Hope vs. Comfortable
Let’s start with a definition of each word just so we are on the same page.
Hope: the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best; to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence; to believe, desire, or trust
Comfortable: being in a state of physical or mental comfort; contented and undisturbed; at ease; producing mental comfort or ease; easy to accommodate oneself
I was thinking about these two words. I don’t think they can exist simultaneously. Just watching people I know recently go through stuff I have been meditating on both of these. All of us know people who have gotten laid off right before the holidays, or maybe you have been laid off, we know people who have just lost someone dear to them, we know people who are going through struggles with cancer, finances, etc. We know people who are losing their homes and can’t see what will happen next. We know people who are hurting.
I believe God allows us to have to have hard times to have hope. When life is comfortable and everything is great there is no need for hope….or dependence…on God. I have actually noticed this with myself. It is in my darkest times that I am closest to God. I am prostrate on the floor surrendering with tears and sorrow.
I want you to ask yourselve…Do you know you need God? I mean do you really know? I think sometimes I don’t know I need him. I mean I have everything. I live in America! I think I focus on God most when I need hope. What I forget is that He is the Hope.
He is the hope of heaven.
1 Peter 2:10-12 (New Living Translation
10 “Once you had no identity as a people;
now you are God’s people.
Once you received no mercy;
now you have received God’s mercy.”
11 Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 12 Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.
This is not our home and dang it I get too comfortable here! Again that word comfortable. I sometimes think if I am comfortable I am not walking close enough with God. I think that is true. In the old testament when do people turn to God? (answer: disaster, when nothing else will work). In America when do people turn to God? (disaster, death, etc.) I believe we are at a critical time in our country. Many, many people are realizing they don’t have it all together and they need something.
Hebrews 6:13-20
13 For example, there was God’s promise to Abraham. Since there was no one greater to swear by, God took an oath in his own name, saying:
14 “I will certainly bless you,
and I will multiply your descendants beyond number.”
15 Then Abraham waited patiently, and he received what God had promised.
16 Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding. 17 God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. 18 So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. 19 This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. 20 Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 10:21-24 (New Living Translation)
21 And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, 22 let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. 24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.
Being a worship leader I ask myself how I do relate this to worship? I sing with hope, I guide people to the cross every Sunday. I tell them through song about the hope they have in salvation! I cry out to God in my own live and I must become venerable and transparent as I worship and live so people can see through my deepest hearts cry to God so that they can know His love.
