Maybe this is what life is. Maybe, just maybe, life begins once you’re out of your comfort zone. Where everything becomes different, and you start doing things that you’ve never done.
It begins uncomfortable. It begins on the outside. So when coming from the inside, when coming from your comfort zone, what’s different can feel like a burden. What’s different can tend to make you think about how things were when they were comfortable, and we begin to ask God to change the circumstances of where we are because we’re uncomfortable.
What’s uncomfortable can weigh you down to a point where all you can think about is how things were when they were they were comfortable. So you linger on the comfort that used to be instead of embracing the new opportunities and experiences that are right in front of you. This is when we start to live in the moment that’s coming rather than experiencing life as it is actually happening. We wait around for our circumstances to change, but frequently our circumstances are not what needs changing.
It’s like God says, “It is not your circumstances that need to change, but you. I am working in you.”
I believe that every experience and every opportunity we take place in gives us a choice; comfort, or discomfort. We can choose to remain in our comfort zones. We can choose to play it safe and watch life happen from the sidelines. But when we choose discomfort, something miraculous happens. We begin to live fully alive, and God shows us how change bears newness.
Discomfort brings new experiences and new opportunities. The moment we choose to do something out of our comfort zone we start to gain a new mind set. At first, fear comes in and we begin to worry. But if out God is for us, then who could ever stop us, right? Be not afraid. In these moments, we have to give our fear to God and learn what it means to be brave; to let God make us brave.
We gain a new perspective, because we never tried, so we never knew. But now we’re beginning to know and we’re wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.
Even if we don’t see it right away, God works in the midst of discomfort, and in the midst of change, and in the midst of our fear and anxiety. Through these changes, God shows up in miraculous and unexpected ways and teaches us more and more about who He is and just how much He loves us. And through it all, He makes us new.
We learn to laugh and love regardless of the circumstances. We drift out of our comfort zone into a whole new light reaching a whole new audience of those in need. We start to do spontaneous things we wouldn’t of dreamt of doing before we took that first step. This is living and breathing. This is living fully alive. This is where life begins; where your comfort zone ends.
Ellie Proctor 