Enriching Your Life to the Extraordinary: Dream to Discover (Part 3 of 5)

Sunday, August 8, 2010

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

In order to live the life of your dreams, you must have courage, take risks, be able to fail, to get back up, and never give up. This kind of life must be continuously fueled by our imaginations and this must start will an insatiable curiosity. God has designed each of us to learn, to discover, and to invent. What often gets lost along the way in growing up as adults is the gift from our childhood—curiosity. You don’t have to teach a child how to be curious. Ever child is naturally curious; some more than others. A child doesn’t need to be told to explore, touch, to feel, to look, or to try new things. It’s wired into their design as they going places they’re not supposed to go, trying things they’re not supposed to, and getting themselves in all sorts of trouble.

The problem with our thinking is that we connect knowledge to maturity and curiosity is seen only as a childhood luxury. As we grow up our passion for discovery and exploration is thrown by the wayside. We so desperately want to grow up, become adults, and become mature that we lose our imagination, and thus our curiosity. We stop asking questions because the answers never seemed to satisfy our question for knowledge. Or maybe your dreams never seemed to come into fruition so you gave up trying new things. Perhaps your curiosity led you to places that were destructive. It left you physically or emotionally hurt and started being less and less curious about the world. If nothing else, one of the main reasons we give up our insatiable curiosity is because we strive for what’s comfortable, secure, and predictable.  Trying new things, being in new places, meeting new people puts us in a very hard, difficult position and we’d rather stay in our own comfort zones more times than not.

We must approach the world with a childlike wonder, awe, and imagination. Our mandate should be to learn everything and anything to turn your dreams into a reality. Once you stop learning, you will stop growing; and when you stop growing you never get anywhere beyond where you’re at. The longer we live, the less adaptive our minds are to learning. We convince ourselves that we already know what we need to know and that is good enough to get us where we want to be. We, as Christians, above all others should be driven to question, to examine, to learn. Our faith shouldn’t make us less curious but insatiably curious. When you live in a relationship to the God of all creation learning should be a given.The journey of discovery will never end; it’s one that will go on from now until eternity. This journey is as endless as God is infinite and eternal!

This approach to the world can be seen all the way back in the beginning with the first man, Adam and His encounter with God. “Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.  But for Adam no suitable helper was found.” (Genesis 2:19-20) The overarching story here in this scripture passage is that God is preparing Adam to realize he needs a woman to complete his humanity, but the process that God uses here is our current focus. God brought all the animals before Adam and he named each and every one of them. He had nothing to draw upon, no former education to help him in naming the animals. Yet through the process of discovery he named and identified every single animal distinguishing between the birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects. Not only could he name them, but he could distinguish between them. All because he used his childlike wonder and curiosity to discover all the wondrous creatures God had made for him.  Curiosity is essential for life. It’s part of the way God made us; we were made to explore, discover, define, and pioneer.

Think about this for a moment: If children were not curious then how would they develop the skills to survive? If you didn’t discover that you shouldn’t touch a stove when it’s on, then you would seriously be in risk of getting a severe burn on your hand. If you never questioned the laws of gravity, how would you know that it’s not safe to be leaning off the edge of a cliff.  Why do we ask questions in the first place? It’s because God has given us the capacity to learn, to grow, and to understand. Life is an incredible journey, a great adventure that God has placed before us. If we were incapable of learning then growing up and changing would be impossible. In a way, learning is an expression of humility. It shows that we don’t have infinite knowledge and wisdom; we must have an attitude of humility in order to continue to learn and discover the world that God has placed before us. And the more we learn about the world, the more we naturally want to know about the One who created it.

Throughout history, people have been faced with challenges, obstacles, and problems that seemed insurmountable to everyone, but someone has always found a way to overcome them. One person found a way to overcome that all the rest deemed insurmountable.  Once a problem is solved, everyone sees it. For those who have been able to sustain curiosity and wonder as adults there seems to be no limit on our capacity to explore and learn new things. The real dilemma is not identifying a problem but solving it. Once we see a problem it lets us know that where are limits are if we don’t solve it. Our problems, obstacles, and challenges can become the markers of our limitations or spring us into a new world of discovery–the choice is ours to make.

