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Faith

Choose the adventurous life

What does it take if you want to let go of the safe, mundane, follow-the-rules existence lived by most people who claim to be followers of Jesus, and in its place embrace the life of adventure that seems to be promised in the New Testament? There seems to be such a large disconnect between the Christian life as you read about it in the gospels and the Christian life as most people seem to live it nowadays.

Maybe it’s something to do with faith. Somehow, we have created a type of “Christian lifestyle” which it is possible to live without ever actually needing to rely on God for anything. It’s all about obedience without risk. And to escape into the life of adventure that God really intended for us, we need to be following Jesus down paths which are not safe, where we cannot succeed without truly relying on God. We need to start acting as if we believe that God really will miraculously intervene in our lives.

That’s the attitude taken by the friends of the paralysed man in Luke chapter 5. The house was so crowded that it was not possible to reach Jesus in a conventional manner. Any “normal Christian” would have concluded that they should wait for a better opportunity. But the friends of the paralysed man saw things differently. If you really believe that Jesus is who he says he is, then it doesn’t matter how much difficulty or embarrassment you might suffer in lifting the roof off the house so that your friend can get healed.