We like to be comfortable. It is human nature to seek out safe, secure, comfortable situations. To create comfortable safe havens to which we can run when we feel threatened, uncomfortable, insecure, or simply tired and worn out.
We like to be with people we know and who know us. People we trust. People we love and who love us. People with whom we are comfortable. It’s natural.
The recent focus has been on creating safe, secure, comfortable places for ourselves and our family – where we can shut out the noise, the politics, the talking heads, the ugliness going on in cities here and around the world.
Shut out the COVID talk – symptoms, masks, mandate, vaccines, boosters. We shelter in place, cocoon, huddle, and quarantine – finding new ways to be comfortable. And we continue to do so because the world has become an increasingly uncomfortable place.
Be encouraged.
God never promised comfortable.
From Genesis to Revelation, we see God do His greatest and mightiest works in and through His people who have been moved out of their comfortable into the uncomfortable.
God works in the uncomfortable.
It was uncomfortable for…
- Noah to risk reputation, livelihood, and ridicule to build the ark
- Abraham to leave his home, life, and people to journey with his wife to a destination unknown
- Moses to leave the fields of Midian to return to Egypt to lead the rebellious, uncooperative, ungrateful, and disobedient Israelites out of captivity and through the wilderness for 40 years
- Deborah, a prophetess and judge, to step into military leadership – she wasn’t a warrior, but she sounded the battle cry leading Israel into combat against the fierce Canaanite army
- Ruth to leave everything familiar to follow Naomi, a penniless widow back to a foreign country to serve its God – Jehovah
- David, the shepherd with a poet’s heart, to leave the pastures, fields, and streams of home to fight a giant, become a soldier, then run for years chased by a jealous King determined to kill him
- Esther, a Jewish orphan queen, to risk her life and luxurious existence in order to save her people, the Jews, from certain and utter annihilation
- The prophets of old, John the Baptist, Jesus’ disciples, Stephen, Paul, Barnabas and so many others whose stories are told in Scripture and Christian history books; men and women who in times of great discomfort were used by God in great and mighty ways, changing the course of their lives and the lives of others. The resulting impact of their discomfort touches us even today.
Our Savior took upon Himself unimaginable discomfort, so that we could have the ultimate comfort of mercy, redemption, eternal salvation, and everlasting life.
We cannot remain fixed comfortably in one spot and expect to learn all that God wants us to learn about
- Him,
- Walking and growing in faithful obedience,
- Working out our salvation as His Holy Spirit does a transforming work in us, and
- Being shaped moment-by-moment into the image of Jesus Christ.
God teaches, stretches, and works through us in times of discomfort.
Take comfort when you find yourself uncomfortable knowing that God is doing a good work in you.
GOD WORKS IN OUR UNCOMFORTABLE.
MY PRAYER IN TIMES OF UNCOMFORTABLE
Gracious and Loving Father,
Help me to take comfort in times of discomfort knowing that You are at work in me. Fill me with the hope and peace of Your eternal comfort. In You alone there is comfort, in You alone there is rest. Amen.
“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, Who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.”
2 Thessalonians 2: 16, 17