"[Bilbo] I should think so - in these parts! We're plain, quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anybody sees in them."
I can easily see myself having such a response as Bilbo. "Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!" I can't say the word, "adventure" has always intrigued me. But as Millie Keith's aunt Wealthy put it, "God calls us to a wild adventure, not a tea party, my dear." For me, what this world provides as "adventure" is a poor representation of the true adventure that God calls us to. Adventures can be "nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things," yet what you find through the adventure is so much better. It's not because I like getting "dirty" that I have accepted God's invitation to this adventure, it's because He is so much better than anything else. God is simply so beautiful, so wonderful, so worth living for, that I don't mind getting a little "dirty" in this broken world in order to know and serve Christ more. What I have gained in this world, I'm beginning to count as loss, or as dung, as Paul puts it in Philippians 3:8 (KJV). I'm leaving what I know, to find something better. Jesus Christ is better than any and all else.
It's the greatest romance novel, the greatest adventure, and the greatest thriller of all times... and I have the privilege of playing even the smallest part, on such an enormous stage. I do not choose to follow Him because it's all fun, not because it's all thrilling, not because it's all entertaining; I choose to follow Him because Jesus loved me so much, that He gave His life for me, and the least I can do is give my life to Him, for His purpose, His glory. The fact that Christ not only saved me, but has such an amazing love for me, to invite me to serve Him... to be an ambassador of Him; such an amazing privilege, for someone so worthless as I. How can I say "no?"
Do not expect this blog to be all about my personal life, because, quite frankly, my life is rather boring by itself. But I have embarked on the greatest adventure of all times, and while you may see some of my journey through my writings, my purpose is to let Jesus Christ be center stage - the main character. After all, He is what we are truly after, or at least should be after. He is the One Thing that each one of us should desire, and I pray that I may spur you forward into this amazing, never-ending realm of knowing Him.
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:7-14 NASB
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