I love to grab a snack and a drink and go outside in the sunshine or, if the weather’s bad, in my office and watch a movie or read a book or listen to music and crochet.
Because it’s comfortable.
It’s my own space, doing what I enjoy. We like to do things and follow patterns that make us comfortable.
But you know what getting comfortable often leads to?
Ruts.
Like how if you sit in your favorite chair enough, you “waller” it out and it makes a “you-shaped” space. Sometimes we get so comfortable in our habits and traditions we wear out an “us-shaped” hole that gets hard to climb out of.
And you want to know the truth?
God often calls His children to do things that makes them uncomfortable.
Look at Moses.
In Exodus chapters 3&4, God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. God calls him to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt. Moses came up with excuse after excuse, begging God to send anyone else, anyone but him. But God told him, “You’re the man for the job.” Moses thought he couldn’t do what God was asking of him, but God said, “I’ll be with you and even send your brother to help.” God pushed Moses out of his comfort zone, out of his comfortable life in Midian, and led him to do great things and lead His people to freedom.
What about Esther?
She was comfortably living with her cousin Mordecai when King Ahasuerus decided he needed a new queen. After becoming the new queen, Esther settled into life at the palace and found a new “comfortable” and safety. Then Mordecai found out about Haman’s plan to eradicate the Jews. When he asked Esther to petition the King on their behalf, she was uncomfortable. She reminded Mordecai that the King hadn’t called her to him, and that going before him uninvited could mean her death. With the famous words, “Who knows whether you didn’t come into your royal position precisely for such a time as this,” Mordecai reminded Esther that doing what was right was more important than her comfort. After prayer and fasting, she went before the King and was also able to deliver her people from harm.
How about Job staying faithful, even after losing everything he had – all his possessions, his children, and his health.
Or Jonah trying to resist God’s calling and ending up in that gross fishy belly?
Daniel and his friends serving God and refusing to bow and pray to the king, even though they knew it could cost them their positions and their lives.
Or Hosea, who God commanded to marry a prostitute to represent God’s people’s unfaithfulness and His redemption of them.
What about Mary, the mother of Jesus? A young girl, minding her own business, called by God to be the mother of His Son. The things the community would have thought about her, having a child supposedly out of wedlock. That had to be uncomfortable. But she gladly did what God asked of her.
Think about how uncomfortable Peter must have been seeing Jesus for the first time after denying Him. I’da hated to have been in his sandals! But he went on to transform from an uneducated fisherman to one of the great leaders of the early church.
Paul, on the other hand, was in a very comfortable position as a student of the esteemed Gamaliel when Jesus, as Jeremy says, “bushwhacked” him on the road to Damascus. Think how hard it would have been to go back to the places you’d been actively persecuting the very people you were now one of. But he did. And lived his life every day to please God.
Better yet, let’s look at the early Jewish Christians.
Their lives were turned upside down. All of a sudden, things they thought were wrong were okay. And things they had always done needed doing differently, and some of it didn’t even matter at all anymore. They had to retrain their minds to what God desired of them, and I’m sure that period of growth was uncomfortable. But they did grow, and learned and spread and shared, and now here we are.
Sometimes God calls us, individually and collectively, to do things that are uncomfortable. He wants us to climb out of our easy chair and make changes, turn the world upside down, and free His children who are still in bondage to sin and the law.
Paul tells us again and again to embrace our spirit of freedom in Christ.
Romans 6:6-7; Romans 7:6; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:4-7; Galatians 5:1; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 1:7; and many more.
He reminds us we have been freed from sin and the law and are to conduct ourselves as children of God, liberated and redeemed by Christ.
It won’t always be comfortable. Just as the early church had to retrain their way of thinking, often we do as well. But if we are willing, like Moses, Esther, Mary, and the others, to trust in God and leave our comfort zone, He will do great things through us as well.
I’m trying to make more videos, because I know everyone isn’t a reader like I am. You can find the link to this one here. Once I have several up, I will make a page for all of my YouTube links…
Thank you, Corri. Very good for me!