'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 NIV

 The YES Adventure. That’s the name of this website and blog. Following God becomes an adventure the moment we say YES to Him. When you say YES to God, He will take you places you never expected to go and enable you to do things you never expected to do. He will do more in you than you have ever expected and more through you than you ever imagined. My challenge to you: Discover YOUR more when you give God your YES. That has been my experience and it’s what I want for you.

This week my adventure included a milestone birthday. Milestones always inspire reflection for me. They are an opportunity to look back and celebrate how far I have come. But they are also an opportunity to dream about where I am going next. Do you do that?

As I have considered this milestone, I have wanted to honor the adventure God has taken me on. From my first YES, He has led me from a scared, self-centered girl to a confident, caring woman who spends her life serving others. My girlhood dream was to be a famous actress. My grown-up dream is to fulfill God's purposes for my life, which included becoming a minister and serving His people. That’s a journey I never expected to take! My life is so much more fulfilling and satisfying than I ever dreamed it could be. And at this juncture many people would be looking toward retirement, winding down. Tom and I are in the process of preparing to gear up for a new season of service and are training for new adventures. I shake my head. How did we get here? One YES at a time. YES by YES. And more to go!

I have heard people talk about choosing a life verse, but if you ask me, I think the verse chooses you. Any verse I choose focuses on me and what I want out of life. But when a verse chooses you, it’s about God and what He wants for your life. As I consider my YES adventure, there is a verse that seems to have chosen me. I have chosen other verses, but this is the one that sticks. This is the one that shows up for me over and over. It exists in Matthew and Luke as well as in Mark. It is the heart and soul of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the heart and soul of God because it is the verse that Jesus used to summarize what God wants from people. It’s become my heart and soul as well, my unconscious motivator:

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 NIV

God wants me to love Him completely. If I love Him, He wants to fill me with Himself. God is love. (1 John…) Loving Him means letting who He is flow through me. This is what I am called to: To love God so completely that I am filled with His love so that it flows through me constantly and overflows to those around me. That’s what He wants for me. That’s what He wants for you if you belong to Him.

Loving people is the natural outworking of loving God. They are inextricably linked. They are intertwined like a tightly woven tapestry. God wants me to love people, all people. He wants me to love people who believe in Him and people who don’t. Regardless of culture, background, or philosophy, I am to love the people in my world. That includes public figures whom I will never meet. Regardless of who they are, God wants me to love them because I love Him.

 Regardless of how old I get, I will always be a work in progress and so are you, my friend. I have come to peace with that. I think I finally realize that there are no real destinations in life, only stops along the journey. If you recognize a lack of love in your life, be at peace. Your journey is not finished yet! I know that I have come a long way in loving people, but I still have so far to go! Let’s let God do His work in us.

Want to know how God has grown me in love?  He has put people in my life that could be described as EGR people, Extra Grace Required. (Isn’t that a great term? I borrowed it from someone else because it fits!) There is no way that I can love EGR people unless God empowers me to do so. But the amazing thing is that as I have said YES to loving EGR people, He has enabled me to do it, and I have felt my heart expand. Like the Grinch who stole Christmas! Heart expansion is not possible without grace accompanied by stretching. It doesn’t just happen. God has stretched me out so that He could put more of His loving self in. He’s doing that for you, too, my friend. It’s uncomfortable, but it is so valuable. He is expanding your capacity to love.

I guess if I could summarize my YES adventure so far, I would say that it has been a love adventure. I have learned to love myself because God loves me. Where I was once filled with negative self-talk, the Word of God really has transformed the way I think (Romans 12:1-2). There is no way to truly love other people without learning that kind of love. At the root of self-love is loving God. I honor God by honoring the person He created me to be. And that is the key that unlocks loving other people.

I wanted to do some special action to honor my adventure with God up to this point. Something that would also indicate that this YES adventure, this love adventure, is not over yet. Tom and I took a trip to the ocean to celebrate my milestone birthday and booked a sunset sail on a schooner as a special event. When they asked for a volunteer to help “set the sail” for our time off the coast I knew that was my cue. It was small but symbolic. As the sail unfurled and filled with the breeze, I was thanking God for all that He has done in and through me up to this point and saying YES to all He still wants to do in and through me in the journey ahead, YES to another destination on this life of adventure.

Loving Him wholeheartedly has set the path in front of me. Loving Him is what makes this journey an adventure because He is leading me forward into the most satisfying and fulfilling places. Ready to join me? Time for another YES! Let’s go!

Key Thought: A satisfying and fulfilling life starts with saying YES to God.

A Scripture to Consider: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 NIV

A YES Challenge: Take a few moments of prayerful reflection. What has your adventure with God been like? Is it time for another YES?  

Prayer: Father, my life is so much richer than I ever dreamed it could be. Your dreams for me have been challenging to say the least! Yet, as I have said YES to You every step of the way, You have taken me beyond my wildest imaginings. I don’t want to stop now. I want to keep giving You my YES every day. I want this adventure with You to continue until I take my last breath. I want to go all the places You want me to go and do all the things You want me to do. Do everything You want to do in me so that I can do all that You want to do through me. I want to fulfill my divine potential for Your glory. Amen.