Stepping out of your Comfort Zone

For some people, the superstition of Friday the 13^th being a day of bad luck and probable trouble, is a very serious matter. Believing that their day is doomed to be full of mishaps, fated tragedies and all around bad luck, creates a mindset that today is the day to call in sick. It might be best to stay home, hunker down with a good book or a stack of movies, except of course the one called, you guessed it, Friday the 13^th. 

The superstition is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia. Try to say that fast 10 times. But wait a second, if you do, you just might end up at the emergency room with an oral surgeon trying to untie your unlucky tongue. It might just be easier to say, I have Fear of Friday the 13^th. It has been called the most prevalent superstition that people experience. In fact, on Friday the 13^th, many people won’t eat out, will not fly, and avoid anything that may put them at risk of stepping out of their safe Comfort Zone.

In reality, many people all over the world are being pushed to the panicky edge of their own personal Comfort Zone. With the downsizing of many companies all over the world, most employees are having to wear 3 or 4 hats just to keep their jobs. The press of forced change that is imposed upon all of us today due to circumstances outside of our control, creates incredible anxiety, and threatens to take away our peace in the Quiet Place.

 

The Quiet Place is not a realm where we are free from life's trials, or do not experience trouble. It is only as our hearts and minds are at peace with God, that we can step out of our Comfort Zone because the Quiet Place is not a location or a protective force field...it is the ability to travel trough the storm of trouble, yet maintain peace and comfort within because God is within us. He is our Quiet Place.

The real risk of stepping outside of our Comfort Zone

The idea of taking a step outside of this place of perceived safety brings on the highest potential of failure,increases the risk of making a fool out of oneself, and thereby being potentially rejected by others. The fear of dropping the ball, and letting people down, and ultimately enhancing their LPR (Loser Potentiality Ratio), is terrifying.

For some people, the thought of taking a risk to attempt something outside of one’s Comfort Zone, without a stiff drink, smoking a bowl of green bud, or taking Ativan, Xanax, Valium, or any host of pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal, is impossible to consider. This is life for them, and it is real and scary.

The only true Hiding Place is found in God

A person cannot hide from life because they may fear hurt, failure or loss. Only God provides a Hiding Place so safe, that nothing can come to you that doesn't first pass through Him.The key is in being vulnerable enough to trust Him with the risk that life hurts, and suffering is real. It is a trusting assurance that should a storm come your way, He will be there strengthening you and comforting you through it all.

The Burdens of Life Can be Overwhelming

Life is filled with risks every day. It doesn't make a person a better or stronger leader because they take risks. It is the leader who knows which risks to take, and which to avoid, that exemplifies good leadership skills. I have made enough mistakes in my lifetime to know that.

God is the God of all Comfort (I Corinthians 1:3-50). When you find yourself flat on your face and you don't know which way to turn, try looking up. His comfort Zone flows out of His all sufficient grace, lavished upon us through His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord of Peace. He is the Prince of Peace because He paid the Price of Peace (II Corinthians 5:17-21).

When Life becomes a daily Friday the 13^th

Let’s face it, today most people are afraid of the loss of their ability to hold onto their personal financial security. 

Just like taking a table cloth and giving it a good snap to unfurl it, the ripple of significant economic destabilization of international markets, have had a large scale impact across the financial infrastructure of world economics that has affected every one of us.

Employment Downsizing and Work-life issues

The security of one’s job used to be something that gave a person a sense of personal security. Not many people today can say with certainty, ”My job is secure. They need me too much to lay me off much less fire me.” The term ‘Downsizing’ is now a common phrase from Seattle to Cape Town, from Rome to Athens, or from Manila to London.

Loss of Control and Facing the unknown 

Do we really have control over anything? Not really. Something can happen to anyone, at anytime, in anyplace and one might have no power to prevent it from happening. On the morning of March 11, 2011, the people living in the city of Kesennuma, Japan could do nothing as the horrific tragedy of an earthquake and tsunami devastated their city and hundreds of miles of surrounding communities. The world watched in horror as scenes of devastation spread across the internet and international media causing a firestorm of visual shock and grief. In reality we all face the unknown every day of our lives. 

We all need a Comfort Zone, but one that liberates us rather than imprisons us. Life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone, and that only can take place when God becomes the God of all Comfort to you.

“You are my Hiding Place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance." Psalm 32:6

Only Jesus Christ Can be our true Comfort Zone

When your days are filled with worry and stress, remember that Jesus Christ has much bigger shoulders than you do, and they carried an old rugged cross all the way to the very heart of God.

The peace of God is found in Jesus Christ alone. 

"I am the way, the truth and the life; no man can come to the Father except by me." John 14:6 

The troubles of life will fill you with anxiety

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me."  John 14:1

 The peace of God cannot be counterfeited

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” John 14:27

Life outside the Comfort Zone will always be tough

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 

 

If today is a day where your anxiety and stress are high and your heart is heavy, take time to meet with God in the Quiet Place and lay the burden of life at His feet.

Tough Faith for Hard Times

The deserts of our lives are not pleasant pilgrimages that we journey through at leisure. Most often when we think of a desert, we think of a place that is inhospitable, harsh and fraught with hardship, and the potential of danger. A desert exists geologically as a place where nothing useful grows to sustain life. A few animals can survive there, but for humans, it is a place to avoid, not head toward.

