no more comfort

1) I love comfort. This moment, I was just challenged as I was praying that I don't want God to move. I really don't. It's like our pastor always says, "Don't pray for revival. It's gonna mess up your schedule."

I don't want God to do amazing things through me. It makes me squirm on the inside because I know it's going to involve discomfort, and it's going to involve God doing things and not me. When I pray for amazing things to happen, my heart is seldom in it. Let that change, God.

I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory; but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame. In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise your name forever.
- Psalm 44:6-8

And life isn't always going to be peaches and cream just because we trust in God either. I don't think that actually struck me until just now, but later in Psalm 44, the psalmist is basically asking God, "Why? It's not like we worshipped idols? Why are we getting screwed over? Why are our enemies victorious? What did we do to deserve this?"

And they speak the inevitable prayer of so many psalms:

Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love.
- Psalm 44:26

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2) In Chapter 3 of Crazy Love, Francis Chan talks about a conversation he had with someone and a question that arose from it:

If God is so loving, then why does He force us to love Him?

It was referring to the idea of hell. Why is God saying, if You don't love me, then You're going to hell? Why does he threaten us?

Francis Chan explains it as saying that God wouldn't truly be loving if He didn't use every means possible to bring us back to Him and to realize that our greatest joy is Him. I'm still kinda meh/iffy on that, but it's an acceptable answer.

On the other hand, what I do realize is that God isn't a God of empty threats. Hell is real. He's not going to say, "Just kidding, I just said that so you would try harder." No.

And they will know that I am the Lord; I did not threaten in vain to bring this calamity on them.
- Ezekiel 6:10

He's not kidding when He says hell is... yeah. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. I've never seen teeth gnashed, and that says something about hell.

And I remember this yesterday, when David told us we're gonna run this last set of suicides, and that we're gonna run another one unless we beat him. I thought he was joking. He wasn't.

I ran till I died on that one that I thought was the last, and when it turned out not to be the last, I literally died on the next one. My legs were lactic-acidified before we even started. David didn't make an empty threat. I don't think God is, either.