Called to Be Uncomfortable

Good afternoon, brethren.

Days of Unleavened Bread. Just open up with a story quick. This morning, I’ve actually heard another lady in the congregation with her son say something very similar, but my daughter said it this morning. She said, “Daddy, do you know what day it is?” I said, “Well, yes, I know what day it is. Do you know what day it is?” She says, “It’s a day of eleven bread.” It’s a day of eleven bread. She didn’t say unleavened. She got close. It was eleven bread. Actually, oddly enough, I was told that exact same story by another lady in the congregation with her son, who had the same way of pronouncing unleavened back when he was younger. So then she immediately asked if we could eat some donuts. She doesn’t quite understand, doesn’t quite grasp the meaning of the days yet, but children are fun.

When I was growing up as a child, me and my brothers, we would see the World’s Strongest Man. How many of you have heard of the World’s Strongest Man competitions? Ever since I was young, I was fascinated by it. We didn’t follow it intently when we were young, but I would see it. And whenever it was on the television, I’d be excited because you’ve got these huge people throwing massive objects over tall hurdles, and they’re doing tug of war or they’re lifting up these giant Atlas stones, whatever it is, they’ve got these competitions that involve both strength and endurance.

And I was fascinated by it. I loved it. I love the World’s Strongest Man. And it’s still going on to this day. I don’t follow it too closely, but it sets up this message very nicely. There’s a man named Eddie Hall, in recent years, who won the World’s Strongest Man. And he performed an act that the world had never considered or even thought possible before. Previously, he held the world’s strongest deadlift. Now, what a deadlift is, is basically just taking the bar and lifting it off the floor. It’s a pretty simple lift, but he held the world’s highest deadlift. I think it was four hundred and sixty-five kilograms.

Now, most of these records that are broken are broken by one kilogram, two kilograms, five pounds, ten pounds, something like that. Very small increments. He determined to break the record and jump all the way up to five hundred kilograms. So he went way, way, way, way beyond what any human being could have fathomed. And he determined to do it. And then he did it. He broke the five-hundred-kilogram deadlift world record, set the world record at five hundred kilograms back in twenty-sixteen. So that’s only ten years ago. Something that the world could not... nobody else could even lift four hundred and sixty-five kilograms.

Now, five hundred kilograms is over eleven hundred pounds for those of us in the United States. So he went from something under a thousand, or roughly around a thousand, to eleven hundred. Now try to imagine that. It’s not something that we can really grasp very easily. But now, since twenty-sixteen, something fascinating has happened. How many people do you think, since then... You would think, well, all these people for the last six thousand years, nobody could lift up... Maybe people did way back when, and we don’t know about it. It wasn’t recorded, but nobody since twenty-sixteen could lift five hundred kilograms. And now you would think, well, nobody else has probably lifted it since. Well, that’s not true. There’s between five and ten other people who have lifted five hundred kilograms since. And some of them are doing reps with it, repetitions. They’re doing it for two reps.

Now, what Eddie Hall did was fascinating to me. He broke a mental barrier that was thought to be impossible. He did something that both he and the rest of mankind couldn’t have ever fathomed. Roger Bannister, if you know who he is, back in nineteen fifty-four, did the same thing with breaking the four-minute mile. Running a mile in under four minutes was something before Roger Bannister’s time that was simply not thought possible. To this day now, since nineteen fifty-four, over twenty-three hundred people have run a sub four-minute mile. I would not be one of those twenty-three hundred people, nor would I be one of the five to ten who have lifted five hundred kilograms off the floor. But what I’m trying to illustrate with these people is they have a mindset that is simply unique. They’re able to break through barriers of what was simply thought to be impossible prior to their time.

I was a kid. I loved skateboarding when I grew up. There was a man named Tony Hawk. How many have heard of Tony Hawk? Okay. A lot of people. And I bet a lot of the people who raised their hand today, a lot of the brethren have not skateboarded, nor do they really know anything more about Tony Hawk than his name. Okay. He was a famous skateboarder back in the nineteen-nineties. And why he was so famous is he did something that nobody else thought was possible until he did it. He performed what’s called a nine-hundred spin on a vert ramp, where you drop down, and you go up this ramp. He came up, and he did two and a half spins on his skateboard before landing it.

