Comfortable | Part 2

Revelation 3:14-22 | Part 2 | Have you gotten comfortable where you're at? Maybe you've lost your fire for God. What's stopping you from being all in? Let's push past comfort zones to find the answer. Dive into the letter to the church of Laodicea to wrap up our series.

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

It's like I have my to do list for the day, and I with every intention to do, but I take that to God and I surrender. It's like this is my plan today, God, but not my will, yours be done. Change my will. I follow you, not myself.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Zittler. Junior is the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicago land. Junior, we are picking it back up in Revelation 3, looking at Jesus' letter to the church in Laodicea.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

So, Junior and I was just at the Museum of Science and Industry, you know, here in Chicago from where we're from.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

And there's a room in the museum with all these displays of like human body, like, you know, muscles and veins and nerves and whatnot. Have you seen the leg one? Yeah. So that's what I was just about to say. The leg display where there's the one leg that is very sedentary, just kind of sits on the couch. And then there's one leg that is more active, you know, running, lifting weights, whatever. And you see the muscle. And the muscle is very much broken down in the sedentary leg. But the muscle of the active leg is you can tell it's just a lot healthier.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

So it kind of reminds me of uh you're in my leg.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, well, we'll leave it up to the listener as far as uh deciding who's his whose. But we were made to press out of our comfort. Like God designed us to not just sit. And the more we sit, the more we begin to waste away. In fact, I remember when my grandma, she's passed away since, but uh, she had Alzheimer's, and her doctor had said the worst thing you can do is just do routine all the time. That's actually going to make your brain deteriorate faster. Instead, you need to get out there, read some new books, do some new things, because that's going to exercise your brain. We were designed to do different things and to break outside of our comfort. So often we just revert to being comfortable. And we can do that spiritually, and this was Jesus' issue with the church in Laodicea.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

That's so great. What a great way for us to even just start as we listen to this sermon with this mentality of let's stretch ourselves as we're as we're listening to God's word. Let's come ready to be stretched and ready for our faith to grow. That's right. Wherever you are, thanks for joining us. Now here's Junior.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

