After four years of a man pursuing the Lord for a vision of what He, the Lord wanted to do, it finally happened and God gave him a vision and multiple confirmation as to the new direction. So the man gets rid of all his stuff, packs up his little remaining possessions, and moves across the country. Suddenly, the man finds himself in a place he does not know, with people he does not recognize, to do something he has no idea about. He wonders about employment and how to pay the bills; the culture is very different than where he came from, they talk different, use different words to reference similar things, even food products are different…it’s still food, but very little of it is anything he’s familiar with; the air is different, dust is different, the water is different, food is different, the bacteria is different, the land and soil are different, tax structure is different. But yet he is sure that this is what God has asked him to do. Uprooted and obscure, a seemingly inconsequential outsider, this fellow is so very uncomfortable. And now that he is at the destination the Lord has given him, he finds himself with one huge, over-arching, ever present question: Now what? And all is silent.

Do you find yourself in similar discomfort? The circumstances may be different, but the discomfort is the same.

It would seem our nation is a country of uncomfortable people…frustrated and disquieted in our hearts. Some for good reasons, some for not.

Maybe God is gently getting our attention and we, as a nation, are simply, and quite probably, hard of hearing. What do you think? …. and i’ll be right back.

In all the Bible, one of the most uncomfortable people, in my opinion, was Naomi, who’s story is revealed in the book of Ruth. Sure, Job was uncomfortable, but it was for a short while, whereas Naomi had a life of being uncomfortable. It seemed for the longest time nothing was working out. When situation after situation arose, i’d bet, at some point, she stared off into the distance, sighed, and thought, “Great! What’s next? Locusts?”

She, her husband and two sons lived in Bethlehem, Judah during a famine, times were tough. They decided to move to Moab, evidently things seemed better there. During the next 10 years in Moab, her husband died; her two sons marry two Moabite girls, then the sons die. She is left with no means of getting by, and everything about the big plans to prosper in Moab have just fallen flat. Her husband and two sons have died and she is left with only herself and two daughters in law. Now what?

They heard God was giving food to her home people in Judah, so she and the two daughters in law set out for home. On the way back to Judah, evidently things were so difficult, and she was so uncomfortable, she told the two daughters-in-law to go home. Life was very bitter. They were all so very uncomfortable. One daughter-in-law agreed and went home, but the other, Ahhh….Ruth was the other, and she said, “Where you go I go, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” Ruth 1:20-21, Naomi’s heart was, “….Don’t call me Naomi; call me Bitter or Mara. The Strong One has dealt me a bitter blow. I left here full of life, and GOD has brought me back with nothing but the clothes on my back.” Can you relate in some way to this? Maybe you left a home or job, full of life, convinced you were following God’s lead off on a great adventure, and came back with nothing,  just nothing but the ashes of your dreams and the continued discomfort of your circumstances. Yea, i did that. i moved us all to a far away place, and came back 9 months later with my tail between my legs.

What do we do when we’re in the long night of our discomfort? It feels like our ship is sinking, the wind and ocean are howling and raging, and God is silent silent silent. Tough question…honestly, i don’t even like to think about it….it’s just a very uncomfortable question.

Jonah is another person who had a time in his life of being extremely uncomfortable. i think Jonah was a real grouch, never the less, God gave Jonah a job, go preach to Ninevah. Now you may think this is a great thing, and it was, but it was also something which terrified Jews of the time. Ninevah was well known for it’s hatred and abuse of Jews, even torturing them just for entertainment, and i think Jonah wanted God to simply kill them all, without giving them of any sort of hope. i mean, what if Ninevah repented and God saved that horrible nation of horrible people? So, Jonah ran away from God. Yea right, like anyone can actually escape God.

Jonah found a ship going far away. He was so uncomfortable with God’s request and his personal circumstances that he left everything behind, got on a ship and headed out to anywhere but where God was, or so he thought.

Well, everything about Jonah’s life got worse and even more uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable he became, the more uncomfortable things got. A storm of storms blew up, the ship and it’s crew were in danger of dying at sea, and i guess in an effort to escape God all together, Jonah resigned himself to die. He told the sailors it was all his fault. In Jonah 1:15 “Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.”

It seems Jonah figured dying was better than being as uncomfortable as he was….a sort of suicide in a way, only he was getting the sailors to do it for him. It was a permanent fix to a temporary problem, when quite probably, all Jonah had to do was STOP his running and face God.

When we are uncomfortable, so often, i think we attribute that discomfort to our doing something wrong, or God is pressuring us to repent or something like that. On the other hand, it is entirely possible our discomfort has nothing to do with doing something wrong and everything to do with simply being in the Lord’s transition. Regardless, if you can’t out run the difficulty you’re in, stop running, turn and embrace it. We’re going to live with it until we deal with it, and pretending an unfortunate situation isn’t really there, doesn’t solve anything. Actually, if anything, that pretending thing we do only increases our discomfort.

Is that, as a nation, what’s going on with us? We need to stop, STOP what we’re doing and face God. You know, i heard a man say once that God will get our attention, one way or another. He’ll work to get our attention in our spirit, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll work to get our attention in our minds, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll get our attention in our flesh even to the shedding of blood, but one way or another, He WILL get our attention.