In Genesis 4, we get a glimpse of problem solving and making something of the world we are a part of. “Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play the harp and flute. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.” (Genesis 4:20-22) Just from these few verses we can see the birth of the tent, musical instruments, tools out of bronze and iron. From each new invention came new methods of doing things which in turn birthed new ideas for doing things throughout each new generation.  God created us to find solutions to the problems before us. We were made to be adaptable and expandable.

A life called out by God is one full of risk, challenges, and uncertainty. Have we just settled because this happens to be where we are at the moment? It’s important to ask: Why are you doing what you’re doing? Are you living up to your calling? Are you making the most of your God-given opportunities? The fear is that sometimes we think that if we leave everything we know, it’s going to get worse from there. What we don’t realize is most of the time we’ll never experience greater contentment or joy until we’re willing to give up what we know and go and explore into what is the unknown.

Although you should learn, explore, and discovery everything, it certainly doesn’t mean that you should experience everything. What is it called when you convince yourself you must experience everything in life before you actually know better? Stupidity. This can be clearly seen in the warning God gives Adam in chapter 2 of Genesis: And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17) God’s command is very simple: “You eat from this tree, you die.” Adam was free to experience and eat from any other tree he wanted just not this one. Not everything in our lives has to be learned from experience. Sometimes we are able to learn from others who have failed or having confidence in that what God tells us from scriptures.  

The truth is there are times when we decide we must learn the hard way for ourselves. Instead of choosing to learn from wisdom we insist on learning through pain or in many cases a nice way of saying–stupidity. Your Mom tells you not to put something in an electrical socket, but we do it anyways because we’re curious of why we aren’t allowed to do so. When you grow up, we’re told smoking is bad for our health, but you wonder what all the fuss is about. Then you try it, are hooked, and the truth hits you later when you’re faced with lung cancer. You were warned but you still didn’t listen. What begins as curiosity can fast become corruption. In the wonder and power of a childlike imagination is that children have no fear of being wrong. In order to grow and thrive in life, we must be willing to cope with failure. Some things were never meant for us to discover.

Your curiosity is the fuel from God to keep you searching and asking until you find Him. It is then that we can truly know Him. Let’s take one more look at scripture this time at the account of Moses and the burning bush. “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.’” (Exodus 3:1-3) What brought Moses into presence of God? His insatiable curiosity. He sees a bush, it’s on fire, and it’s not burning up. So he goes forward to get a closer look. The reason we all have this need to know, to learn, to discover, is that God created you to search for Him and to grow in Him.

A common flaw in our teaching is when we enter into eternity in Heaven we’ll suddenly know everything. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A more likely realization we’ll have is that all the questions we have will suddenly we overwhelmed with new ones. Only one second will pass as we stand in the presence of the Creator of the universe and we’re going to get a vast new number of questions! Eternity isn’t where we get all the answers; instead it’s a place where we get all new questions and where we’ll always be learning. How long does it take to know everything about an infinite God? I’d have to say all of eternity! It’s a good thing, eternity is eternity right!?

Once we begin to know God intimately it is then that your dreams can become a reality. Each of us is an artist painting a picture of the world we will create. We are image-bearers of the creator making something of the world and creating a future better than what it was before us. Never stop learning, growing, exploring. Expand your horizons and see beyond your limitations! It is then that we can push what’s boring, comfortable, easy, and predictable aside and see the world through a whole new set of eyes. Eyes of wonder, awe, and excitement like a child opening a new gift on his or her birthday. Or a child trying something new that they’ve never tried before. Or a child seeing an amusement park for the very first time. Capture the insatiable curiosity inside of you and you’ll begin to experience the great adventure that God has laid out before you! You wouldn’t believe your eyes what you see!

 **Next week we’ll continue this 5 week series with part 4: Exceed to Excellence which addresses living a life full of passion, going beyond the ordinary, and giving God your all. Our rallying cry should be in the words of John Wooden to make “every day a masterpiece”. Have a great day and God Bless. **

Sources:

Erwin Raphael McManus, Wide Awake. Thomas Nelson: Nashville, Tennessee, 2008.

2nd Photo pictured on right coutersy of exhibit located at the Creation Museum