What is an adventure? It's something new.
It's something out of your comfort zone. It's something unpredictable, unexpected, exciting, and maybe even a little dangerous.
When they leave home for university, school leavers are looking for adventure. They're not interested in the mediocre, the safe, the normal. For many, pursuing their relationship with God is assumed to fit into the latter descriptions more than the former.
The expectation is that for something new, for something exciting, they have to go elsewhere; because frankly, God may be real but he's also old news. For those who have been in church for years, faith can become somewhat expected, safe and normal, even if it is alive and active. As they head off to uni I think we need to be letting our young people know that if adventure is what they're after, pursuing God does not offer a safe option, but a risky, unpredictable, exciting, and above all, new opportunity.
It's very easy as a young person growing up in church to feel like they know everything there is to know about God. I know that when I went to uni I didn't expect to discover anything new about him - just to keep on going and hopefully find some Christian friends to enjoy the ride with. What I discovered was that my experience of church, faith and God was so inconceivably limited, and God revealed himself to be so much more than I had even conceived him to be.
When Peter saw Jesus walking on the water he freaked out. When Jesus finally got into the boat with them their response wasn't 'standard Jesus, doing something freaky, seen it all before', it was to bow down and to worship him in awe. This was by no means his first miracle, and yet they were still amazed. There are opportunities out there like that for our young people who've grown up in church. Opportunities are waiting for them that will reveal the outrageousness of God, the unexpected acts of God, and a new depth to the age old truths - he loves us, he knows us, he forgives us.