Personal Life Deserts are harsh emotional wastelands, void of vital resources when needed, and have the capacity to break our spirit. In Scripture, many times, the use of the word desert, wilderness, wasteland or dry land is interchangeable. Deserts are places that you travel through, when you have no other way to get to where you need to be. Deserts are real, and they are, tough places to traverse. In a symbolical sense, they illustrate those hard, seemingly unprofitable times when our lives are stymied, on hold, or we are spiritually as dry as a mummy’s breath. 

As a shepherd and soldier, David spent a lot of time in the dry wildernesses of Judah. He often found the need to flee to the desert during times of threat and personal crisis. When he served under King Saul and was suspicious of treachery, David fled to where he had the best chance to find a hiding place. 

In the Desert of Ziph

“David stayed in the desert strongholds and in the hills of the Desert of Ziph. Day after day Saul searched for him, but God did not give David into his hands.” 1 Samuel 23:14

In the Desert Of Edom

On one of David’s many forays into the wilderness, he was being pursued by his son Absalom, and his life was in peril. David went into the desert to find a safe haven, and discovered that amidst the turmoil, hardship and deprivation, his longing for God became an intense and insatiable reality. Deserts have a way of separating us from our natural comforts, and they strip us of the barest of life’s essentials.

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”  Psalm 42:2 
 

In the desert, God can speak to us in ways that He can in no other place. Be it under a mound of unresolved problems, painful discouraging long term health issues, a broken marriage, years of depression, or seasons of dissatisfying spiritual dryness, the desert creates a pilgrimage process, that has but one purpose: to lead us into a deeper life with God.

The Desert Creates a Thirst for God

After days of wandering in the barren wilderness, David trekked deep into the wasteland of the Valley of Baca. The interpretation of Baca (bacah) in the Hebrew could be translated, “The valley of weeping.” It was a dry lonely desolate place. As life became more desperate for David, his heart began to thirst for God. 

“How lovely (Beloved) is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” Psalm 84:1

This was not a muffled sob coming from David but a shrill longing cry from an anguished heart. The word that is here rendered cry, is from the Hebrew, that signifies to shout, or cry out with great emotion, as soldiers do at the beginning of a battle. 

While in the wilderness, with every labored step, he was longing for and crying out to be near to God.

“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young—a place near your altar.” Psalm 84:3

The reawakening of spiritual thirst happens in the midst of adversity, not because of adversity. Trials will not produce revival within our hearts, neither will correct moral responses or behavior. It is as we draw near to God, that He draws near to us. In that synergistic moment we are touched by God and we are changed, and are never the same.

“ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”  James 4:8

The Desert Ignites a Need to Praise God

There is something profoundly powerful and deeply moving, when our heart reaches up to praise God in the darkest night in our personal desert. When God hears the heart inspired praises of a Christian in the desert, it pleases Him for it is the epitome of trusting faith.

“In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  I Thessalonians 5:18

When David feigned madness before King Abimelech, and he hid in the dark lonely desert caves at Adullam, he wrote Psalm 34, with a key emphasis on praising God in the midst of adversity.  (See I Samuel 22:1-2; Psalm 142:4-7)

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” Psalm 34:1

 

That is why David was so moved to praise God in the desert valley of Baca, because he recognized that wherever he was, God was there with Him. In the desert he began to recognize that the God of the Burning Bush, had become the God of the Burning Heart.

“O Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you. Selah” Psalm 84:3b-4

The Desert Stirs is a Hunger to Know God

 
While Paul was in prison, he had but one aspiration, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” Philippians 3:10

Tough times stir the heart to become bitter and disheartened, or they stir the heart to a hunger to know God more deeply. For David, the journey through the Valley of Baca, could only be done with the strength of God. Spiritual strength came in the midst of the valley as he passed through it, not before he entered it. 

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” The natural heart is a pathless wilderness, full of cliffs and precipices. When the heart is renewed by grace, a road is made, a highway is prepared for our God." Frederick Fysh

 “As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.”  Psalm 84:5-7

The Desert Awakens the Heart to Worship God

There is no more comforting a place than on our knees worshiping God before the Throne of Grace. Everything else fades into silence while our heartbeat harmonizes with His Heartbeat, our purpose aligns with His purpose, and our will responds in obedience to His will. That most often happens in the midnight of our own Gethsemane.

“Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the Throne of Grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:16
 

In the desert David was humbled by the majesty of God, and he experienced His presence while in the isolated barrenness of the desert. As he experienced the presence of God, and renewed his absolute trust in God, he could only bow his head and pray,

“Hear my prayer, O Lord God Almighty; listen to me, O God of Jacob.  Selah Look upon our shield, O God; look with favor on your anointed one. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. (Beloved) O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.” Psalm 84:8-12

Thirst   Praise   Know   Worship

The more we Thirst for God, the more we will begin to Praise Him, and the more we Praise Him, the more we will hunger to Know Him, and the more we get to know Him, the more we long to Worship Him.

When you are in the desert remember that you are not alone...He is there, and it is not your strength that will get you through it but His. 

Take a few moments and reflect upon the meaningful and encouraging message in this song, "Find you on m Knees" by Kari Jobe