And to all of us, we don’t really have understanding of what that is, but that was a big deal. Nobody had ever done that before. And now you’ve got twelve-year-olds or fifteen-year-olds doing nine hundreds. How is that possible? It’s not that he did something physically impossible. It’s that he broke through a mental barrier that was not done before. He opened up the minds of other people, including kids, to think it possible to do a nine hundred spin. They don’t actually even know how many people have done the nine hundred because it’s between fifteen and twenty people. They’re people we don’t know their names. They’re not remembered. But who was remembered? Tony Hawk. And a lot of people in this room have heard his name.

Chuck Yeager, nineteen forty-seven, broke the sound barrier. Prior to that, it was not thought possible. Just twenty years later, the first manned aircraft, just twenty years after nineteen forty-seven to nineteen sixty-seven, the first manned aircraft reached six point seven two times the sound barrier. And you could go on and on. The stories are endless. There’s always people who break barriers. The first people who climbed Mount Everest back in nineteen fifty-three, just a year before Roger Bannister broke the mile. Now seventy-five hundred people have successfully climbed Everest. And many people, including Sherpas, have done it multiple times. They just go up and down and up and down like it’s nothing. But prior to nineteen fifty-three, it was thought to be an impossible feat.

What we’re talking about today is a concept, get into this thing called the forty percent rule. The forty percent rule is a mental toughness principle, stating that when your mind tells you that you’re exhausted and finished, you should just quit, that you have actually only reached forty percent of your true physical or mental capacity. Now, this was designed by and created by Navy SEALs, popularized by Navy SEALs. This concept suggests a sixty percent untapped reserve of potential exists beyond your comfort zone. That’s the thing. A lot of people don’t want to go beyond their comfort zone. Never mind break massive barriers by being the first five-hundred-kilogram deadlift or being the first person to reach a sub-four-minute mile.

Here’s just a quick example of the forty percent rule the Navy SEAL came up with. So imagine you’re running and you feel like you have to stop because you’re exhausted. We’ve all been on jogs, or we’ve been in races, or we’ve gone out for a run. Once you feel tired, the forty percent rule suggests, and it’s true, you’ve heard of the term second wind. You feel like you’re hitting a wall, and all of a sudden, you can get a second wind if you keep pushing. That’s what the forty percent rule is all about.

Maybe you’ve been up late nights studying. I was in college for architecture, and there was a lot of late nights. And I can attest to this. If you just keep pushing a little bit further beyond what you think is possible, if you have enough caffeine or whatever to aid you, you go an extra twenty or thirty minutes, and you can still push yourself to be able to do more than you thought possible. In stressful, high-pressure situations like public speaking or being in a competition, some might feel overwhelmed. But your instinct is to back off or panic or sort of recede into the curtains or whatever. But if you stay with it and keep performing, you realize you can handle more pressure than you thought. That’s the forty percent rule.

And a lot of people, these great people on earth, who have broken these mental barriers and physical barriers, have exercised this rule. Now, if human beings, people without God’s Holy Spirit, can achieve these kinds of feats, breaking through mental and physical barriers thought to be impossible, how much more can we achieve knowing that we have God’s Holy Spirit in us? God’s Holy Spirit is the same spirit that created the universe, mind you. The same spirit that, when you look outside, and you see the beautiful flowers, he designed those flowers. He designed the clouds in the sky and the ecosystems. He designed our human bodies.

God has not just given us the knowledge of who He is. He’s given us a part of who He is, His Holy Spirit. So His Holy Spirit is in us. Something that Tony Hawk didn’t have. Something that Eddie Hall didn’t have. Roger Bannister didn’t have. Chuck Yeager. They were able to accomplish things that were thought unimaginable. But they could never achieve those lofty goals if they didn’t push themselves. And, brethren, they stretch themselves, and we can too. We can too.

