It’s the feeling of your heart pounding in your chest, or the blood rushing to your face. It’s your stomach turning, in the best way possible. It’s the rush of adrenaline telling you that you can conquer the world. It’s believing it.
These are some of the reasons, I think, that so many of us live for thrill, for adventure. They’re what push us to do crazy things, to really get out there and explore, to push the limit; whether for you, that means simply letting go of the lap bar on a roller coaster and shoving your arms straight into the sky or if it entails strapping a parachute on your back and jumping out of a plane -- we all crave this sensation. There’s a voice inside of us -- maybe yours is quiet, maybe it’s screaming -- urging us to throw all our cares out the window, to ignore the “What if”s, to just live in the moment. To tiptoe across the narrow ledge, to climb all the way up to the top of the tree, to take that leap of faith.
To me, what makes these moments so alluring isn’t just the wind rushing in my face, or the rays of the warm sun coming down all around me, or the breathtaking views waiting just around every corner. That’s all incredible, don’t get me wrong, but I think the reason we keep coming back for more is this: it’s in these moments that we no longer have control over the situation. We loosen our grip on life for just a little bit, trusting in things like parachutes and lap bars to keep us intact. For once, we’re merely along for the ride; it’s up to them to do all the work, to make sure we journey safely. Once you’ve taken that step, what’s done is done -- it’s a daunting thought, but there’s comfort in feeling you’ve done all you can, in knowing no amount of stress or worry or work can affect the outcome anymore.
So, I think it’s safe to say a pretty big reason adventure is so appealing to us -- why we seek out that heart pounding, blood rushing feeling -- is that if we’re being honest, it feels pretty nice to hand the controls over to someone or something else. It feels pretty nice to give up control, even if only for a minute, and just follow the current.
Why, then, is it so hard to give it all to God, to let Him carry our burdens? Why are we fighting tooth and nail to have it our way when, supposedly, He’s got far better plans? Why, when just a second ago we were talking about how nice it would be to take a break, for someone else to be in control, does this all of a sudden sound risky, scary even?
It’s definitely something that’s easier said than done, giving it all to God. The reality is that we can talk about this all day, but when it comes down to it, we’re afraid. We look at our lives, and we look at God, and we look back at our lives again, and we know there are definitely pieces that He’s going to rearrange, take out, replace with other things. We look around at what’s familiar, and whether we know deep down His path is the right one or whether we don’t have an ounce of trust, we want it all to stay familiar, because it’s what we’ve been leaning on for so long. It’s whatever we’ve given our all to, whatever we’ve been hiding behind.
The fact is, if you surrender control to God, He may remove some things from your life -- toxic things, things that didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. And you’re going to miss them. Plain and simple, there will be an empty space that was once filled, and you’re probably going to feel it. But it’s only there to make room for something else, something bigger, something better, something beyond what you’ve imagined up until now.
The other fact is, if you surrender control to God, you’ll feel the exact same rush you felt jumping out of a plane, going down a hill on a roller coaster, walking out a little too far on a branch. Except this time, the feeling won’t leave you when the moment does. Because the rush you get from the safety of knowing that you’re in God’s hands isn’t adrenaline, though sometimes it sure feels like it. It comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere more meaningful, more permanent. It’s the wind in your hair, it’s the sun in your eyes -- it’s all of this and more, all in your heart, exploding and bursting, a feeling almost able to be described by words, but not quite.
I challenge you to do this a little more each day. If you can trust your life in the hands of a parachute strap, of a harness, of a lap bar, I have faith that you can trust it in God, too. And you’ll experience the rush of adrenaline and then some, in all its indescribable describability, and while it may never make perfect sense in your head, you’ll know that somehow, in some crazy, bigger-than-us way that we will never fully understand, everything is coming together. And this feeling will be far better than that of free falling, I promise you. Maybe it’ll even feel like flying.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” - Isaiah 55:8-9
