Have you ever had God shine His light on an area in your life that needed to come out of the shadows? That happened to me recently and frankly was kind of embarrassing!

In a teaching in the Bootcamp I’m attending the leader suggested we shop the perimeter of the store so we’re avoiding overly processed food and sticking with the fresh foods, like fruits and vegetables, meats, poultry and seafood, and dairy, etc.

I had to admit, it would be great to shop the perimeter if I actually went to the store! Since the pandemic I’ve been ordering from the grocery store using Instacart. It doesn’t always end up with all the things I need but it’s so convenient, I’ve just kept doing it. Shame washed over me as I admitted my habit that enabled my comfort a bit excessively.

As I continue to move forward on saying “no” to sugar, the hard work of self-control and discovering the difficult reality of so much of my eating being linked to how I am doing emotionally can be a heavy weight on me.

As I thought it through, I began pondering comfort and the difference between God comforting me and ME comforting my flesh! As I began to pray this list formed in my journal…

Comfortable

Convenient

Casual

=

Complacent

OUCH.

As I looked up the root word for comfort in Greek it means to console, to encourage, to strengthen by consolation – to comfort

So…

Jesus comforts us with HIMSELF, (2 Cor. 1:3-4).

But WE comfort OURSELVES with FOOD, DRINK AND CONVENIENCES!

DOUBLE OUCH!

If our chief goal is to be comfortable, to weigh everything we do based on how convenient it is, viewing our behavior and all that is connected to it in a very casual way … we will no doubt become complacent.

Kinda scary to look up the definition of complacent:

pleased, especially with oneself or one’s merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; SELF SATISFIED.

Hmmmmm… satisfied with SELF instead of JESUS. Ohhhhh boy.

Without awareness of some potential danger. Ummmmm yikes!

Makes me think of the frog in the water, slowly being cooked to death because the temperature of the water was never detected because it rose so slowly. He was without awareness of that potential danger, and I believe that is the enemy’s plan with us, to sneak into our lives through complacency.

So I’m beginning to see that God shining His light on areas of our lives that have deteriorated into complacency is a very good thing, a loving thing for Our Savior to do … perhaps a wake-up call, to shake us out of our spiritual complacency and provide the light to guide us toward His comfort. His comfort is not convenient or casual … it’s costly and serious. It cost Him everything.

Where I long to be is a place of concern rather than complacency. A holy dissatisfaction with the ways I allow my comfort of the flesh to trump His comfort of my soul.

Are you sensing a call to examine your ways? I know I am … let me know how I can pray for you!

Thanks for joining me today,
Athena