So I I look at this and I ask myself, like, what were they doing that made them lukewarm? Can you give us some details here, Jesus? Were they not serving? Were they not sacrificially giving? Were they not reaching out to their community? No. Jesus doesn't give a detail. Why? Well, I believe because through the Holy Spirit, they knew exactly what Jesus was referring to. They knew exactly where they were lukewarm. They knew where they were overly comfortable, where they were not stretched. We have that same Holy Spirit in us. We do too. So right now I think deserves a timeout to just kind of sit in this. And let me just ask you: is your walk with Jesus simply a routine at this point now? Oh, at first it wasn't. At first it was like everything was new, kind of stretching, learning things, growing. But over the years, for those of you who maybe have been following Jesus for a while, has it just kind of become this routine? And to be fair, it's in our nature to make things into a routine. I think of like when Nicole and I brought babies home, our goal was to establish a routine, sleeping routines and eating routines, and we would train our kids to adopt the family routine. I think a lot of families do that weird backward thing where it's like we're gonna adjust to the baby's routine. It's like that's a baby. You make the baby adjust to your routine. So, you know, so you have this routine and you have the baby adopt your routine, you know, you train the baby to adopt your routine. That's good and that's healthy to have those routines. At your job, there's power in having your routines. Isn't there? You have meetings at this time and office work at this time, you catch up on email at this time. It's in our nature to take things and establish routines so that it's not chaotic. And that that can be very great. But what's happening in Laodicea, and likely in us, is they made their walk with Jesus, which was stretching them at a time, but they made it into a routine. So now it's like there's no more stretching, there's no more growth, there's no more pushing. We've made this into a routine. Jesus' invite to take up a cross and follow him, that can never be a routine. It's just this daily challenge, this daily stretching of our faith, this daily push to grow, to sacrifice, to risk, to forgive radically, to intentionally humble ourselves, to openly confess our shortcomings, to serve sacrificially. Like the path of Jesus Christ is this constant stretch. But in our comfort, it's really easy at some point to just kind of sit back and go, let's just run the same comfortable play over and over and over and over until Jesus gets back. And Jesus starts off this letter by saying, nah, I started this thing, I'm gonna finish this thing, we're pushing to the end. There's no cruise control in the life that I've called you to live. We're not living these predictable small little lives. God is in you. We're living big. Like, where are you at when it comes to that? Is your spirit become lukewarm? And I think that's too big of a concept to just kind of skip right past. And so let's sit in this, just let's take this a level deeper. A few symptoms of a of lukewarm spirit. First off, is this spiritual apathy? In marriage counseling, apathy is one of the most concerning attitudes. You know, you have two people trying to make a marriage work, and uh, if there's a passionate disagreement between the couple, that can often be worked through. If there's a crisis in the marriage, that can often be worked through. But if one or both are just kind of apathetic, just really don't care about making things work, don't really care about living up to their vows, well, that then there's just not much to work with in. Same is true spiritually. I believe, and you can disagree with me, but I believe that it's often easier to turn someone who's militantly against God. I've seen this happen. Like people who just hated God, who now serve him faithfully, we have a few in our church. I think it's easier to turn somebody who's militantly against God. I think it's easier to turn them than someone who's just kind of spiritually apathetic. It's like, meh, you know, I'm here, I'm good, you know, good enough. Is that you? Like, when's the last time your heart broke for your neighbors? When's the last time your heart broke for your coworkers? When's the last time your heart broke thinking, man, how many people are on their way to hell? When's the last time that bothered you? When's the last time your heart absolutely broke over your sin enough to drag it to the light and address it? Have you just kind of grown numb to your own sin? Have you grown numb to the reality of hell? Have you grown numb to the work that God is up to right now? It's far more serious than we often think. Another symptom of lukewarm is just comfort. And I think this is Jesus' point here with Laodicea, is you're just very comfortable. And Jesus is saying, your comfort is a slow death. You've been comfortable for years. There's no challenge, there's no confession, you're rarely stretched, and your spirit is atrophied. Look at you. It's atrophied spirit, you're lukewarm. You ever hear of something called the anterior midsingulate cortex? I know for a guy who eats dog treats, I sound pretty smart right now. I just heard about this and it's fascinating. The anterior midsingulate cortex, let's call it the AMC for short. The AMC, everybody has an AMC, it's part of your brain that grows the more you embrace discomfort and challenge. So the more you do things you don't want to do, the more your AMC in your brain grows. So for example, a study was done last year on diets, and people who followed through on this like diet challenge, their AMC in their brain grew. Now, those who like quit the challenge just kind of went back to doing what they were doing before, their AMC in their brain actually shrunk. So pushing through discomfort grows your AMC. Now here's what's fascinating the bigger your AMC, the better you age. This is why there's a, and we've talked about this in the series already, but this is why there's a sharp health decline immediately after retirement. We retire, we tend to get comfortable, we