Break Out Of The Comfort Zone Series

Did anyone this week decide they were living in the comfort zone of life and decide it is time to make a change, to escape the zone and move into the Borderland? It becomes an issue of dealing with the accumulation of fear which has prevented you from moving forward, in dealing with the phrase, “I can’t” which has been holding you captive.

People also become held captive from pursuing their God given dream because they have refused to forgive themselves from their past failures. They tried it before, it didn’t work, so they have huddled in the middle of the comfort zone, refusing to move forward, refusing to risk again, and in the end, losing. GEORGE STEPHENSON spent fifteen years to perfect the locomotive. WATTS worked for thirty years on the condensing engine, and hard rubber cost GOODYEAR ten years of study, poverty and public ridicule. FIELD crossed the ocean fifty times to lay a cable so men could talk across the oceans. BURBANK the plant wizard at one time personally conducted over 6,000 experiments before finding the solution. WESTINGHOUSE was treated as a mild lunatic by most railroad executives. “Stopping a train by wind! The man’s crazy!” Yet he persevered and finally sold the air-brake idea.

I could go on and on with dreamers who expanded their comfort zone, pressing past what was hold them back and fulfilling the dream God has placed in their hearts. These are people who overcame the criticism and their own fears to provide society with inventions which have made life better as they explored their potential, people who did not remain in the comfort zone, people who took that step into the borderland and beyond. I wonder, how many of you will be in hot pursuit of your dream?

Bruce Wilkinson has laid out seven steps to fulfilling the dream, you begin with a dream, work your way through the comfort zone and then come to the third step of a dream, the borderland.

The borderland exists just beyond the end of the comfort zone. It takes in some of the comfort zone and moves you beyond just a life of comfort. In the borderland you will find people who you know, situations you are familiar with because this overlap exists. This is the place where your friends will want to pull you back into the life you were living because they have an overriding concern of what will happen to them when you venture out of the familiar.

Perhaps you have shared your dream with someone and instead of finding the joy and excitement you thought they would have, rather they threw cold water on what your heart beats for you to accomplish. Not everyone is going to be excited about your dream, in fact, most people will just shake their head and say, “there you go again,” a subtle way to point out your past failures without providing hope to move forward.

In Luke 18 we read the following, 9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The prayer of the Pharisee is the prayer of comfort zone people who want to suppress your dream and make themselves look superior to you. They are self-righteous and will try and keep you from pursuing your dream for if you do, it exposes their lives as Jesus did when he called them white washed tombs full of dead men’s bones. Your dream has to be more important than what other people think or say. Your dream is not for self-exaltation but for God-exaltation.

You are going to have people tell you it’s the wrong dream at the wrong time and you have to make a choice, will you listen to them or will you listen to the heartbeat of God. Sadly, the people who love you the most could well be the people who will hold you back. Love them but pursue the dream God has given you.

If you are waiting to walk in your dream until everyone says it’s a good dream, it’s the right vision, the Second Coming of Christ will arrive before you fulfill your purpose. You are going to have people point out the dangers of pursuing the dream. David would never have become king of Israel if he listened to his brothers, Goliath would still be taunting the soldiers of the nation.