Seeking a Better Land
 
      We don’t think often enough about all those who have been the prospectors among the hills of God—the spiritual adventurers, the explorers of the kingdom. God wrote in the Bible about them because they were seeking a better land.
      Why did Abraham leave Ur of the Chaldees? God promised him spiritual adventures, and he moved out at God’s bidding, but it didn’t make him a hero at that point.
      Think of what the contented people must have said.
      “Look at that fool,” they said. “What’s the matter with him? Everyone else is satisfied to go to the temple once a week and make an offering, but Abraham talks about hearing a voice that said ‘get thee into the land which I will show thee.’”
      They said, “Abraham, you are a fool!”
      But Abraham said, “I heard the Voice, plain and clear. I’m moving out!”
      At that point Abraham was no hero. They thought he had lost his mind, that he was at least semidemented. But you know the rest of the story.
      Then there was Moses, who could have lived on in the house of his supposed mother in Egypt and perhaps could have become the emperor. But he refused to do it. He got up and left. You know the story and the great list of his spiritual adventures and his favor with God.
      Think of the apostles and all of the great souls who have been adventurers. They were not the heroes of the crowd, but they have entered into God’s great Hall of Fame. But something had to happen within each one, an internal fire before it became external. This desire to prospect the hills of God for new lodes of gold had to be inward before it could be outward. These adventurers for God knew the happening on the inside before there was any evidence on the outside.