Outside our comfort zone

God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore I came.    —Acts 10:28-29

Longfellow wrote, “The vine still clings to the moldering wall, but at every gust the dead leaves fall.” Like that vine, many churches today cling to the crumbling wall of traditional programs, losing members like dead leaves carried away by the biting winds of our times.

To put it another way: We refuse to leave our comfort zones. We like to stick to the familiar, the predictable, the usual.

In some ways our attitude resembles the way Peter felt before the Lord prodded him into new territory. Peter knew that Christ’s strategy was Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 1:8). But Peter simply wasn’t comfortable with Gentiles. They were not “his kind of people.” Yet, God shook him loose to go to the house of Cornelius and give them the good news about Jesus (Acts 10).

The church, like Peter, is often locked behind the walls of its brick and shake-shingle fortress. We tend to stay where we feel unthreatened, among the people who make us feel accepted and loved. It takes a clear vision of God’s compassion for the lost to get us beyond our comfort zone to reach those for whom the Savior gave His life.

Have we gotten too comfortable?   — Haddon W. Robinson

Go to the lost, in the home, in the mart,

Delay no longer, today make a start;

Tell them of Jesus who bled for their sin —

From byways of darkness bring others to Him. — Houghton

Read: Acts 10:1-22

The church is a training center, not a country club.

The Bible in one year:

• Psalms 91-93