684 Comfort Is Not Your Friend

There’s a place you can go that threatens every dream and desire you’ve ever had. A place where your potential can be sucked right out of you. A place that will chew you up and spit you out, leaving you a lesser than version of who you were created to be. You need to know about this place because it is dangerous … and it’s ever so near. This place constantly beckons you with it’s enticing advertisements and false claims. It says “come here, life will be easier here.” But if you go, you get stuck. It’s like Hotel California, you can checkin any time you like but you can never leave. Without even knowing it, you thought about this place this morning. When your alarm rang, it was likely the first place your mind went. What place am I talking about? What is this danger to your dreams, desires and potential? Where is this threat to who you were created to be? IT IS YOUR COMFORT ZONE. This is the place where you’re lulled into doing only the things you feel like doing. This is the place where you settle for what is easiest and what is immediate. This is the place where you go into a downward spiral of being comfortable. Comfort is like a drug. Once you get used to being comfortable, you become addicted to comfort. Here where things are easy and you’re not forced to do anything you don’t feel like doing, your ambitions are thrown away. Your God given dreams are exchanged for cheap imitations with immediate gratification. This comfort zone is where your dreams go and die. And let me tell you something … Your creator, the one who placed a world of potential inside of you, the one who breathed his vision for your life within you, HE DOES NOT WANT YOU STUCK IN THIS DANGEROUS PLACE FOR ONE MORE DAY! It called to you this morning with the lull of your comfy bed. Just 15 more minutes of sleep. Just a little more laying here and being comfortable. And it’s funny how it’s never enough. 15 minutes turns into 30, then before you know it you sacrificed valuable time to begin your day well because you were stuck in the comfort zone. And how about comfort food? Oh that food that just makes you feel so good right in the moment, then it sits like a brick in your stomach and you feel ill afterwards. Dang, why do we fall for that? Why are we eating for comfort rather than nutrition? What have we done to our bodies in the process? My most popular devotional I’ve ever recorded here was titled “Brownies Are From the Devil.” I’m a former brownie lover. I could bury my face in a pan of brownies and eat 3/4 of it by simply trimming the edges. Like seriously y’all, I would never sit down with a plate because in my mind that would be wrong. I’m not allowed to eat a brownie. So instead I would stand in the kitchen and just trim the edges. Cut a little from this side, and a little over here. Pretty soon I’ve had the equivalent for 5 brownies and I never even sat down to enjoy 1. But then what happens … I feel shame and guilt. And THAT is why brownies are from the devil. He works in the things that make us feel powerless. He dwells in the places that leave us feeling ‘less than’. The devil doesn’t give a flying flip what you eat … but he darn well thrives on making you feel defeated, discouraged, overwhelmed and disappointed. But here’s what we MUST be aware of … these things that make us feel defeated, discouraged, overwhelmed and disappointed first appear as highly desirable choices in the moment. Here, put that off until later. Right now just sit here for a little longer. Ahhhh, sounds good. Then you’re completely overwhelmed later with all you have to do because you didn’t get started when you should have. Girl, don’t worry about that today, you deserve a break.