Adventure

The key to adventure is risk. If there is no risk, there is no adventure.

Seventy percent of those in rest homes wish they had taken more risks in life.

Those who are the most successful in life are those who repeatedly take risks.

The path to success is littered with failure. If you are going to succeed, then you must first fail, perhaps numerous times. It is the law of averages. It is said that before Thomas Edison succeeded in inventing the light bulb, he first failed . . . around a thousand times.

So, If you are going to succeed in life, you must push through countless failures. You must be persistent and tenacious.

Over the years I have noticed a familiar tactic Satan uses.  A nominal Christian decides he will move out of his life of mediocrity and attempt to do something significant for the Lord. He launches out, only to be met with a vicious attack from Satan. The heat of the battle is too much for him, and he retreats to a safe place to lick his wounds, heal up, and recover a state of being where very little is required of him.

. . . And he determines he will never try anything risky again. He lives out the rest of his life in relative mediocrity, never really accomplishing anything significant in God’s kingdom.

Such is the plight of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of Christians throughout history. After the first real risk, ending in painful defeat, they never try again.

Risks can be small, or they can be very large. When I was a young man of 20, a friend who was a professional artist encouraged me to try oil painting. He took me to an artist supply store and picked out several tubes of paint and brushes, which I bought for about $20.

Shortly thereafter I bought an instructional book on oil painting. I chose a portrait of a peasant woman and went to work. I was so fascinated with painting that I would start in the evening and when Mother got up around 6 a.m. I was still painting.

When the painting was finished, I took it to my friend. He turned it around and around in his hands, inspecting it in ways I didn’t understand, and he apparently didn’t believe I had done the painting. “You did this?” he asked repeatedly, to which I replied that I had. My friends’ younger brother who was in the room, laughed at him and said, “He’s better than you are.”

My second painting was a Bible with a cross suspended over it. It hung in my parents’ living room for over 30 years.

The two paintings were in my parent’s living room propped against a chair when a neighbor girl and her boyfriend stopped by. She spotted the paintings and got very excited, “You did these?” After some conversation back and forth, the boyfriend, who had formal training in art, calmly remarked that they were “primitive.” It wasn’t until recently, that someone pointed out to me that he was jealous. Of course he was. His girlfriend was so excited over my paintings, and he was himself a painter.  

But his comment about my paintings being primitive stuck in my spirit and stayed there right up until the present. I took his comment as a negative. I didn’t think I was very good and I didn’t want to risk trying again.  

Lorraine, who has a BA in Art explained to me that the word primitive describes a style of art. It wasn’t necessarily a negative comment about my work at all.

While I was in the Army I did a third painting for the girl I was dating at the time. Then I quit painting, all because I took this man’s comment about my paintings being “primitive” to heart, as a derogatory comment.

Now, decades later, the Lord began prodding me to start painting again. I procrastinated and procrastinated. To try again was a risk, you see. I was afraid it wouldn’t be good enough. Finally, I bit the bullet and painted a landscape.

Much to my surprise, people liked it . . . quite a lot. Two of them said it reminded them of Grandma Moses, which suited me fine, because I admire Grandma Moses. Though I knew I could do better, I was satisfied with the painting, and I learned some things in the process. I also realized that I really enjoy painting and am now making plans for the next one.

This was a small risk and ironically, I procrastinated for months before I took it. When God is asking anyone to take a risk, often there is a period of procrastination, a digging in of the heels, so to speak.

It would do us well to learn that procrastination accomplishes nothing. It just makes the task harder and slows down God’s working in our life. We should learn to obey God right away.

Well, that was a small risk. There have been many, many very large risks in my life. I will tell you one that just had me petrified. It was very similar to a situation in which God spoke to a pastor in South America to get on a plane, fly to New York, and deliver a message to David Wilkerson.

In case you’re not familiar with David Wilkerson, he was a giant in the Christian world, humanly speaking. He was a country preacher that God told to go to New York City and preach to the gangs in the inner city. He went, many gang members were saved, and as a result he started Teen Challenge, which still exists today in many chapters all over the nation. Teen Challenge is a drug rehabilitation ministry with an 80 percent success rate.

There was a time later on in Wilkerson’s ministry when apparently he had gotten pretty seriously off-course. God told this pastor in South America to fly to New York City and confront Wilkerson.

The pastor did just that. In effect he got off the plane and said, “David Wilkerson, you’ve run off the tracks. You’re out to lunch.” Then he promptly got back on the plane and flew back to South America.

Well, I was that pastor on a smaller scale. God told me to confront a pastor in a large city who had great respect all over the city. He was off-course.

I went to his office, sat down and stalled and stalled. Finally, I told him in a very gentle manner what God had showed me. When I came to the punch line, he immediately bent over, nearly falling out of his chair, as if I had punched him in the stomach.

That was a huge risk. He certainly had the influence to make me an outcast in the Christian community if he had chosen to.

But he was a gracious man. He thanked me, we talked it through, and he made some adjustments.

Risks come at you in all colors and sizes. Risks are a very important part of life. Running from them is a very bad idea. Nothing good can come from resisting a risk God is asking you to take.

But facing and conquering risks can catapult you to new heights in your Christian Faith Adventure.

(The photo at the top of this newsletter is a recent painting done by George.)

In His Service,

George and Lorraine Halama