Coming out of the Passover in the Days of Unleavened Bread, we’re actually in a great position right now. Think about where we are. You could turn over to Second Corinthians chapter thirteen. We’ve just come out of the Passover, where we’ve deeply self-examined. We’ve thought long and hard about where we are, where we could improve, things that we could do better, things that we’re doing well already. And Second Corinthians thirteen shows us what we were supposed to do prior to the Passover.

Second Corinthians, thirteen, and verse five. It says this: “Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know you not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except you be reprobates?” We’re to examine. The word examine is peirazo. It means to test or scrutinize. We’ve done this. We’ve examined. We’ve proven. We’ve tried ourselves. And the word prove is dokimazo. It means to test, approve, or allow, or discern. We’ve looked at ourselves deeply and sought to discern areas that we could use some improvement in our lives. It also means to try or to have an intense examination. That’s what prove means. And that’s what we’ve done. That’s what we’ve done.

You’ve already taken inventory of yourself. It should be on the forefront of our minds now that we have the Passover behind us and we’re in the Days of Unleavened Bread now. We’re here during the Days of Unleavened Bread seeking to keep sin out of our lives, the way the very sins that we recognize through the pre-Passover self-examination period. So we’ve already taken this inventory.

So my question to all of us today is this. How far are you, how far am I willing to push ourselves to improve or overcome in the areas we’ve examined? To what extent are we willing to be like Tony Hawk or Eddie Hall, or Roger Bannister? Because what they’ve showed us, we don’t have to be like them. We don’t have to be just like them. But the principle is what we all have to apply. We have to learn the lesson from them that you and I can do so much more than we may think physically, mentally, spiritually possible.

We put ceilings above our heads, oftentimes unnecessarily. We think, oh, it’s just too hard. That might be too difficult. That’ll take too much time to apply those things in my life, whatever that might be. But at the end of the day, oftentimes we could look at our ceiling and say, what we ought to do as Christians is we ought to say, how can we raise our ceiling? How can we increase our ceiling? We put artificial caps on ourselves and our abilities. And what we’re talking about today is how we can burst through those perceived limitations that you and I have. We all have them. Mankind has perceived limitations on what they think is physically possible. But it takes unique people to break through those perceived limitations. And you and I all have them. We just need to break through them, too.

Think about this: never in the history of mankind has society lived in such convenience. We’re at a great disadvantage at the end of the age. Just a hundred years ago, in the nineteen twenties, only fifty percent of homes in America had electricity. How often do we think about electricity in our homes? We live in a society where it’s such a given to have electricity, nobody would even contemplate or consider even the cheapest, most lowliest of homes have electricity in modern society. Just a hundred years ago, half of the nation had electricity. And prior to that, it was much less. Only the rich would have electricity in their homes. The same with hot showers. Hot showers in homes across the United States were not common until the fifties, nineteen fifties.

Just in my lifetime, humanity has seen the rise of the internet. Conveniences that give us the ability to tap into knowledge that the world has, that prior to the invention of the internet, we had to go to encyclopedias. We had to go ask our parents. We had to go ask our grandparents, “What is this? And what do I do here? What’s the answer to this question?” If you had a question about anything, it might have been days or weeks before you could get the answer. Just because we didn’t have-- even in my lifetime, I’m not an old person, but even in my lifetime, I remember growing up with encyclopedias and dictionaries. You didn’t have online dictionaries and online encyclopedias where you could have the answer to every conceivable question at your fingertips. Again, we’re at a disadvantage because of this. I’ll get into why.

