Outside Your Comfort Zone

Shut yourself up in an intellectual monastery, do not disturb yourself with the thought of unregenerate men, and of course you will find it easier to he a Christian, just as it is easier to be a good soldier in comfortable winter quarters than it is on the field of battle. You save you own soul – but the Lord’s enemies remain in possession of the field.

-J. Gresham Machen

It is easy to hide ourselves away from  culture. When we do, there are no questions about abortion, gay marriage, fair taxation, the rights of migrant workers, or what to do with undocumented workers within our borders. We hide in our quiet little world and let everything else work itself out, taking no stand on anything. However, Christ does not call us to be safe or content. And, on many of the issues above, there are few answers that give us comfort in every scenario we could envision.

Christ calls us to a life of tension, to live openly with the “I don’t know.” It would have been so much easier, easier to condemn and to judge. It also would have left us farther from our Savior. There would be no struggle to deal with loving people wrapped in things we would like to call sin. There would be no question as to who our brothers and sisters in Christ truly are; obviously, they would be people like us, people who believed as we believed, who never challenged or questioned us. Neither would there be growth.

When we struggle with issues of faithfulness and righteousness we also find ourselves turning to the Savior more for the answers that lie far beyond our comprehension. We are left with “God, HELP ME!” far more often than our hearts and minds would like.

However, it is as we get dirty in the culture, as we come in contact with those across the fence from us, that we show forth the love of Christ more clearly and more to His glory. There is nothing hard about hiding in the church, safe in our cocoon. If we do that, the enemy is in control of the field, and our love for Christ is a faint shadow of what it could be, allowing the light of the Living One to be lived out where it needs to be seen more clearly. Leave your comfort zone.

Pastor Craig