The Thrill of it All!

I spoke a little about this in my talk on Sunday (in the start of the series, “Escaping UP!), but wanted to dive a bit deeper here on my blog. As I explained Sunday, my family and I recently went on vacation. Specifically, we hung out with Mickey, Minnie, and the rest of the gang down in Walt Disney World. It was a blast, but certainly was lacking on the “rest” side. We were moving from morning ‘til night trying to cram every experience possible into every minute. We wanted to get our money’s worth…

When we would get to one of the parks (we had park-hopper passes), our first step was to get in line (or get fast-passes!) for the big thrill rides -- Rockin' Rollercoaster, The Tower of Terror, Test Track, Mission Space, Everest, etc. (Space Mountain was closed…). It was as if, at those moments of decision (made as we entered the parks) the thrill of it all took priority over everything else the parks offered. This was an undeniable pattern that emerged in our vacation strategies… And I began to think… It was a pattern that seriously began to reflect how we approach our everyday ordinary life.

Most of the time we are looking for specific thrills rather than all that life has to offer…

These kinds of simple observations about how we behave as humans beg further questions. This is especially true if we think about our life in the context of being a Christ-follower. What causes us to want to remain in the “dreaming of” and “longing for” the thrill? Seriously… Why are we often more interested in the thrill than in God alone?

No one can honestly say that they love being in the deep dark valleys all the time. In fact, we could not survive these valleys without God. But it is true that if we had our choice, we would likely opt for the easy over the difficult, the rewarding over the depleting, or victory over defeat. Remember when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain where the transfiguration took place? Peter was so psyched about the thrill of it all that he wanted to stay there and build memorials (Matthew 17:4).

When we taste the thrill we usually want to savor it for as long as we can. But God did not create us to stay on those awesome mountaintops. Instead, God created us for God’s purpose and plan -- to love. Specifically, to love God with every ounce of our being, and to love others into the kingdom.

God does not call us to form a solution, or to worry about a problem, or to try and create a new path through the valley on our own. Jesus simply says, again, “…as for you, follow me” (John 21:22b).

Jesus gives us these thrilling mountain top experiences so that we can follow Him through the dark valleys, reaching out to others who are desperate for hope… Jesus is not just in the thrilling moments. He’s not just in those times when we feel hopeless and lost. Jesus is in the now. He’s in this very moment as you read these words, and each moment that came before and that follows… But, often we can’t see Jesus because we are too eager for the thrill...

What are you eager for? What might happen if you looked first to God? No more quick-fixes… No more temporary thrill-rides…

Instead, what if you and I got on board the ride of a lifetime?

That would surely be the thrill of it all!