So many people are looking for work, and these days there’s a lot of work available, so they can no longer say they aren’t working because there isn’t any, but now must be honest to tell the truth, which is “i want to get what i want and i don’t want to work for it.” A very uncomfortable place to be i’d say.

Many are uncomfortable at church, and uncomfortable even in their best chair. They are uncomfortable in their beds, in their kitchens, sitting outside, with friends, without friends…it’s almost as if all of life feels like wading through mud. We plant 100 and reap 10, we extend ourselves to 10,000, and only 50 respond. We leave a difficult situation and shortly find ourselves, in yet another difficult situation. We get into a conflict with a friend or at work, and we don’t resolve the conflict, we just leave it to stand hoping it will simply go away, and of course, it doesn’t really go away. It just changes shape to morph into yet another conflict, which we’ll have to live with until we deal with. Many sail from storm to storm, so often, the storms seem to be normal operating conditions.

Imagine each life situation as a brick. One brick of one unresolved situation maybe inconsequential, but when it is many bricks of many unresolved situations, what was once just a brick is now a wall, walling the world out, but also walling ourselves in. There are two sides to every wall. God calls to us and we’re not listening…. The phone is ringing but we pretend to not hear.

We have become a nation of uncomfortable people who tend to want to move away from or avoid what we don’t understand…. many times rather than ask an uncomfortable question, we simply smile, keep quiet, and move away. In our avoiding the Lord we have become increasingly uncomfortable. We eat but we’re not satisfied; we store up and conserve but in the end nothing is saved; it’s almost like we plant but don’t get to harvest; we do the work of crushing grapes but don’t get to drink the wine. We invent machines and tools to help us save time in order to have extra time, but in the end we still seem to have no time. We are frustrated and very uncomfortable.

What do you think is up with that? And what are we going to do about it?

James 3:17 “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” It would be simply brilliant if we stopped what we were doing and turned to face the Lord. It just seems wise to find out what He’s got to say. Not so we can shut Him up, but because all our own efforts are getting us no where…. like Jonah, we need to stop running away and meet with Him. i really believe the discomfort will continue until we turn ourselves to meet with God Almighty.

Mind you, i don’t believe God has sent work into our hearts, that we would labor mindlessly as some sort of vindictive punishment, that is not His character. i fully believe if there is laboring and work in our hearts it is because we have put ourselves there. Listen though, that doesn’t take into account that in the middle of transition, it is highly likely there’s going to be struggles and expasperations, ‘cause there are. i’m talking about our evading issues, running from God and metaphorically plugging our ears singing “La-la-la-la” to drown out the call of God.  It is more that He has simply allowed us to have our determined self-focus, self-determination, and self-declaring which all is an effort to leave Him out of our lives.

An old horseman had a very difficult horse once. i asked him what he was going to do to persuade the horse to yield and do things the man’s way. He said, “I’m going to simply give him his head, and let him run square into the law.” He did exactly that the next time the horse wouldn’t yield, and ended up deep in the most awful briar patch you ever saw, cut, poked, and frustrated. After a couple times like that, the horse and the man got along just fine. Funny how that works.

God has given this nation it’s head and will let us go as we insist until all our efforts completely come to a grinding, radically uncomfortable halt. Do we r-e-a-l-l-y think we can ignore the Lord? Do we really think He’s just going to take a passive-submissive posture towards the very creation He created? C’mon, who are we kidding?

Is it possible, we in America are so uncomfortable with life that we just don’t notice the world around us?

Let me complete the story which i began all this with…the man in the first part of this conversation stopped his own actions, prayed morning, noon, and night…sought the Lord with all he had, and for all he was worth….in his looking for the Lord, God has given him a vision of what’s next. Life is largely still a puzzle, but things are moving, not so fast he’s lost his way, but bit at a time as the Lord grows his character to fit the next appointment. Inch by inch, life is a cinch. Yard by yard it’s very hard. We need a vision of where we’re going so we’ll know how to be where we are. Think about it!

Our time is up and we’re at the end of the road for this production of Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late night cascading banks of the Ockluhwahhah River. i’m Social Porter sitting on the deck with Tony, Paul and a late evening cup of coffee, talking and laughing, cutting up and watching the river flow by. Tonight, as usual, has been brought to you by Living In His Name Ministries, Area 22 Guitars, Miss Jackson at the DeLuxe Beauty Shop, Frank Edney at the Hot Spot, Bruce and Mildred Harrell, White Knuckle Studios, and Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven.

Music was by the Pete Minger Quartet, The Brecker Bothers, Dissection, Bill Bruford, and Jazz for a Rainy Day.

Isaiah 51:1 “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn;” Acts 17:27-28 “…so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸ for in Him we live and move and have our being…”.

The Lord is our direction, He alone is our comfort, and in Christ alone will we ever in this life gain the peace we need. Let us cease from our own works and seek Him. Just stop from our own doings and stubborn way…. turn and face God. It’s time to inquire of the Lord, don’t you agree?