And AI now? Add that on top of the internet? Are you kidding me? Think of the possibilities. Everything in society today is designed so that we can live as comfortable and cushy lives as possible. Everything. It doesn’t matter where you look, whether you look at the light bulbs that are above our heads, that we now take for granted, and think, well, everybody should have a light bulb. That’s a convenience. Prior to that, it actually took work and effort to light the oil lamp or the candles in your homes, with potentially burning your house down if you didn’t handle it correctly. Everything in life nowadays is designed to make our lives easier and make us feel more comfortable. It’s to take all the sharp edges away. Make sure that we’re surrounded by pillows and take the work out of everything. Again, you can have any answer to any question at a moment’s notice by just talking to your phone.

Jordan Peterson said a while back, he said, “In a world of such convenience, people are deprived of the necessity to be strong.” And we, in God’s church, also have become accustomed to living cushy, easy lives. We’re not like saints of past eras. Think of all that they had to go through. And very little demands of us that we go outside of our comfort zones, if I could put it that way. But God didn’t create us this way. He created us so that we could work. He created us so that we could put forth effort and push ourselves. Because it’s through those kinds of endeavors, pushing ourselves beyond our limits, beyond what we think is reasonable and where we think our ceilings are, by pushing ourselves beyond that, it’s then and only then that we actually begin to develop character.

But we face an absolute uphill battle in today’s society because everything is designed to do the exact opposite. It’s designed to try and help our lives, make them easier, more comfortable, not harder. So, brethren, this message is difficult for us, more than any other era or part of God’s church in the six thousand years of mankind’s existence. It’s more challenging for us today because we’re accustomed to living comfortable lives. But we can’t let that same mindset that has gripped the whole world today grip us as well.

Turn over to Romans chapter twelve. Romans chapter twelve. Very common verse. One that we’ve all heard. Memory verse. Romans twelve. We’ll just read one verse. Verse one. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” God wants us to live, you could argue, uncomfortable lives. He’s not into us having squishy, comfy, pillowy lives. He wants us to live lives that have a little bit of hard edges. That’s not to say that we’re going into the lion’s den like Daniel. That’s not to say that-- think about all the trials that saints in past eras and years have had to endure. We don’t have to necessarily endure those same trials. We have other trials that we’re facing. But God doesn’t want us to live such easy lives. He wants us to be living sacrifices.

Let’s pick this verse apart a little bit. “Present your bodies,” meaning your whole self, your physical body, your mind, everything about you, present it as a living sacrifice to God. Think about how seriously God took sacrifices anciently. A sacrifice was not something to be taken lightly in the Old Testament. Priests had to sacrifice animals that were perfect in many regards, without blemish, of a very specific age. You couldn’t just pick the first one that you saw out of the flock. Sacrifices, if we’re supposed to be like a living sacrifice to God, similar to how the sacrifices were selected in the first century back, well before the first century, long before the first century, then the sacrifices that were done anciently were very specific, very specific. You had to get the best of the herds. They had to be of a proper age. Ownership and authenticity was taken into consideration.

There were so many factors that when we read something as simple as putting ourselves and being like a living sacrifice to God, we should consider what kind of sacrifice are we? Are we sacrificing ourselves and giving ourselves like we’re just picking the first lamb that we see out of the flock? Or are we going through and selecting the best of the best? Is that how we sacrifice in our lives to God? Takes a lot more work. It’s not as easy, but that’s what God wanted anciently. Why would it be any different today? Why would it be any different today? Sacrificing in our lives means we’re stretching ourselves beyond our comfort zones. It means we’re experiencing discomfort. This is a message about being uncomfortable in life. God doesn’t want us to live soft lives. I’ll say it again.

Turn over to Luke chapter seventeen. Luke seventeen. Pick it up in verse five. Luke seventeen, five. “And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.” They wanted to grow. They didn’t want to stay the same. They wanted to constantly be growing. How can we get better? How can we stretch our ceilings? Increase our faith. Make us more profitable. “And the Lord said, If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say to the sycamore tree, be you plucked up by the root, be you planted in the sea, and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by when he’s come in the field, Go and sit down to meat? And would not rather say to him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird yourself, and serve me till I have eaten and drunken, and afterward you shall eat and drink.”

