You learn to trust God. When He starts to lead you into these new adventures, you are ready to follow.

  You start to learn about yourself. You discover your strengths. God brings people into your life to help you.

  God slowly shapes you into His likeness, to be like Him. He gives you a new heart, transforms your mind and thinking, and conforms your will to His own.

  God starts to reward your faith and your confidence matures.

  God learns He can trust you. This is big! You see, God does His greatest exploits through men He can trust. So be faithful in all your adventures with God!

There is no simple way to describe God’s custom adventures because no two are alike. God loves to be God. He loves to lead us. He loves to do good works in our lives. You can trust Him. Start with the common adventures and hold on because the custom adventures are awesome!

In My Experience:

Obedience has a compounding effect. That means if you do the right thing today and tomorrow and the next day, for a long time, then together, the small acts of kindness, honesty, courage, risk, and loyalty have a combined effect greater than you ever thought possible. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill that starts small and slow and gets bigger and faster the further it rolls.

When I started my first Royal Rangers group in La Paz, Bolivia, as a thirteen-year-old, I was scared to death. But God was taking me on a custom adventure because I’d been faithful to follow Him on the common ones. Little did I know my obedience would make it possible to start a total of thirty-three groups before graduating from high school, to travel all over Latin America and the Caribbean training leaders to mentor next generation men while attending college, to become a missionary, and to become the international and later the national director of Royal Rangers. I’ve ministered all over the United States and in over seventy nations around the world. I am so glad I heard God’s call!

Adventuring with God has a multiplying effect in your life. Doing what’s right increases your personal confidence. People trust you because they know they can count on you. It opens doors. Nothing will have a greater compounding effect in your life than committing yourself to do everything God invites you to do.