To Move Out of Your Comfort Zones, You Must Be Willing to Make Mistakes
We get comfortable with things that ought not to feel comfortable. Jesus calls us out of such comfort zones. He calls us to change. You cannot move out of your comfort zones unless you’re willing to make mistakes and move beyond them. A quick review of the Gospels indicates that in Matthew, Peter is mentioned in 24 different verses. In 11 of the 24 verses he is doing the wrong thing, or saying the wrong thing, or in some other way missing the mark. That’s 11 out of 24 references! In Mark it is 11 of 20 verses, in Luke it is seven out of 18 verses, and in John it is 10 out of 19 verses. Here’s a guy who seems to have about a 50 percent chance of doing the wrong thing in a given situation. Ultimately, he fails at walking on water with Jesus’ help. He is also the man to whom Jesus said, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt. 16:18).
What was it that Jesus saw in Peter? I believe he saw in Peter a man who could change, a man who could be shaped, a man who could grow. He saw in Peter a man who made mistakes but who could move beyond those mistakes.
To move out of your comfort zones, you’ve got to be willing to make mistakes and to move beyond them. How are your comfort zones holding back the cause of Christ? In August 1985, 200 lifeguards with the New Orleans Recreation Department gathered for a party at a city pool to celebrate. It was the first summer in memory that there had not been a drowning at one of the New Orleans city pools. While they were celebrating, a 31-year-old man, Jerome Moody, drowned in that very pool.
Comfort zones give us a false sense of security. “Two hundred lifeguards! Nobody could drown here. Everything’s fine. We’re okay. We’re having a good time.”
When you stay in your comfort zone, not only does it hold you back from being all God means you to be, but it may hold back the cause of Christ because you are unwilling to move beyond your comfort level in giving or ministry.
Dreams die in our comfort zones. The only way to stay alive is to keep growing. To keep growing, you must keep dreaming. Jesus calls us out of our comfort zones not because he wants us to squirm, but because he knows there is a kind of growth that occurs when we move out of what is comfortable to us.
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