tend to coast, very little push, we rarely ever do things we don't like, we're just kind of relaxing. And our AMC shrinks and we decline mentally and physically. So a lot of people today believe, you know, like, hey, to stay sharp as you age, let's do sudoku, let's do wordle, let's do all that. There, I guess there can be some benefits to that for sure. But studies have found that if you actually like doing sudoku, if you like doing Wordle, it's really not doing much. It's it's definitely not growing your AMC. You have to push through things you don't like doing, and that actually helps you age better. I love how God designed us. God designed us to not be comfortable. One of my favorite quotes is by a guy named uh Victor Victor Frankel. He's uh at 37, he was a Jew who at 37 had walked into a Nazi concentration camp and just lived through the horrors of watching extermination happen firsthand, survived the concentration camp, and he later penned these words. He wrote, what man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and the struggling for some goal that's worthy of him. And we're seeing this reality play out today. Our society has never been so comfortable, yet so aimless and depressed and empty. And we, especially men, call me sexist, I don't care. Men and women too, sure, but like just especially men, we're just not built for comfort. We were built for striving and the struggle for a worthy cause. It's built inside of us, it's designed by God. And Jesus says, I gave you that worthy cause. I gave you my ministry. Hell is real. Get off the couch, into the fight. How can you sit back when we're being hurled toward eternity? It continues on, verse 17. He says, For you say, I'm rich, I have prospered, I need nothing. Not realizing that you're wretched, you're pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Now, luxury can be a blessing. So Jesus is not saying that success is a sin. Success is not a sin. However, success has a great potential to blind us from seeing our spiritual poverty. This is why Jesus taught that it's hard for a rich man to enter heaven. Because luxury can just invite apathy, success can blind us from our true spiritual state. So he continues in verse 18. He says, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich. Gold refined in fire means real gold. So Jesus is saying, Your gold is fake. I mean, I guess it's real gold, but it's really fake. Your gold, your accounts, your assets do nothing for you spiritually. You have a lot of fake gold. Come to me, understand your reliance, I'll give you the real stuff. He says, In white garments so that you may be clothed, you clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen. Sab to anoint your eyes so that you may see. So chances are some of the original readers of this letter sold ISAV, or they are part of the ISAV industry, developing the ISAV. And Jesus says, it's really ironic that you all make and sell ISAV when you're blind spiritually. Yeah, you're in church, you're reading this letter, but you're just kind of comfortably blind. And I just I won't accept it. Verse 19, to those whom I love, I reprove in discipline. So he's telling them, I love you. That's why I'm telling you this. So be zealous and repent. Verse 20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant to him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat with my father on his throne. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. A few thoughts to consider from this text. Number one, check your heart. Check your heart when it comes to this. When I took my girls into bed, in fact, they did this last night, they'll ask before I turn off the lights, and I think they just don't want to go to bed, but they'll say, Dad, can you can you like check our heart? Can you check our heart? And what they're talking about is I've done this since they were little, but when I took them into bed, I'll put my hand on their heart and I'll just ask them, How's your heart? I'm just trying to train them to like guard your heart. You know, how's your heart doing? Do you have any bitterness in there? Any envy? Did anybody hurt your feelings? You just got some anger in there. That's not just for kids, though. There should be this common practice for all of us. So let me ask you, how's your heart? Like, really, how's your heart? Like, what's in there? And when's the last time that thing broke? When's the last time you prayed to God that you just break my heart for what breaks yours? See, broken hearts bleed passion, broken hearts lead to action. But for some of us or a lot of us, we just kind of struggle with this because we have these hard hearts. The comfort of our life is hardened our heart, bitterness, apathy, envy. It just kind of all hardened our heart. And not much, if anything, is going to change until that heart of ours is broken and it's softened. How's your heart? Number two, hold routines loosely. A while back, my dad challenged me because he's the worst. It was uh it was a Monday. And so Monday for me is a day that I pack a lot into because I feel like if I can attack the beginning of the week Monday, it just takes pressure off the rest of the week. And so I have like this whole routine on Monday, this whole list to tackle. And and on this particular Monday, it was about Monday mid-afternoon, I got into nothing on my list to do. I had a few pop-up meetings, I had to juggle some child care that I wasn't expecting. Um, I had a few surprise phone calls. Like I had just gotten nothing on my Monday, Monday list. And it was really getting to me, it was really agitating me. And my office is next to my dad's, and so he can sense my frustration. And he peeked his head around the corner and he's like, Well, what's up with you? And I was like, Well, I just I have not gotten to anything that I needed to get to today. It's really gonna mess up my whole week. And and he goes, What if what if what God had for you today, though, is more important than what you had for yourself? What if everything he threw at you today is more important than what you decided was important for today? He's like, Why don't you just leave my office, Dad? I like that. Because it was true, and truth doesn't taste good sometimes. But here I am, I'm serving my routines, I'm trying to control my the predictability of my day, really my week. I had left no room for God to lead me elsewhere. And so since then, I've added a new element to my morning prayer is I just surrender my routine. It's like I have my to-do list for the day, and I with every intention to do, but I take that to God, I surrender. This is my plan today, God, but not my will, yours be done. Change my will. I follow you, not myself. There's something about that posture that slows us to creating these very predictable, routine, comfortable lives. Hold those routines loosely, especially, sorry, but like new parents. I know it can be really difficult with little kids, and we got the sleep schedule, and this and this and hold those routines loosely. Let's be open to what God has for us.