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.
When you start to move forward, be ready for those voices that will point out your past, remembering everyone has a past, no one except Jesus has been successful at everything they have done, in fact, past failures become the building block for those who have experienced future success. They learned from the past and avoided it again. There will be difficulties, there will be hardship you will endure, you will have failures but a failure is only a failure if it holds you back instead of using it to catapult you forward.
Unfortunately, if people cannot hold you back from your dream because of their dissection of your dream, they will try and hold you back by criticism.
Warren Wiersbe wrote in Be Determined “Leaders are often blamed for things they didn’t do and criticized for things they tried to do. They are misquoted and misunderstood and rarely given the opportunity to set the record straight. If they act quickly, they are reckless; if they bide their time, they are cowardly or unconcerned. Referring to the pressures of leadership, President Harry Truman wrote in Mr. Citizen, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!”
They are going to come after you as a person and it is in that testing time of your personage you will decide whether you will return to the comfort zone or push forward through the borderland.
When Joshua followed in the leadership steps of Moses, he is told in Joshua 1:16 by those he will command, “Whatever you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go. 17 Just as we fully obeyed Moses, so we will obey you. Only may the LORD your God be with you as he was with Moses. 18 Whoever rebels against your word and does not obey your words, whatever you may command them, will be put to death. Only be strong and courageous!”
You will have to be strong, you will have to be courageous to move into the Promise Land of your God given dream and destiny, even when it seems impossible for all things are possible with God.
Right now think about who those people are who have opposed the dream God has given you. They may have done it subtly, they may have outright attack the dream and the dreamer. What was the main cause of their attack, their desire to hold you back? Did they have a problem with the dream, was it going to infringe on their dream, was it going to take the spotlight off of them? Was their some justification for their objection? Does you dream put the spotlight on Christ? We also have to face the reality that some people who we might think are objecting, or really helping to make sure we properly formulate the dream.
In closing, let me forewarn you, there will be people who come against your dream, expect opposition and the bigger the dream, the more they will team up in opposition and the more they will work to separate you from the dream but your dream must remain more important than what any person or group of people say or do to detract you. Ultimately, we pursue or dreams not for the accolades of man but for the applause of heaven. We are here to serve Jesus Christ and the purpose He has given to us before we were born so that His kingdom will be seen above the din of mankind and His glory exposed for all that He has done to push us in the heavenward direction.
This week, take time to review your dream and see if you might be stuck in the borderland, or the comfort zone and decide what steps you need to take to get yourself back on track.
In the 1700’s a little man in England, a cobbler by trade, who kept a map of the world on a wall of his workshop so that he could pray for the nations of the world, became burdened for a definite missionary outreach. When he shared his burden at a meeting of ministers, he was told by one of the senior men of God: “Young man, sit down. When God wants to convert the heathen, He will do it without your help or mine.”
But William Carey did not let the fire of his enthusiasm be dampened by such a response, and eventually he left the shores of England for those of India, where he engaged in pioneer missionary work, doing exploits for God.
Don’t allow your dream to end in the border zone of life, be like William Carey, do great exploits for God.
