STEPPING OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
What is your comfort zone? Our comfort zone is the area in which we feel most comfortable. It is the area in which we feel familiar, at ease, and free from stress or anxiety. But to experience growth, we must move out of our comfort zone. By what means and at what time should we move from comfort to discomfort?
In this series of lessons, we will look at the love of God and his plan (his mission) in bridging the gap between us and him and bringing us back into a relationship with him. In His bridging the gap between us and Him, he calls for us to become His disciples, members of his family. Becoming God’s disciples and fulfilling his mission, plan, and purpose for us at times may feel uncomfortable.
This discomfort has been the experience of many in the past. How did they respond, and what were the results?
God has a mission and a plan that involves us. In this series, we look at God’s call for us to get out of our comfort zone and partner with him in fulfilling his mission (his plan and purpose).
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Let Us Inviting God’s Presence:
God Most High, we recognize that you have a plan and purpose for us, but to experience it, we must move out of our comfort zone. Give us the strength and the courage to do so. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Our comfort zone is a place where we feel comfortable. It is the place where we are familiar with the routines, expectations, and outcomes.
In essence, our comfort zone represents a zone of low stress and low risk. But at times, God calls us out of our comfort zone.
God invites us to move out of our comfort zone to fulfill His mission and purpose. He wants us to introduce Him to those who do not know him. He wants us to stand as witnesses for him.
In being a witness for him, sometimes He may ask us to do things we haven’t ever done before. What he asks us to do may cause us to feel uncomfortable, and we may even feel afraid. Change is uncomfortable. Nevertheless, when we allow God to develop us, He can use us to do a mighty work for him.
For example, the people in the land of Shinar who were building the Tower of Babel. They were comfortable. They were builders, so they were comfortable building the tower.
But God called them to move out of their comfort zone. Thus, He caused the builders not to understand each other. So, they stopped building the tower of Babel and left the land of Shinar. It was God’s purpose that rather than everyone congregating there in the land of Shinar around the tower of Babel, they disperse and populate the entire world.
Though discomforting, look at what happened once the People of Shinar were dispersed. It says in the book Patriarchs and Prophets:
“This dispersion was the means of peopling (populating) the earth, and thus the Lord’s purpose was accomplished through the very means that men had employed to prevent its fulfillment.”—Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 120.
Another example of being pushed out of their comfort zone is Abraham. God called Abraham to leave his home and go to another country. God wanted others to have the opportunity to learn about Him. Read about Abraham’s call in Genesis 12.
Then there were the disciples of Jesus. These followers of Jesus were in their comfort zone when they were working among their own people, the Jews. But they were discomforted when they were instructed to work among the Gentiles, the non-Jews.
At first, they shared the Good News about salvation through Jesus with only their own people. But then Jesus sent them to share the Good News about Him with non-Jews.
Read about their work among their people in Acts 3 and what happened to cause them to be dispersed and begin sharing the Good News about Jesus to others in Acts 8:1-4.
In Acts 1:8, Jesus laid down a principle for sharing the good news about Him with others.
Acts 1:8 says.
8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
Notice that Jesus starts them in a place of comfort and familiarity. They were to start locally, Jerusalem and Judea, then go to Samaria (a less familiar area, slight discomfort) and, ultimately, to the ends of the earth (less familiar and greater discomfort).
God may never call us to leave our family or our country.
But God wants us to get out of our comfort zones. He wants us to be participants in fulfilling His mission, His plan, His purpose for us. He wants us to share our experiences of Him with the people around us. He wants us to tell others about the Good News of Jesus Christ.
We can do this every day with our kind words, our good deeds, our forgiving spirit, and being tenderhearted to our family, friends, and neighbors. It involves telling of our personal experiences we have had with God and sharing the good news about Jesus and his power to save.
You see when the church in Jerusalem was becoming complacent and did not want to move out of their comfort zone, its members experienced persecution. The persecution forced them to disperse.
Though the people suffered and were discomforted because of persecution, it became a means of spreading the good news about Jesus worldwide.
For us to develop and become secure in reaching others, God wants us to move out of our comfort zones. What could be the potential pitfalls of not moving out of your comfort zone? Read Genesis 11:1-9 then Continue to Part 2: Moving Beyond Our Comfort Zone
God’s Mission, My Mission (Lesson 3)
God’s Call to Mission
Part 2 of 6
Moving Beyond Our Comfort Zone
Sharing the Good News about Jesus with others requires that we move out of our comfort zone. This will involve us doing things we have never done before. Moving out of our comfort zone may make us feel nervous, anxious, or even afraid.
It is more comfortable interacting with the people we know. It is more comfortable to remain with our own ethnic or social groups, but this habit can cause selfishness and even evil intent. This danger we learn from the story of the Tower of Babel found in Genesis 11:1-9
What did the people want to do? Why did God stop them from doing it?
The story of the people at the Tower of Babel reveals that they had the great ambition to be famous. They planned to build a city and tower that would be the highest and grandest in the world. They said in Genesis 11:4, “let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name (Genesis 11:4).
They wanted to be famous!
How often do people today try to do the same thing? They may be artists, political leaders, businesspersons, or even pastors who want to be famous.
But, In the end, their wish to be famous is empty and has no meaning. This is what Solomon concludes in Ecclesiastes 2:1–11. Read Ecclesiastes 2:1–11. He says in Ecclesiastes 2:9–11
9 So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.
10 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, For my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor.
11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done And on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:9–11)
Genesis 11:4 tells us why the people wanted to build the tower. They wanted to avoid being scattered all over the earth. They wanted to stick together for their own selfish reasons. But that was not God’s plan for them.
Although they were united in their efforts, “the Lord said in Genesis 11:6
6 ‘“Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. (Genesis 11:6).
The plan of the people to build this tower was in fact, evil.
Though it is not said directly, it is believed that the people didn’t trust God’s promise in Genesis 9:14, 15 that He would not destroy the earth with water again. Therefore, rather than trust God’s promise to help them feel secure, they decided to build a tower.
In other words, they didn’t believe what God had said. So, instead of putting their trust in Him, they attempted to build the tower. But God knew their intentions were evil. Their hearts were filled with selfishness. So, God stopped their plan from happening.
God expects us to not just interact with people who agree with us or confine ourselves to groups or communities that we only identify with.
God wants us to interact with people who are not part of our race, ethnicity, community, or nationality. What does God want us to be to others? Read Genesis 12:1-3 and Watch my next video, Part 3: Becoming a Blessing to the Whole World
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