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziegler. We'll get back to Junior in a moment. We want to tell you about one of his books, The Manual. If you're a man or raising a man, married to a man, maybe dating a man, there's a lot of confusion around what real manhood actually is. In the manual, Junior cuts through the noise. Both the over-the-top macho stuff and the politically correct definitions, and he gets to the raw core of manhood. He exposes the toxic masculinity for what it really is, not manhood at all. This book is simple, honest, powerful, and it might just change how you view men, strength, and leadership. We'd love to send you a copy of the manual. Just visit juniorziglar.com and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it to you. That's juniorzir.com. Now let's get back to junior's message.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Then number three. Take the next challenge and then the next. Following Jesus is about taking one step and then the next. Problem is, some of us, in fact, I would maybe even venture to say most, if not all of us, at some level, we've gotten to this point in our spiritual walk where we think, I feel like I'm kind of good here. This next step looks scary. This next step looks difficult. It looks very humbling. I don't want to talk about my sin. I don't want to bring this to the light. I don't want to serve that way. I don't want to give that much. We kind of feel like I'm kind of good here. I mean, based on all these other people, like I'm I've kind of gone pretty far here. So here's good. I don't want to serve there, I don't want to give that, I don't want to apologize, I don't want to reach out, I don't want to cut. Even though God is convicting me, I'm, I think I'm I'm good here. And as Jesus says to this church at the beginning of the letter, like, what are you doing? I started this thing, I'm finishing this thing. This is not the destination. You might have built something cushy here, but I'm taking you further. Live by faith, take that next step. I think that every believer should be borderline obsessed with the question, what's my next step? I think every morning we should be waking up with that on our heart. What is my next step that God has for me today? Take that next step. What have you been dragging your feet to? Kind of reminds me, we were we were standing on uh on a glacier in in northern Norway. My wife's dream was to do this uh a day's expedition of a glacial mountain climb. And so I'd spoken at a conference in a nearby city and we had our flight scheduled to go back home. But we'd Nicole and I was like, when are we gonna be in Norway again? Let's let's just like kick our flights back a few days and and just do a mini get a getaway. And so we drove out to the the glacier and we bought climbing gear and we rented crampons for our boots and bought waterproof stuff and we pulled into the chalet at base camp. It's 34 degrees that day and raining. So weather could not have been any worse. You know, one like a couple degrees colder, it'd been snowing, it'd have been fine, but it's just wet and cold. Now, I just want to be clear. This was not my idea. I just wanted to sit on the harbor and watch the boats come in, but Nicole really wanted to do this, and so we're we're we're gonna go out, we're gonna do this. And it was pretty miserable. It was like white out, white out conditions. This is my wife year. We had tied ropes to each other so that we didn't get lost from each other because you can't see like more than maybe 15 feet in front of you. So we hiked about three hours. It was terrible. All we saw was white every, I mean, it's just terrible. Hike about three hours in this cloud of rain, saw absolutely nothing, not even a rock. Finally, we had taken a break, a little lunch break. We had we sat on our our backpacks and we just kind of ate our pack lunches, and and the team had all elected to just let's just call it. We've seen nothing, let's just head back to the uh base camp. Six-hour trek, good enough. But I looked at my wife and she just looked really disappointed. And so I had said to the South African couple next to us, he said, What if we split up? Like half of us continue on, the other half can like hang out here, go back, whatever they want to do. And half the team said, Yeah, a few of us are willing to go forward. And so we split, traded ropes, half of us kept going. It got a bit dicey as we continued on. We hit this ice ledge, we're walking on wet ice, we did this drop off into a ravine. We had to crawl using our sticks as ice picks and climb down into this ravine. And it's then, it's there that we had heard this rushing water as we were in this ravine, but it was still white out, couldn't see anything. All we could hear was just this rushing water. We kept on going, kept on going until we saw it. It's like this gorgeous, towering glacier waterfall displacing the cloud. I've been a few moments in my life who've taken my breath away. This is one of them. Just standing under this waterfall, watching this water spill into this blue ice is incredible. And we sat there, and the first words out of our team's mouth was, we can't believe half the crew missed this. They're all sitting back there on their backpacks. And I wonder how many of us are gonna get