When God Shakes Things Up

We live in a world that prioritizes comfort and stability. Don’t believe me? Watch a few commercials for recliners—that might change your mind.

It’s completely natural to long for these things. A steady routine each day. A solid roof overhead. A community of likeminded friends.

I think it’s okay to enjoy these pleasures too. The problem arises, however, when comfort and stability become our primary focus, the main things we’re striving toward.

Consider the life of Jesus for a moment.

He was born in a barn, grew up in a poor family, and spent His adult years traveling from city to city preaching a message that caused the religious leaders to want to kill Him. His companions were a motley crew of rough fisherman, a tax collector, and outcasts. His disciples probably didn’t know where they would sleep each night as they followed Jesus around.

But what if that built faith?

The disciples saw Jesus provide over and over again, whether that be a meal for thousands or a safe voyage across the sea. If they had chosen to remain safely in their homes, they wouldn’t have witnessed so many miracles.

When I consider my own life, the moments when my plans went awry were the same moments that brought me closest to God. For example, when I finished my undergraduate degree, the “comfortable” path would’ve been getting a full-time job in the writing industry. I tried to go down that path, but when doors kept closing, God led me to pursue the training I’d need to become a published author instead.

Investing in another program, watching friends seem further along than me, and continuing to wait on God to help make this “impossible dream” come true hasn’t been comfortable. There have been many times when I wondered what God was doing. I’m still on this journey, trying to hold onto hope and faith that God will keep opening the right doors to pursue His calling for me.

But you know what? I wouldn’t have grown the same way had God not brought me down a different path, shaking up my understanding and inviting me to trust Him more deeply.

If we lived in a world that was completely comfortable, we wouldn’t need God to comfort us.

How might God be calling you to release your plans and trust in Him today?

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:7b-14 (NIV)