As creatures of comfort, we despise anything that takes us beyond our familiar confines of comfort zones, even if those comfort zones are harmful, dangerous, or simply keeping us from moving forward to where we could and should be. Those comfort zones could be anything from staying in an abusive relationship to refusing to try something that is hard such as a new job, school, or an adventure because we can't accept not knowing what lies beyond the other side. The unknown is a scary place. Leaving what is familiar and predictable for something unpredictable and unfamiliar is uncomfortable and terrifying. From someone who struggles with anxiety and just being a fellow human who loves comfort as much as anyone, change does not set well with me. In fact, I tend to fight it to the point of screaming through tears on my bedroom floor fighting it to the core. If I were to be brutally honest, I only fight and fear it because I lack control of it. We only fear what we are incapable of controlling. However, as the saying goes, there really is nothing great that ever came from settling within comfort zones. Sometimes growing requires stretching and growing pains.
Never give up the ground you have gained for ground you have already conquered and laid away. Read that again. God cannot bring you to a new season if you are not willing to let go of the old one. Lot's wife is one of many examples of how we often react when God calls us out of where we've been to the new and unfamiliar place he wants and desires to take us.
What God instructed them to do was quite simple so it seemed. One small instruction: Do Not Look Back. However, Lot's wife let her fear take precedence over obeying Him and she lost her future because she insisted what she knew was better than what He promised. By doing so she literally became physically stuck in her past. She became frozen in the place God no longer rested and His blessing was lifted. Her desire for what was comfortable and familiar, what she knew, became stronger than her desire and ability to see what God was doing right then thus allowing her distraction to take her eyes off of her present and keeping herself rooted in her dead past. She lost her focus. She missed God.
Where are you looking? To the familiar and comfortable past? The place he already brought you out of? What is your focus? I encourage you today to PRESS ON- looking forward and not daring to look back. He promises that where He is leading you is far greater than where you have been. You don't have to embrace it, you just have to learn to accept and trust Him.
He who is faithful will be faithful again.
