What No One Tells You About Fear & Comfort Zones

Last night I read a blog post that encouraged me so much. It summed up how I'm feeling at the moment and I've posted some of the key parts here. The original blog is here by Ann Voskamp

More than being afraid of a dangerous world, maybe we should be much more afraid of comfort zones. Because when you’re tired enough of your comfort zone — you can start living in the dangerously alive zone. 

When you’re tired enough of listening to all the talking heads, you can listen to the One who speaks to your soul. The One Who calls you to freedom that only comes outside of comfort zones, to give yourself away and not be afraid. Life is too short to miss out on the harvest opportunity for which God has specifically blessed you for in the first place.   

Under the same sky as us all of us last month, the alleged rape of a six-year-old girl in a school triggered a series of street protests by angry parents and political activists over the lack of safety for women and children in one of the world’s largest countries.

A 16-year-old girl in Delhi was gang-raped at gunpoint in June, and a seven-year-old girl was found hanging from a tree in a village in West Bengal state.  

Women under all our sky are facing daily violence, carrying invisible wounds and unspeakable rejection… so how can we be caught blithely cat-napping when our girls, our daughters, our sisters are being kidnapped and our girls are driven from being kids to being our slaves, to being our whims trafficked and bought and sold, as if that chain of DNA that makes you female are chains that make you invisible.

How can we not, the Esther Generation, rise up and say for such a time as now we will risk everything inside the gate for those sisters outside the gate. For such a time as now we will risk comfort, for such a time as now we will risk ease, for such a time as now we will say no to oppression’s disease, for such a time as now we will give up, so our sisters can rise up.

We’re all called out of our comfort zones because we have sisters outside the gate. We cannot stay inside our comfort zones when we’ve got sisters outside of the gate. Because there is nothing worth having inside the gate when you’ve got sisters losing everything outside the gate. Because you could do this: Every day you can do one thing that you wish you could do for every one.

You can’t be a world changer until you serve. And you can’t serve until you break free of your comfort zone. Living outside your comfort zone isn’t living irresponsibly — it’s living obedient. And the bottom line is: We will be known by our fruits — not by what name we call ourselves or by what fame we want to be known for. We will be known for our actual fruits, not the intentions of our imaginations.  The greatest of these is love. And love’s actual fruit is service: Love bears service. Love says: Let me serve. 

God beckons you to look into your bucket of seeds and ask your heart how much of a better story you’d like to sow.   God asks you to look into the bucket of blessed seeds you’ve been given — and ask your heart how much you’d like to be part of a harvest.