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| My two older sisters and I pouting on the couch circa 1999 |
I spent my college summers working at Achaius Ranch, a nonprofit horse ranch about 20 minutes from where I lived. The ranch worked with rescued horses and provided free sessions to kids from all over the city.
The ranch had a motto, and since it has been three years since my summers on the ranch, I cannot remember it perfectly, but the main idea was that learning happens outside your comfort zone.
In order to learn a new skill, you have to step outside of your comfort zone, challenge your fears, and test your limits. This principle was applied to the horses, to the kids we worked with, and especially to ourselves.
I found myself reflecting on this the other day when a thought crossed my mind that I was a lot less of an irritable and impatient person before I moved to Brazil.
From one dirty rotten sinner to the next, can I just tell you that God has been showing me a lot of my sin lately? And just between you and me, can I admit that I felt a whole lot better about myself before he did?
God has revealed impatience where before I would have described myself as someone with a long fuse. He has revealed irritability where I would have described myself as laid-back and easy-going. He has revealed an abundance of pride that I wasn't aware was there. He has revealed a lack of love for others, where before I would have said that loving people was one the easiest things in the world for me to do.
Why the discrepancy? Have I become more sinful since becoming a missionary?
No. I have simply become uncomfortable.
Here's the thing, we can all do a pretty good job keeping ourselves in check when we are comfortable. It requires much less effort to be easy-going and laid-back when there are minimal outside stressors. It's easy to have an abundance of patience and love for others when pretty much everything else in our lives is comfortable.
I am not saying my life before didn't have problems or stress, but there were stressors that I didn't have before such as language differences, cultural differences, weather differences, community differences, and a number of small things that I never had to think about.
I also want to make a note that the word "stressor" doesn't have a fundamentally negative connotation, it simply implies something that requires more attention and patience.
So I don't want to confuse something being "stressful" with something having "stressors"-- Brazil isn't a "stressful" place to live, but it is full of "stressors" that I didn't have before.
I love living in Brazil. I love the people here. I love the food. I love the other missionaries. I am so grateful that the Lord has brought me here and is allowing me to serve him here. With that being said, it is discouraging to look back on the person I was before I moved here and feel like that person was a better Christian than I am now.
But you do want to know the worst kept secret? The sin God has been revealing in my heart now was always there, it was just easier to hide when things were comfortable.
When we step outside of our comfort zones, new stressors cause buried sin to bubble to the surface, which makes us realize what's in our heart and our need to deal with it, bringing us to repentance, and allowing God to make us more like him.
So it could also be said that sanctification happens outside our comfort zones.
Philippians 1:6 says: "And I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."
That "good work" referred to here is the work of sanctification--the process of making us uncomfortable, revealing sin, leading us to repentance, and causing us to live differently over and over until we die.
Sound exhausting? Yeah, sure, but the latter is worse.
C.S. Lewis in his book The Screwtape Letters writes about a fictional world through a series of letters between senior demon Screwtape, and his nephew and junior tempter, Wormwood. The two demons have been assigned to a British man, only known as "the patient" who has recently become a Christian. The two demons write letters back and forth, corresponding on how well they are doing at destroying the man's faith by putting obstacles in his walk with Christ. The demons refer to God as "The Enemy"
"But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and old" (Lewis 154-155).
Our enemy isn't uncomfortability and we can't use it as a scapegoat for our own sinfulness. Our response to newfound sin as a result of more difficult and uncomfortable circumstances should not be, "I need to remove myself from these circumstances so I can be the Christian I used to be!"
Instead, we have a more subtle enemy, one that creeps in and kills us before we ever realized what was happening. Our enemy is comfortability--a comfortability in life, a comfortability with our sin (or our perceived lack of it), and a comfortability with where we are at with God.
This is not to mean that we should seek out suffering or intentionally walk into challenges in order to be sanctified. These things inevitably come. The point is when these circumstances come, because they will, and not just once or twice in our lives, but over and over again, that we don't flee from them, or treat them like the enemy to be avoided at all costs.
It means embracing the circumstance for what it is, and thanking the Lord that he is using it to sanctify you, rather than allowing you to stay in the rut of unperceived sin.
It means finally doing that thing God has been prompting your heart to do for many years, but you keep pushing away because you know it will make life very uncomfortable for a while.
Do I think everyone needs to move to Brazil and be a missionary in order to be sanctified? Absolutely not. Some of you are quicker learners than I am.
Now, I wouldn't venture to say that the only reason God brought me here was to make me uncomfortable and sanctify me, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say that was one of the many reasons he brought me here.
I think we all have one or many things that God has laid on our hearts whether that be confronting someone who is living in sin, whether it be confessing sin and seeking forgiveness from someone, or whether it is making a dramatic job or life change, whether it be ending a relationship, or whether it is any number of things that will flip a comfortable status quo and make things uncomfortable and painful for a time.
Why do we put off these things for so long, when intellectually we know that in the long run, we when we finally obey, we will be glad we did, and even lament how long we put off obedience?
Because we know uncomfortablility is hard, and unfortunately comfortability is easy.
And again, intellectually we know that what is easy is not what is best for us, but time and time again the lines between our heart and mind don't always connect and it becomes hard to convince our hearts that what is really needs right now is a big dose of uncomfortability.
I want to give a final note of encouragement to anyone who also might be walking in similar shoes as me right now. You feel like one big knotted mess of sin and you look back at a more virtuous version of yourself and wonder how it all went wrong. You feel like your circumstances have made you into a worse version of yourself.
I urge you not to believe that. There isn't anything you are displaying now that wasn't already in your heart. I know that might not feel encouraging but I promise it is. It is encouraging because it proves you aren't someone else, but the same person just a little bit more aware of their need for God's grace.
And God in his abundant love has allowed you to end your ignorance in a certain area. And God in his abundant love is giving you an opportunity to repent and become more like him.
Not everyone is given this opportunity, don't waste it.
You are loved and you are not alone,
Love,
S
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