Some people like to say “I don’t want to go out of my comfort zone”! What they are really saying is that they like living in a static place where they feel comfortable, but don’t want to be challenged to grow and change and have new experiences. While our human nature tends to be that way at times, it is clear in the Bible that God has no intention of keeping us in a static comfort zone all of our life! God’s call is always to new and abundant life, as uncomfortable as that is at times, and to deny his call on our life to move forward is to settle for a stagnant existence that is always less than he desires for us.
Comfort zones are, well, comfortable, and God does want us to enjoy them! Sometimes it may be an activity that we really love. For example, I’ve been playing golf since I was probably 10 years old. (And yet I still play pretty crappy at times!) I know which club to use, how to read the hole, and I just love playing with my guy buddies when we are comfortable enough to tease each other about our poor shots and laugh at each other. I can do this many times a week, but I also realize that life should involve a lot more than this!
Primarily, comfort zones involve relationships with other people! Our family and close friends make life really fun and meaningful, and without them, life just isn’t quite the same. When our children grow up and leave the nest, there is sometimes a feeling of sadness and a loss of them in our immediate lives. (And of course, there is great celebration as well, as we divvy up their rooms to become sewing or craft rooms or dens and man-caves!) But when we lose really close friends, or a spouse, we find that our “comfort zone” with that person has really been shattered. I certainly enjoyed a wonderful “comfort zone” with Claudia as my wife for 42 years. Not that it was ever perfect, or easy, or always “comfortable”. But through our disagreements, struggles, forgiving each other, and reconciling again and again, we learned to form a team, and a bond that enabled us to face the trials and joys of life together, knowing that we had each other’s backs. And when that team and deep bond was broken by death, I learned that it affected everything else in my life in small and sometime significant ways.
So, what do we do when a major comfort zone in our life is taken away from us?
Some people retreat into the past, hoping vainly that it will be resurrected somehow. They stay in what’s left of their comfort zone, and just exist for the rest of their life. But if you understand the Bible and God’s plan for us, you know that is NEVER His plan! In the Bible, God is always commanding people to move forward toward him, to grow in faith and character, and live life here fearlessly, knowing that an even better life awaits us in the future!
Through 18 months of watching Claudia slowly die, and now about 8 months of trying to figure out what God wants me to do next, I came up with 3 major thoughts about how God wants to use everything in life to move us toward him.
1) God uses everything in life, the joys and the sorrows, the celebrations and the losses, to move us closer to Him!
Psalm 42:1-2 says,
1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
All of the wonderful joys of life, from beautiful landscapes to loving relationships, were created by God for us to enjoy, and represent the intimate, deep relationship he desires to have with us. God didn’t just create us to enjoy this world and each other; he wants to share it with us! That was the original design in the Garden of Eden, but our sin separated us from him, and thus we are missing out on the best relationship we can have, a closer one with God himself. But if we let him, he takes the best and worst experiences of life and uses them to remind us of his love and desire to help us. One of Claudia’s good friends who also fought cancer likes to remind others that we need to “lean into God” especially when times are hard and we are going through wilderness experiences.
2) God wants us to be in loving, supportive relationships with each other, because they represent the relationship he desires to have with us!
We need each other, because that’s the way God designed us! We all need family and friends to laugh with, cry with, and share the joys of life with. There should be no “lone ranger Christians”, and if you think of yourself that way, you are missing out on the best opportunities to experience joy and support that God wants for you. The Bible says that marriage is the ultimate in human relationship, because it represents the very relationship God desires to have with us! In Ephesians 5:31-32, Paul says “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a profound mystery— but I am talking about Christ and the church”. What Paul is referring to here is the idea that in the future Kingdom of God, all of us as believers will be considered the “bride” of Christ, and he will be the bridegroom. So the very best of any marriage is just a glimpse of how wonderful and close our relationship with Jesus will be when we live together with him forever on the future New Heaven and Earth combined!
In my case, because I experienced many wonderful glimpses of God’s love through my imperfect marriage with Claudia, I am seeking to find another wonderful Christian woman to eventually share the rest of our lives together! Will it be easy? Nope! Will it be a comfort zone experience? Not for a long time, but hopefully sometime in the future! Will it be un-comfortable for both if us, causing us to give up familiar and comfortable habits to start a new beginning? Absolutely! Would it be easier to stay single and just play golf? Probably. But am I going to try it? Of course! Because I know God is calling each us of to move forward in faith with our lives, so he can give us the best, most abundant experience that he desire for us! And, I love the thought of having a wonderful Christian partner and friend to share our faith together, with others, for the rest of our life!
3) Every experience in life, both wonderful and discouraging, is designed to move us on to our permanent home and new life with God forever!
In our 18 month battle with cancer, one expression that came to bring me much comfort and hope was the idea that her many friends and I were, together, helping to “walk Claudia home”! Now, it took us a long time to get there! We prayed for well over a year for physical healing and the hope that she would stay in this “home”, here with me, for another 20 years or so. And I really struggled to let go of that idea. But now, on the other side of her death for 8 months, I can truly rejoice that Claudia is really at “home” where she belongs, and she is infinitely more at peace now than she has ever been. And someday, she and I and all those who trust their lives to Jesus will be reunited and we will join him in living forever on a combined New Heaven and Earth, with new bodies that will never get sick or die! We get a glimpse of this amazing new life in Revelation 21: 1-5:
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
WOW! That, my friends, is the ultimate and only “comfort zone” we should be permanently seeking if life!
Enjoy your comfort zones, for a while!
But don’t get stuck and mired in them, or you may miss the best life God has planned for you!
Isaiah 43:19 says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Finally, live life fearlessly, with hope for the future! Christians are always called to look forward and move forward, knowing that the best is yet to come through Jesus!
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit!”