Comfortably numb
In case no one’s asked you a provocative question lately, I’ve got four of them for you. Take your pick:
When was the last time you did something for the first time?
Do you care more about other people’s expectations or what’s right?
Have you paid attention to your dreams and followed them at a great cost?
What is the rut that is you?
It used to be that survival was an issue. In prior generations, you got a job because if you didn’t, starvation was an option. Now, food takes up just 6% of the average person’s budget. We have the luxury of following our dreams because failure has little downside.
We’re not going to starve. The only thing at stake is our destiny.
But we’re groomed to be timid, risk-averse souls. We’re anesthetized, made numb to a world of possibilities. Here’s how it often happens:
1. We become more concerned about getting a degree than discovering a call.
2. We sell ourselves into slavery to school loans, car payments, and a mortgage.
3. Along the way, we find ourselves buying stuff because advertisements tell us to.
4. We find ourselves far from our spiritual home – the narrow walk of faith Jesus described.
Without realizing it, all the big decisions in our life were made by somebody else. We never really decided to settle down and live the American dream.
It just happened. And we find ourselves leaning our ladders against walls that someone else built. Climbing up them, peering over the edge, only to discover they are facades.
A voice nags us along the way up our ladders, “Is this all there is?” It asks. We sense the answer is, “No,” but we’re too comfortable to do anything about it.
Comments (6)
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OUCH, Seth. I’m taking this one a little too personal! This is a great blog!!!
Father, plz prepare all the hearts for conviction to those you have purposed to read this blog, including mine. Then give us the courage to live the life we are radically called to!
Having just recently read through most of John Eldridge’s books this is not nearly as shocking as it would have been three months ago. This is where the Lord has me, working through these questions and inching me towards living completely in His will. Moving out of my own personal rutwhere what ifs keep me (what if it doesn’t work, what if it isn’t good enough, what if I don’t have what it takes to do itall about me and forgetting what a HUGE God we have) I am gradually stepping out into the real, God intended world.
Following the call at whatever the costthat is where I can get stuck. Timely blog for me. Thank you for putting it out there.
sometimes doing whats right gets you sent to Mexico continuing to live the way the LORD directs me(stepping into the deep)call you when I get home.I concur with MB timely blog from the call 07/07/07
Sometimes it’s later in life when we realize that God has made the call and then we stand and wander if we have a party line and not a private line (for those young ones all telephones used to be shared with neighbors and called party lines). We wander if that call is for someone else. Then he says just take a step and follow me, step out of that boat, then we can begin to experience the life he has called us to, I know for me personally it’s become a rollercoaster ride one much better than anything Six Flags has to offer.
Thanks God for taking me from my “COMFORT ZONE”
Bless the Lord for you Scott. May that day come…and soon too, when most of us will read blogs like this without any sense of guilt, need for repentance or that expected radical action.
The heart of the problem seems to be a problem with the heart.