If a servant is doing the things that they’re asked to do, should they necessarily even be thanked for it? Christ is saying. That’s just what they’re expected to do. Verse nine, “Does he even thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not.” I think not. Verse ten, “So likewise you, and you shall have done all these things which are commanded you.” We’re here at a commanded assembly. Should we be praised by God, or by man, or by anybody, by each other? “Oh, I’m so glad. Good job being here at the Days of Unleavened Bread. Good job being here at Sabbath services. I’m so proud of you. You did such a good job.”

No, this is just what’s expected. We’re supposed to be here. We shouldn’t be thanked for coming to the Days of Unleavened Bread. We shouldn’t be thanked for coming to Sabbath services every week. This is just what we do as Christians. If we’re doing this, Christ says, we should say to ourselves, “We’re unprofitable servants. We’re just doing the things that were our duty to do.” God wants us to take it beyond being unprofitable. He wants us to be profitable instead. And in order to do that, we must stretch ourselves beyond what’s natural or expected in order to become profitable.

So we’re going to get into three simple steps, if you could. They build on one another. Steps that achieve the goal of stretching our limits. How can we take our ceiling that’s twelve feet tall and make it thirteen? How can we make it fifteen, eventually? How can we make it twenty feet tall? How can we stretch ourselves just like these great athletes on earth have done and proven to the world that it is possible to do things that are seemingly impossible? We can prove to ourselves every day that we can do more than we think we can, but we have to be willing to put the work in. We have to be willing to put our minds to it.

That’s what the Days of Unleavened Bread are about. We’re here to try and put sin out of our lives and become better people. It’s hard. It’s not like what the world’s churches teach. The world’s churches say you can come as you are. We don’t care what you’re doing or how you’re living your life. Continue to live that way. It’s better if you don’t, but we’re not going to say that you shouldn’t. God’s church is different. God is different. God says that we ought to change and conform ourselves to be like Christ, who is perfect in every way. So the first of the three steps we’ll cover today is humble yourself to rely on God. Without this first step of humbling ourselves to rely on God, we won’t be able to move on to the second and third step. This is the only place to begin.

Turn over to First Corinthians chapter three. First Corinthians three. We’re reading a lot of Paul today. So go over to First Corinthians three and verse three. So let’s just pick it up in verse one. “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with meat. For hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither yet now are you able. For you are yet acting,” you could add in there, “...you are yet acting carnal. For whereas there is among you envy and strife and divisions, are you not yet acting carnal? For while one says I’m of Paul and another I’m of Apollos, are you not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos? But ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave unto every man. I have planted, “Paul says, “and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”

Now we have a job to do as Christians. We can’t just say I’m going to completely rely on God and then sit on the couch all day and expect miracles to be performed and our character to develop in ways that have us sitting in the kingdom of God in the hundred and forty-four thousand or whatever. We can’t expect that. Paul knew that he had a part to play. Apollos had a part to play. But at the end of the day, God was the one who had the increase, who gave the increase. God was the one who was backing Paul, helping him to be effective at what he was doing. Apollos, too.

So this first point of humbling ourselves to rely on God, we see that Paul lived that. Paul didn’t just live his life on his own human steam and effort. He relied on God wholly because he knew that God was the one who gave the increase. Paul had his work to do. Faith without works is dead. We all understand that. But he had to rely on God in everything that he did because he knew that God was the one who was going to ultimately give the increase.

Turn over to First Corinthians fifteen, a few chapters later. First Corinthians fifteen, verse nine. Again, Paul speaking, “For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” He had a very humble attitude. “And by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace, which was,” because, “...bestowed upon me, was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me.” Paul knew that he labored hard. He knew he had a lot of road to go down in order to prove to everybody else that he had changed because he persecuted the church almost like nobody else had. Killing saints.

So he knew that he had to prove to everybody that he had changed. And the way that he did that was by explaining, I can’t do it on my own. I’m not going to do it on my own. I refuse to do it on my own, but by the grace that God has given him. God was with him, and he knew that he couldn’t raise his ceiling personally without first relying on God to do it. We must be the same.

