More Than Comfort

When you think of comfort. what images arise?

I think of my big comfy chair bathed in sunlight.

How do you respond to situations that push you beyond what you are comfortable with? What is your response to discomfort?

I was listening to a sermon by a favorite speaker/author, Bob Goff. He is hilarious but poignantly inserts deep truths.  One of the many truths that caused me to reflect from this latest sermon was "Comfortable people don't need God."

It made me wonder...

In what ways do I need to challenge my comfort? How is comfort undermining God's place in my life? In what ways am I relying on myself instead of God because life is comfortable?

We know how it works, life is good and we are going along, we talk to God a little less, read our bibles infrequently, all of a sudden we are cruising along ignoring him.

Then something doesn't go our way and we need him again. We pray more, dive into the Word and we are clinging to God again.

How do we carry that need for him into the easy times? How do we challenge comfort, so we remember our dependence on God?

My prayer has been that God would teach me how to love him with my heart, soul, mind and strength and love my neighbour as myself. I have found that as I try to maintain this focus and as God honours my desire, He has a great way of making me uncomfortable.

God has been pushing me in a couple of ways. He keeps nudging me into areas that are hard for me. One area is leadership.  Leadership is scary to me for a few reasons. To lead well requires vulnerability, and reveals my inadequacies.

Vulnerability is terrifying. When I share myself, I open myself up to potential rejection. If people do not like what is exposed, they may pull away or abandon me. That can be very scary.

When I share myself with others, they have the opportunity to judge me. Sometimes we hold leaders to standards that are unfair. We may expect more of them. I am going to disappoint.

To lead with integrity and follow the Spirit's leading means sometimes I am called to share parts of myself that I haven't shared before. That is a very vulnerable place to be. This gives others intimate knowledge that they could potentially use to hurt me. Most people won't. More times than I can count, I have been received with grace. But there is always a fear.

Leadership exposes my failings. I am flawed. My worst fear is that my inadequacies could hurt someone. A careless word or action on my part could divide someone from our church family or from God. I pray that God would lead me in righteousness and love, but I am human. I can almost guarantee I will mess up.  That scares me. It keeps me dependent on God.

If I have hurt you, I want to know so I can make it right. I want to be humble, approachable and learn from my mistakes.

This blog is another step into the uncomfortable.

Sometimes God asks me to share something and all I can think is "I have no idea who is going to read this!!!" It is out of my hands with the blog. I have no control of the audience. I wonder why anyone would read what I have to write? When God is urging me to be vulnerable, what do the people who read think? Of me, of him? What might be the common human experience between myself and an individual in the United Arabic Emirates or Sri Lanka?

Yikes!!

It is all very stretching, a little uncomfortable. And...it keeps me dependent on God. As I seek to love God, he leads me into the unknown, constantly pushing the boundaries of my trust and faith.  He challenges me and grows me.

My greatest joys have happened when I follow God into the deep.

I am learning that when I follow, God is faithful. He has given me sweet moments of glimpsing another's soul when my own vulnerability has given them courage to open up.

I am learning that while I may get hurt, he is with me in it, and that is enough. God has suffered for me and I am learning to be willing to suffer for him. An easier thing to say than do. It's a work in progress...

God is more concerned about my character than my comfort. My love for him and who I am are his priority.

I am learning that a life that pushes the limits beyond my comfort, is where life is rich and full and beautiful. It is a life beautifully dependent on God.

I want to move beyond comfort, I want to be in situations that make me aware of my need and continually push me to press into God.

In what ways do you need God to interrupt your comfort so that you need Him?