Are You Ready For an Adventure?

I love extroverts. They amaze me. They live in big worlds. They are energized by being with people. They don't analyze every single word that comes out of their mouths, and yet, people still like them.

I am married to one.

On a scale of 1-10, Kevin is at least a 15. This is the man with over 2500 Facebook friends. To him, a stranger is just a friend he has yet to meet. He is a pastor and a politician - two jobs that put him in contact with the public all the time. He loves it. He thrives there.

We are a good match for one another.

Psychologist Marti Olsen says, "one of the most significant gifts introverts have to offer extroverts it that they help them slow down." This is true in our marriage. I give Kevin roots. He gives me wings.

But I have not always appreciated how I am designed. At times I have wondered if I am broken.

For this reason, I enjoyed reading the book that I mentioned in my last blog, Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh. A friend also recommended a teaching on extroverts and introverts, entitled, Sit Walk Stand, by Graham Cooke, that I listened to yesterday. (Thanks, Vesna)

According to Graham Cooke, the danger for an introvert is to become so busy on the inside, lost in a rich and colorful world, that they miss the outer world. The danger for an extrovert is to be so busy in the outer world that they miss the rich colorful world inside.

Cooke says there are two ways to have an encounter with God. He compares it to a large room with two doors marked knowledge and experience. If you enter through the mind/knowledge door than you need to leave the room by an experience in your heart. Otherwise, there is a danger in having "only a cerebral relationship with God with no emotional connection."

If you enter the room through an experience in your heart, you need to leave it through the knowledge door. Otherwise, there is a danger in going from experience to experience, with very little heart change.

We need roots. We need wings.

We need knowledge. We need heart experiences.

We need contemplation. We need action.

Jeanett Bakke is quoted in Introverts in the Church, "Many consider contemplation to be a kind of passivity, perhaps even a kind of laziness. They assume that people are waiting for God to do something rather than engaging in the challenges of life. But this is not how it has been lived out. It used to be common knowledge that people of prayer become people of action flowing out of their relationship with God."

So whether you live in a rich inner world or a rich outer world, the challenge is the same - to encounter God and let him take you on adventures into places that are unfamiliar to you. For an introvert, that might be to the colorful outer world. For an extrovert, that might be to your colorful inner world.

Are you ready for an adventure?