Second Corinthians chapter three, just a couple chapters later. Without this foundational step, you and I would be no different than trying to break the four-minute mile barrier using human steam like Roger Bannister did. He did it. He did it. But he didn’t do it with God’s Holy Spirit. He didn’t do it with God backing him in the same way. We have God’s Spirit in us. Lean on that. If we feel like we truly want to grow in our character and expand our ceilings, expand our abilities in life, we must first rely on God in order to do it. Otherwise, we’re no different than Eddie Hall, Tony Hawk, Roger Bannister, you name them. We’re just doing it on our own strength.

Second Corinthians three, verse one. “Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or need we, as some others, epistles of condemnation to you, or letters of condemnation from you? You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men.” Whatever Paul was teaching the brethren, their actions were his epistle. “For as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart, and such trust have we through Christ to God-ward. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves,” this is the key verse, “Not that we’re sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.”

We’re not sufficient to do anything on our own. God says the way of man is not in himself; it’s not in man that walks to direct his steps. We don’t know what we’re doing in life, humanly. We were walking blind before we were called, and God gave us His Holy Spirit to open our eyes, take the veil off, give us understanding and knowledge of what is correct and right in life, and how He wants us to live. So it’s not of our own selves that we are living life. The word sufficiency means ability in verse five. Let me read that again using that word. “Not that we are able of our own selves to think anything as of our own selves, but our ability is of God.”

Turn over to Philippians chapter two. God has given us the ability in life to achieve things that are seemingly and actually impossible. Were you and I able to overcome sins prior to receiving God’s Holy Spirit? Absolutely not. We can’t overcome lust, hatred, greed, envy. We can’t overcome vanity, covetousness. We can’t overcome these deep spiritual sins without having God’s Spirit in us, and we all understand that. That’s why we’re baptized. When God gave us His Holy Spirit, He gave us the ability to overcome things that were simply impossible. He gave us the ability to overcome things that were simply impossible. He gave us the ability to overcome things that were simply impossible. He gave us the ability to overcome things that were simply impossible prior to receiving the Holy Spirit.

So you and I are already like Eddie Hall and Tony Hawk. We’re already like those people, except far more capable. Far more capable. You and I have already overcome things in our lives that were seemingly impossible and actually were impossible prior to having God’s Spirit. This is why this first point is so important. You can do more than you think. You can overcome in these Days of Unleavened Bread.

Philippians chapter two, we’ll pick it up in verse one. “If there be therefore be any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels of mercies fulfill you my joy, that you may be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” We be living sacrifices, brethren. This is how we become living sacrifices. We don’t think about ourselves all the time. We think about others. This is one way that we can break through that ceiling, if you will.

“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men.” The same Jesus Christ that we talked about, who ended up dying for our sins, even though he committed no sin in his life. “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross,” the stake. “Wherefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and of the things in heaven and the things in the earth, things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

“Wherefore, my beloved,” brethren, here we go. This is what’s important. “...as you have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” God has given you His Holy Spirit, something that is so precious that the world cannot fathom. And in that giving of the Holy Spirit, we’ve been given the ability to tap God himself to help us to achieve things that were impossible before having His Holy Spirit. He not only gives us the ability to overcome sin, He gives us the will to do it as well.

So, brethren, let me ask you this. Do any of us find it hard to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones in life? It’s much easier to sit on the couch all day and doom scroll, as they say. It’s much easier to sit and watch movies all day. It’s much easier to sit and play video games. People love playing video games nowadays. It’s much easier to do these kinds of things than it is to have even the will to get up off of that chair and try and change yourself, build your character. God says that he will not only give you the ability to change your character, push through your ceilings, but he’ll give you the will to do it as well. He’ll help you get off the couch to begin with, if I could put it that way. That’s the God we serve. That’s the Holy Spirit that he has given to us, part of himself, so that we can achieve more than we ever thought possible.

