Comfort is the enemy of progress. I find this to be true in so many areas of my life. I want to lose weight, but I don’t want to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced in the process. I want to fulfill the dreams in my heart but dread any discomfort that may accompany them.
Most importantly, I want to fix my eyes on more eternal things and become less concerned with this earthly, decaying reality but I find myself so drawn to the comfortable that I often times miss the mark. I shrink back to my cozy chair and warm blanket instead of falling on my knees in intercession. Or I choose to drown myself in Oreos with a glass of milk whilst watching an entire season of a pointless TV series instead of going to prayer meeting.
We are supposed to be strangers and aliens here but sometimes we build ourselves a cozy cottage and hang our hats there. Life becomes about being comfortable and less about advancing God’s kingdom.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times we need to rest and recreate. But when recreation turns into a 24/7 lifestyle, we really need to reconnect to truth and our purpose in this world. We need to climb out of our hobbit hole and resume our position in advancing the kingdom.
I have found that when I isolate and withdraw from the world for too long, I end up being overwhelmed by my own soul’s darkness, if that makes any sense at all. It’s very much like what Peter said:
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.
1 Peter 2:11 NIV
Sinful desires are more than just the obvious ones we think of like sexual sins, or lying etc. it could also include greed, idolatry, jealousy, envy, arrogance, boasting, hatred, gluttony, basically anything produced by our flesh.
These are all destructive behaviors that we entertain when we walk according to our old nature. I find that it’s easy to slip into these behaviors when I’ve forgotten that I’m just a stranger and alien here. This really isn’t my home- I am just a traveling gypsy here. I should never invite the ways of this world to take up residence in me just because I’m passing through it. I should remain untouched by its darkness because of the One who lives inside me.
I’ve been studying the various feasts of Israel and how Messiah is revealed on all of them. Today I read about the Feast of Tabernacles. God instructed the Israelites to build these little lean-to type booths and live in them for 7 days during this festival. It was a temporary structure and it was to memorialize these years of desert wandering and how He protected them, cared for them etc. I think it also symbolized this idea of passing through and how this world truly isn’t our permanent home. They weren’t allowed to build homes in the desert, just temporary shelters.
I think it’s the same for us. We are strangers and aliens here, passing through to our forever home. We can never get so comfortable that we make sin a casual trespass as we begin to reflect a dark world. We cannot get so comfortable here that we truly miss the reason why we are even here in the first place.
We are here so we can choose to develop a relationship with our creator. That’s our purpose on this earth. We can’t allow comfort to rob us of the transformation He wants to give us through a relationship with Him.
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