{"id":6393,"date":"2020-05-17T23:52:29","date_gmt":"2020-05-17T13:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6393"},"modified":"2020-06-05T20:03:43","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T10:03:43","slug":"god-does-not-want-you-to-be-comfortable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/god-does-not-want-you-to-be-comfortable\/","title":{"rendered":"God Does Not Want You To Be Comfortable"},"content":{"rendered":"
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God Does Not Want You To Be Comfortable<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Fr Antonios Kaldas<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original post by Fr Antonios Kaldas blog site<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cA completely prosperous person walking in the fullness of God has it all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That single sentence from Houston\u2019s book captures beautifully the heart of the Health and Wealth Gospel. This distortion of the true Christian Gospel is just the extreme expression of a very human tendency that lies in the hearts of us all, the tendency to use God as a tool for getting what we want. We think in terms of what satisfies our basic human instincts: physical safety and health; avoidance of poverty, disease, humiliation, failure; etc. That is what we want God for: to make us comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But quite often, God doesn\u2019t want us to be comfortable. He wants us to be comforted. Let me explain this very important difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make us comfortable, God must change our circumstances. Are you suffering the discomfort of being poor? Then God makes you comfortably rich. Are you sick? Then God makes you comfortably healthy. Are you feeling like a failure? Then God makes you comfortably successful. You get the point. Being comfortable means having things around you\u2014objects, circumstances, people\u2014that make you comfortable, because they are what you want or what you need. In short, for God to make you comfortable, He must mould the world around you to your personal wishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But God often does the exact opposite of that. Who is to say that what I want is actually what is good\u2014not just good in itself, but even good for me? It is often said that the most loving thing God can give us is not what we want, but what we actually need. And often, in this broken world and for us broken people, the road to what we truly need involves re-making us. That re-making\u2014like breaking a badly healed bone in order to re-set it properly\u2014is often quite uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all know the mournful cries of the psalms, pleading for salvation from horrible, uncomfortable situations (e.g., Psalm 13). And Jesus Himself said that He came not to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). Far more people felt uncomfortable with Him and stopped following Him than those who stayed\u2014just think of the crowds who left Him when His words about eating His body and drinking His blood made them too uncomfortable (John 6). Or the rich young man who felt so uncomfortable when Jesus called him to sell all he had and follow Him that he turned and walked away (Mark 10). Not to mention the scribes and the lawyers and the Pharisees and the priests who were so uncomfortable with Jesus that they ended up crucifying Him. I could go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this discomfort is the result of Light and Goodness coming face to face with darkness and brokenness. The darkness hates the Light. But it doesn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christ did not come just to make us uncomfortable. He came to save us. When His Light and Goodness invade our lives, we are transformed by them. Then\u2014and here is that crucial distinction\u2014we are not necessarily made more comfortable: our outer circumstances often do not change. Rather, we are comforted: our inner circumstances change by being illuminated by His Light and purified by His Goodness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A beautiful image of this is found in Psalm 131:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2018Surely, I have calmed and quieted my soul.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a weaned child with his mother,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a weaned child is my soul within me<\/em>.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I read that and think of St Irenaeus\u2019 tender description of the Son and the Holy Spirit as the two hands of the Father. They reach out to me and lift me into His comforting lap, hugging me and holding me close till all the fear and anxiety have seeped away from my soul. The Father knows what good parenting is. He does not trample in anger over the world that hurts us in order to fix every little problem we have for us. God is no \u2018helicopter parent.\u2019 Rather, He encourages us, teaches us, and supports us so that we can go out and face the world ourselves. Only thus can we actually grow as human beings. Without doing everything for us, He comforts us, working inside us much more than He works on what is outside of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what it means when Jesus calls the Holy Spirit \u201cthe Comforter.\u201d And Jesus Himself\u2014the other hand of the Father\u2014is also our Comforter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThese things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.<\/em>\u201d John 16:33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Notice where exactly our peace is to be found? Is it in a world that has been fixed by God and re-moulded to make us comfortable? No! In the world you will have tribulation. Where then do we find comfort and good cheer? \u201cIn Me you may have peace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health and wealth will make you comfortable, sure. But that is settling for a poor imitation. Rising above your circumstances\u2014however uncomfortable they may be\u2014and finding true peace in the Father, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, now that is something worth having.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original blog found at- http:\/\/www.frantonios.org.au\/2020\/04\/21\/god-does-not-want-you-to-be-comfortable\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God Does Not Want You To Be Comfortable By Fr Antonios Kaldas Original post by Fr Antonios Kaldas blog site \u201cA completely prosperous person walking in the fullness of God has it all.\u201d That single sentence from Houston\u2019s book captures beautifully the heart of the Health and Wealth Gospel. This distortion of the true Christian … Continue reading “God Does Not Want You To Be Comfortable”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[171],"class_list":["post-6393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-comfort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6393"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6459,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions\/6459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}