Courtney Ellis

My husband thinks its adorable that I change into pajama pants the minute I get home. (I married well in that he thinks it’s adorable and not some sort of neurosis.)

I like to be comfortable! Really, who doesn’t?

The problem comes when I decide that comfort is the ultimate goal of my spiritual life, too. Comfort at church. Comfort in my faith. Comfort with Jesus.

Because here’s the thing: God calls us out of our comfort zone. Consistently. Constantly. Communally.

I want to curl up, alone with my down comforter and a book, and God says, “Go invite your neighbor in for dinner.”

I want to sit with friends I already know, and God says, “That new woman looks a little lost. Why don’t you introduce yourself?”

I want to have tidy, pat answers to life’s deepest questions and God says, “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.”

The world is aching with injustice, burdened with sin, filled with need. Personal comfort cannot be our goal. It wasn’t Jesus’s.

Letting God discomfort me for the kingdom is not only a requirement for me as a pastor, but for any Christians and all of us together as the body of Christ. In his book The Church, Hans Küng puts it this way:

The Church is essentially en route, on a journey, a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents without looking out constantly for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling.

God calls us out of our pajama pants and into our running shoes so we can be a people who are on the move for the kingdom.

So the question is: are you willing to let God be not only the God of all comfort–the one who cares for you in distress, binds up your wounds, speaks hope to your troubled hearts–but the God of your discomfort, too?

As Jesus says in Matthew 9:

³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.