So this is the first point. Part of that, of course, is if we want to have more of God’s Spirit in us, we of course have to pray for it. We have to beg God for more of His Holy Spirit so that he can guide us to both will and do of His good pleasure. But if we don’t do this first basic step, brethren, we’re not going to be able to go on to effectively push our ceilings higher, break through boundaries we thought were impossible before. So that’s the first point. Humble yourself to rely on God. Once we have that down, once God has given us His Holy Spirit, the next point is pretty simple. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

We’re here in Philippians. Turn over to Chapter One. Philippians one, twenty-seven. Again, the society we live in is built around bringing us comfort at every possible turn. Everywhere we go, we can feel comfortable. We don’t have to do much work. We don’t have to think too much. We don’t have to go physically out and labor. We don’t have to do much of anything nowadays because conveniences have done it for us. We don’t have to think. We can just ask the phone whatever question we want, and it will tell us the answer. So brethren, this next step is we have to get out of that thinking. We have to break through that thinking in our minds that it’s best to constantly feel comfortable in life. That’s not how God designed us. God wants us to feel a little bit uncomfortable.

You’ve heard Mr. Pack. He’s used the phrase before, “Suffering kicks a learning mechanism into gear.” There’s a reason that that’s true. It doesn’t say sitting around on the couch with pillows and things is going to kick the learning mechanism into gear. That’s not how it works. Sharp edges in life kick the learning mechanism into gear. So let’s turn over to Philippians chapter one. Let’s begin down the trail of this second point: get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Philippians one, twenty-seven. “Only let your conversation,” meaning conduct, “only let your conduct be as it becomes the gospel of Christ. That whether I come and see you or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” Everything in the Bible is all about unity. Totally different subject, but I thought I’d mention it while we’re here. “And in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him but also to suffer for his sake. Having the same conflict which you saw in me, and now here to be in me.”

Paul told the Philippians we’re supposed to suffer for Christ’s sake. There’s another verse that talks about we’re supposed to fellowship with Christ’s sufferings. Paul suffered. He’s actually instructing them to suffer. Why? Because character only comes through suffering/challenges. Christians are not allowed to live soft, easy, comfortable lives. We’re actually not allowed to. Because if we don’t, I guess you could say... take that back. We are allowed to. We’re allowed to live soft, comfortable, easy lives. But we just won’t be building any character, and we won’t be ready for the kingdom of God. It’s just that simple. So if we really want to be a Christian, we’re not allowed to live comfortable lives. We have to feel the edges, if you will.

And we’ll get into what that means. Don’t worry, there’s a lot that you could go into about that. The word suffer here in verse twenty-nine, but also to suffer for Christ’s sake, the word suffer means experience a sensation, usually painful. Building character is not an easy thing to do, or else everybody in the world would have perfect character. It takes hard work. It means putting yourself outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself beyond limits you thought were possible, so that you can build character and be ready for the kingdom.

Luke chapter nine. Luke nine and verse twenty-three. “And he said unto them, If any man will come unto me,” Jesus Christ speaking, “...let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it.” There’s another way to describe that. For whosoever will try and preserve his comfort throughout his life and make sure that he never has any difficulties or trials or sharp edges that are poking him through life. He that tries to save his life and make it more comfortable in this life, he’s actually going to lose his life. Not my words. Those are the words of the Bible. “But whosoever,” verse twenty-four, “...will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”

Let’s return back to the verse we read in Romans twelve, one. We’re to be living sacrifices, sacrificing ourselves constantly to be holy and exceedingly acceptable to God. That takes work. Is our sacrifice just the first lamb that we pick, that we see out of the flock? Or is our sacrifice on par with out of two hundred or five hundred lambs? We go through and we try and find the absolute best one. We make sure that it’s the right age. We make sure that it’s the right color, that it’s got no blemishes, that there’s everything right with it. How is our sacrificing? Because if we lose our life, only then will we save it.

