The very nature of the gospel is Jesus inviting the disciples on an adventure. To do what they'd never done and go where they'd never gone. Never a dull moment! You cannot follow Jesus and be bored at the same time.

If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself—begin to have spiritual discernment.

So Moses set out with Joshua his attendant and went up on the mountain of God.

“Good,” said Saul to his servant. “Come, let us go.” So they set out for the city where the man of God was.

God, I am trying to recover my faith. Please don't abandon me in the middle of this adventure, I prayed, pushing my fears aside.

We don't have to accept blandness in life. God, who is the author of creativity, is ready to make a dull life adventuresome the moment we allow his Holy Spirit to go to work inside us.

In my experience, take the Holy Spirit out of the equation of your life and it spells boring. Add it into the equation of your life and you never know where you are going to go, what you are going to do, or who you are going to meet.

I had envisioned that this would be a short book, about half of what it has become. Once I opened up the Scriptures, however, it was like the glaciers melted and the dams overflowed, and I had to ride the rivers way downstream. I hope you enjoy and learn from the ride.

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.

Get into the habit of saying, ''Speak, Lord,'' and life will become a romance.

If our gospel does not free the individual up for a unique life of spiritual adventure in living with God daily, we simply have not entered fully into the good news that Jesus brought.

My earlier books, 'The Oath,' 'This Present Darkness' were pretty straight adventure. 'The Visitation' is like a deeper book, more thought-provoking. It probes at character more.