Comfort Junkies
We’re all comfort junkies and we crave comfort from the minute we get up until the minute we go to bed. It’s not just in the big ways—we’re not all seeking to get the most money, have the best vacations, or eat in the most expensive restaurants. It’s the little comforts of day-to-day life that can derail us, becoming the coping mechanisms that get us through.
We want our Starbucks in the morning, so we have our Starbucks app on our phone and we go through the drive-through. And then around 10:00, we want some specialty pastry of some sort, and then there’s lunch. Where are we going to eat today? It can be a big decision.
Then after work we want our yoga, we want our stretching, or we want our massage. And then we get home and ask What’s for dinner? Then after dinner we ask What are we going to download on Netflix?
In all of the little choices we make throughout a day, what are we after? We’re after comfort. We want to feel good, we want to feel at peace, we want to feel at rest, and we want to have these little indulgences to look forward to to get us through the monotony and mundane and to give us a little excitement. The little pleasures of life can erode discipleship and become an idol. It’s like we can’t have a good day without these comforts.
Take Stock
We have to ask ourselves Where is the Lord in this? We can become so sated on the little pleasures of the world that our time with the Lord becomes dull and boring or it sort of dulls our spiritual senses and sensibilities.
That’s why in Scripture we see so much about fasting. There’s a craving for the Lord—a healthy, godly craving and yearning—when we deprive ourselves of comfort. And I don’t mean in some way that’s dramatic or huge. It can simply mean saying no to ourselves every once in a while and denying that craving for comfort that can quicken us spiritually.
If our walk with the Lord is sort of feeling dull, if it has lost its joy, then maybe that’s the first thing we need to look at. It’s not a major thing we’re doing wrong or some big change we need to make. It’s simply asking if we are living each day for comfort in ways that we’re not even realizing.
Content adapted from Flourish by Lydia Brownback. This article first appeared on Crossway.org