to the other side of eternity with that same feeling. Can't believe I missed that. Stopped too early. Sat back in my own comfort and just missed the incredible. We have all of eternity to rest. Why'd I quit way back there? Why'd I stop? It was so cute. Like Nicole and I, we got back into our vehicle, exhausted, wet, numb, and hungry. And Nicole looked at me and she just said, she said, I can't believe I got to do that with you. And one day when this is thing is all over and we arrive on eternity shore, I want us to look at each other and say those same exact words. Man, I can't believe we got to do that. I can't believe I got to do that with you. Like we never settled, we never stopped, we ran this as far as we could. We pushed through some hell, but man, what we got to see, the story that he wrote, like you can't believe we got front row seats to that. And in some ways, man, we haven't seen anything yet. There is more that you are called to. There's more sacrifice for you to sacrifice, there's more struggle for you to go through, there's more exhaustion for you to feel, there is more obedience for you to walk in, but there's also more beauty for you to see and more reward and more stories. So let's be a church, unlike Laodicea, let's be a church that checks our own heart. Man, we run this race with heart. Let's hold our routines loosely, man. Whatever God has for us, may we never be guilty of idolizing our routines and may we take that next step that God is calling us to. Like when I think back to that preaching competition that I was in, I remember after, you know, after I'd gotten those papers and saw my score and all the comments on my grading sheets. I sat in the auditorium as my youth group had left. I was just kind of sitting there. And I remember thinking, I will never preach again. I committed that day. I'm never gonna get up in front of anybody ever again and be that vulnerable and preach again. Truth is, I deserve last place. That was pretty terrible. But it's just kind of fun to look back and see what God does when you just keep taking that next step. Like, I don't know where first place is today. I hope they're doing great. I don't I have no idea where first place is today, but I can tell you where last place is today. Maybe because God has a sense of humor, maybe, but but more than that, I think it's because God just likes to use the weak. God likes to use those who just don't have the natural ability. God loves to use the last placers. God loves to use those who just feel uncomfortable. Because there's something about our discomfort that God uses. I mean, Paul wrote the church that God's power is made perfect through our weakness, that God's glory shines through the cracks of our lack of ability and our discomfort. That God loves to use the weak and God loves to use the last placers and God loves to use those. Who just feel uncomfortable because the credit can't go to them. Can't go to them. It goes to him. But it takes those people to just step out into the discomfort. Just go, yeah, I'll take that next challenge. I'll take that next step. And so get uncomfortable. Push until, push until you're exhausted and keep on then going, even then. Because it's there in your exhaustion, it's there in your discomfort that God really meets you. Take his invite into adventure. There's far more to see, there's far more to experience. No sitting back, no cruise control. It's pedal to the metal because you ain't seen nothing yet.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. That was part two of Junior's Sermon Comfortable. Part of our seven letter series. This letter was to Leo Dicea. Junior, I loved what you were saying of just taking that next step, looking at our lives, evaluating, and say what's next for us. That's right. It's kind of like putting together a puzzle. You ever put one of those puzzles together? Yeah, my boys and I were doing one last night.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Yeah, I was doing that with my girls, a lot of fun. But you know, be terrible is if you're putting a puzzle together and you, you know, you have a hard time finding this piece into the puzzle, and finally you find it and you put it in, you're like, ah, great. Now we're done. It's like, no, no, there's like the the puzzle's not even halfway done. We got a lot more puzzle pieces to put together. Yet this is what we can do in our spiritual life sometimes is maybe we hit like a rough patch, we get through it, kind of fit that puzzle piece in, like, all right, now I'm good here. And Jesus is like, no, no, there's more. So I just want to ask you, where have you maybe slowed down? Or where have you said, nah, this is good enough? I don't need to press in to this anymore. I don't need to jump into that. Maybe it's with serving, maybe it's with giving, maybe it's with confession and accountability, but where have you just kind of said, no, this is good enough, and I'm good here because Jesus is inviting you past that. Are you going to take his invitation?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

What a word of encouragement. Junior, can't wait for next time. You've been listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, a listener-supported broadcast. Junior's the lead teaching pastor of The Bridge in Chicagoland, and we're so glad that you joined us today. As we told you earlier, we would love to send you a copy of Junior's book, The Manual. Whether you're a man, raising a man, married to a man, dating a man, this book cuts through all the noise and it just gets to the raw core of manhood. All you have to do is jump on Junior's website, juniorziggler.com, give a gift of any amount towards the show, and we'll send it right to you. While you're there, you'll find great resources like today's message, all of Junior's books and podcasts, plus a link to our church, The Bridge. If you're in the Chicago land area, we'd love to see you at one of our services. Again, that's juniorziggler.com, Junior Z-I-E-G L E R dot com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. The Bridge with Junior Ziggler is a production of the Bridge Community Church, a multi-campus church in Chicago.