Comfortable

An excerpt from Crazy Love by Francis Chan.

“What are you doing right now that requires faith?”  That question affected me deeply because at the time I could think of nothing in my life that required faith.  I probably wouldn’t be living very differently if I didn’t believe in God; my life was neither ordered nor affected by my faith like I had assumed it was.  Furthermore, when I looked around, I realized I was surrounded by people who lived the same way I did.

Life is comfortable when you separate yourself from people who are different from you.  That epitomizes what my life was like: characterized by comfort.

But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable.  He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.

(See Isaiah 58:2-14)

This excerpt really hit home for me.  The people I’ve met in the Dominican Republic and Haiti showed me what it means to truly live with faith and trust in God every day.  It’s a challenge to live with that kind of trust when we have the means to “take care of ourselves” along with the temptation to keep ourselves safe above all else.  But is life supposed to be about being safe?  Do we really have the power to keep ourselves safe anyway?  What is “faith” if we never have to rely on God?