I was born in a tiny town in Tasmania.
It had about 20 houses, and there was literally no road out of town until I was 7 years old.
I’m a nobody from nowhere.

Cradle Mountain isn’t too far from my home town.
It’s a beautiful spot, and the walks around the lake are amazing.
But these days, tourists seem to drive 3 hours to get there, take the photo, and drive away.

When we go somewhere, my wife and I like to experience places.
We like to go for 3 months and explore places. We get off the usual track.

I’ve been to China 7-8 times, (I even got arrested once).
I’ve lived in Silicon Valley. I lived in Tokyo.

I’ve been through a few severe earthquakes.

I’ve eaten bat, fox, snake, weird things like that in China.
And raw sea urchin, shell fish, and weird things like that in Japan.
We’ve had $5 apples, and $50 melons.
We’ve eaten in tiny local restaurants which hold less than 10 people and where you spend your meal chatting with the chef about all sorts of things...
But we have American friends who went to Japan and ate McDonalds and Taco Bell.

I’ve bathed (naked) in a 50ºC pool in Taiwan, and in a blue volcanic hot spring that we found while hiking on a volcano in Japan.

I’ve climbed a 300m cliff just hanging on to shrubs.
I’ve dived 20m deep in kelp gardens, and caught tuna 30km offshore in a small boat.

But so many tourists seem happy to settle for a selfie and a t-shirt that says,
“my uncle went to Japan and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”


Unfortunately many Christians seem to do the same thing - they become Christians and settle for the t-shirt.

I became a Christian almost 40 years ago.
I had spent 6 years at university studying mathematics and science, thinking I knew a lot.
I messed up my life a bit, and started going to church with some friends who stuck by me.
One day in church by myself, I suddenly realised that I belong to Jesus.

Since then I’ve been on an adventure.

When they were very young, on separate occasions, both my children had potentially fatal illnesses in China
Both times we prayed, and both times they were healed in a matter of hours. One time the Chinese doctor turned white because he thought he had killed our daughter by giving her penicillin, and he found out from the blood test that she was allergic to it.

In California I had mononucleosis, (glandular fever), so bad my poo went almost white, (it takes a lot to get a man to go to a doctor!). The doctor told me that my liver was severely swollen - to go home, go straight to bed, and don’t bump into anything on the way or your liver will burst open. Stay there for 6 weeks.
We prayed, the youth group prayed. I slept for 2 days straight and woke up healed. The doctor didn’t believe it, but he ran the tests and came back in shaking his head... He couldn’t believe it, but 100% gone.
(Unfortunately the youth group didn’t believe it either and they wouldn’t shake my hand when I turned up at church 2 days later).

I was the study leader at a teen mountain bike camp in the blue mountains near Sydney. Minutes before my talk on suffering, and how it can be a good thing, I crashed my bike big time, and broke my elbow. there was a 1cm gap in my radius where the bone should meet. We prayed, the church prayed, and a week later when they went to do the operation to fix it they couldn’t even see where it had ever been broken, so they just sent me home. Another head shaking doctor as she looked at the x-ray in amazement.

I was part of a ministry to Chinese PhD students in Tasmania, that had so many Chinese students became Christians that we started a Chinese house church for them so they knew how to run one when they went home.

I prayed for a lady in Japan and 7 demons came out of her.

In Japan there is a temple for “the god who fell from heaven”. Every November the 8 million gods, (demons), of Japan go there to party for a month. So we went there and walked around in the temple praying against them. Binding their ability to interfere with the gospel in Japan. Things changed. A week or two later we heard of 50 Japanese people becoming Christian in a few days through our church.

I’m no evangelist, but I’ve discipled many people who’ve gone on to become leaders, but most importantly - they’ve gone on to have their own adventure.

I’ve taken a bag of Bibles into China. I didn’t want to lie, so I ticked the boxes on the customs declaration. And the secret government offical actually walked me through customs, telling me, and them, that I was with him, so I didn’t need to be checked.

I have many more stories, and I feel like I have let God down so many times, and that my adventure could have been so much more than it has been...

But my point is this:
This is the kind of adventure you should expect as a Christian.
Watchman Nee was a Chinese Christian author, he called this the Normal Christian Life.

Let’s not settle for the t-shirt.
Let’s make ourselves available to Yeshua, to do whatever he wants with us. To take us wherever he wants us to go.