Comfort before Duty

Imagine yourself startled awake at Five in the morning by a phone call. On the other end is a good friend of yours (let's call this friend John.) John says he's going out on a rickety boat to sea today unless he hears a reason not to. It's currently Mid-January, and El Nino is ravaging the seas day and night. You feel in your gut that if John were to go out there with little no experience sailing, in a rickety boat, in stormy waters that he will almost assuredly die. What do you do? I feel the answer for most people would be that you would try to stop this person from going out. In all likelihood you would cancel what you're doing until you're sure that this person will not go into the sea and perish so foolishly. You know that John has a lot to live for, and shouldn't go out now.

Why don't we as Christians have this attitude towards ministry? There's a chance that those around us will die tomorrow, and if they haven't accepted Jesus, we know that they will suffer a rather unbearable eternity. One would think with such knowledge on our minds that we may go about our daily conversations differently--maybe that we might actually try our best to help these people we care about instead of sneaking it in when the topic may or may not come up...So why don't we?

Oh the challenges of being human! One of the greatest challenges we face in the flesh is comfort. Everyone to some extent just wants stability in their life, and unfortunately most of the time evangelizing will cause some shaking to go on. We fear that we may lose what we have in friendships, relationships, or even be reprimanded at work for such talk. I know that the majority of people who know me also know that I am a Christian, but am I really living to show Jesus in life, or am I simply reflecting Jesus when it's convenient and hoping to coast under the radar otherwise? I imagine I'm not alone here.

This isn't a new problem; Jeremiah complained about this to God himself. In Chapter 20, he laments that "I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long." Jeremiah though says that he couldn't contain the voice inside his heart--he had already made the decision to forsake comfort. Messages like this often intimidate us into not breaking comfort for fear of what may come. There is a reason for this though, like everything in God's plan. Earlier in Chapter 15, God puts this to Jeremiah: "If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?" The discomfort we battle is, in my opinion, one of the greatest challenges we as mortals face, yet it is still a preparation for what is to come. We must learn to tell those we love of Jesus if we have any hope of telling those we have trouble loving as well.

Remember that Jesus came to save the shameful, the broken, and the despised. As God's people, it should be our goal to become so in love with him that we have no fear of preaching his word to those that need it most; those that may not have anyone else who will preach to them. The only way we can get there is by racing with men on foot and telling those who may listen freely of the love that has saved us. It's my heart's strongest desire that God does something truly great in my life, but he is a loving God that will not put us in a situation for which we are unprepared. I believe we owe it (and infinitely more) to our Savior to prepare our hearts for what may come when preaching his word. That first step is to abandon simple comfort--God will take care of discarding the rest of Earth's ties.