Inside Your Comfort Zone

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

For the past several years I’ve had what feels like an extreme luxury of working out of my home office. It started with a couple days a week and eventually turned into me working full time from home.

In a way, it feels like it’s the way things were designed to be. God placed Adam and Eve in a garden and they weren’t to commute to work – they worked at home. For generations until the past 50-75 years people worked either out of their home or close to home.

When did it become part of “normal” life for everyone to be gone from the home for a third to a half of our waking hours? Think of all that affects – family relationships, child rearing, not to mention working and ministering in your own community. Were we really meant to spend hours daily sitting in a car, bus or train?

We don’t live in areas near our work, yet we choose them for where we want our kids to grow up. For many of our parents generation their neighborhood was important as all the parents knew each other and were truly a community. I know that for us as I look back at the places we’ve lived we may have known some of our neighbors, but it certainly wasn’t like the movies and TV shows of the 50’s where everyone seemed to really know each other.

Consider the life of Jesus and how he selected his disciples, and the fact that some of them left their work as fishermen to follow Him. It looks like it wasn’t a decision they agonized over – they left quickly to follow this Jesus into his ministry. When we look at that with our western viewpoint it seems odd that men would just leave their work to follow Jesus. Are there benefits? What’s the workweek going to be like? What’s the pay? Is there a retirement plan? From our vantage point it seems like they would have had a few questions about what he was offering before make a decision like that.

When we read about life happening in the bible, it helps if we try to see what happened through the middle eastern eyes of their culture and what it meant. In that day, Jewish boys would start learning and studying the Torah at an early age and when they grew older, those that did well and had what it took to become a teacher of the law, or a Rabbi would continue in their studies and those that didn’t would learn the family trade and go to work. It’s similar to sports today where there are many young adults who play sports in high school, but less of them make it into college level sports, and even less make it into professional sports. Those that don’t, go to work. Not necessarily in the family business, but they find an occupation to go into. They didn’t make the cut. It was the same way with Jewish boys back then. those that didn’t make the cut didn’t continue on in rabbinical studies.

Later as those young boys grew into men some of the Rabbi’s would go from town to town teaching. When they did, some of the Rabbi’s would be looking for disciples, and would sometimes “interview” young men as they went into different communities looking for those who might have been missed and have the ability to work with them and learn. If you were asked to follow a Rabbi it meant that someone felt you still had it and asked you to follow them. It was a great honor to be asked to follow a Rabbi, and men would jump at the opportunity. It wasn’t looked at as abandoning your occupation, but following a great calling that all Jewish men aspired to. For those who played sports in high school, imagine a professional team coming to you when you were in your 20’s and telling you they think you have what it takes to play on their team. How many would jump at the opportunity? Would your friends think you had lost your mind by not continuing on at your job, or would they cheer you on at taking a chance at the opportunity?

Now of course professional sports is not the same as a calling into the ministry, although I know some would disagree. I was looking for an example today to help relate to what it meant when these young men decided leave their jobs to follow Jesus. It was the chance of a lifetime for them, and they took it without thinking twice. Jesus found twelve men who hadn’t “made the cut” to become Rabbi’s yet with those twelve men He changed the world.

We don’t necessarily have to leave our jobs either. At the end of the teaching the pastor talked about people who feel called to move outside of their comfort zone and certainly there are those of us who have the opportunity to go to other places in the world and serve and serve in ways that seem incredible, but for the vast majority of us we are simply called to look for ways to reach out and minister to people within our comfort zone – those we see regularly at work and school or in our local community.

The point of this post isn’t to make you feel guilty if you can’t work from home – we live in a different time and culture. At the same time choose wisely how you spend your time when you are at home so that God and Family remain the top priorities. when you are at work, look for ways to serve & minister inside your comfort zone – three are people right around you in your workplace who need to see Christ in you.

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(DISCLAIMER: I read several sources, commentaries, devotionals, etc., when I study the bible. Some of what I write is heavily inspired by what I read, and some sections may not be all my own words. I try to distill and paraphrase but there are way too many great writers who know the depths of God’s Word more than I ever will. I try to give credit where possible, and I don’t want anyone to think that everything I write comes straight from my brain – it’s all inspired by God and others He has chosen to write through. I encourage you to look to those who have also studied and written about Scripture, while at the same time remembering they are only men, and the ONLY true standard is the Word of God – everything written by me or any other human MUST be measured against that standard.)