“For what is a man advantaged if he gained the whole world and lose himself or be cast away?” If we try and conform ourselves to this world and try and fit in so that we don’t feel the sharp edges of the world, we just feel soft edges, God says we’re going to lose our lives. We can’t let ourselves fall into that trap. “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed when he shall come in his own glory and in his Father’s and of the holy angels. But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of God,” and the transfiguration account, and so forth.

But what did it say in verse twenty-three? We kind of read over it quickly. But twenty-three says, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily to follow me.” Paul exhorted the Philippians, “Be sure that you suffer like Christ,” suffer for Christ’s sake. Here we can add suffer daily for Christ’s sake. Make sure that every day, every day, we are trying to go outside of our comfort zones so that we can develop character, build the character that God and Christ want us to build, to be ready for the kingdom when it arrives. We must daily feel uncomfortable. Again, that’s the point we’re covering right now. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

So I’ll ask this: how comfortable was Christ when he carried the stake to his own death? Was he having a real good time? Was it easy for him to do that? Was it easy for him to be betrayed the night before? Was it easy for him to preach the gospel to all the people that he did? Was it easy for him in his life? Every day, he was going through something. Every day, the apostles were going through something. So, brethren, we all should strive. This might sound counterintuitive, we should strive to feel uncomfortable every single day in one way, shape, or form or another.

Acts fourteen. “But, Mr. Holcombe, I’m in a day of prosperity right now. I’m in a time of great prosperity. I don’t have any trials coming at me right now.” Okay, that’s good. I’m glad to hear we’re in a time of prosperity because God sets the one against the other. Days of prosperity and days of adversity. We can be in days of prosperity. That’s not saying that we should just constantly live lives that are hard and never enjoy anything in life. Of course, we’re supposed to live the abundant life. That’s not the point here. But if we’re in days of prosperity, does that mean that we still can’t go through certain trials?

Acts fourteen and verse nineteen. “There came there certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Albeit as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, came into the city, and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra and to Iconium and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom of God.”

Now, we all understand that trials are going to come our way. Trials, tests, the word tribulation there means pressure. It’s pretty simple. Pressure comes at us from family. It comes at us from our co-workers. It comes at us through health trials. It comes at us through all means of these external sources are coming at us. Satan, the devil, is a roaring lion. He’s constantly coming at us, trying to break us down, break us apart, make us buckle under pressure. We know that trials come from outside sources.

But, brethren, have we ever considered that most of us see trials as coming from the outside and really only see trials as coming from the outside? Humanly, we don’t like pressure. We don’t like it. We want to try and avoid it at all costs. That’s why society has developed to the point where it is today. We don’t want to feel any hard edges, so we design everything in life to make us feel as comfortable as possible. Humanly, that feels better than going through trials. But pressure isn’t always external. What do I mean by that? Have you ever considered that you can put pressure on yourself? You can put your own pressure on yourself, causing your own tribulation in life, and directly increase your chances of entering God’s kingdom and increasing your reward.

Now, what do I mean? Well, if we pressure ourselves to do more than we think is possible, that develops character. It doesn’t take a health trial. It doesn’t take a trial at work to develop character. Those things will do that too. But if we pressure ourselves and we say, “You know what? I’m going to go one step further. I’m going to do more. I’m going to study more on this subject. I’m going to make sure that I push myself beyond what I think is natural. I’d rather just sit down on the couch all day. But rather than doing that, I’m going to push myself. I’m going to build more knowledge, build more character, do things that aren’t comfortable.” And if we do that, we’re actually building ourselves up toward entering the kingdom even more. We’re building our character. We can choose to do that ourselves.

So if we see that we’re not experiencing a lot of discomfort in our lives, it’s likely because we’re not challenging our ceilings, testing our limits, going above and beyond, pushing ourselves to be profitable, which is easier? Sitting on the couch at home, watching a movie, or spending that same time pushing yourself to think of ways that maybe we could help with fundraising in the local congregation. Maybe thinking of ways that we can benefit brethren who are shut-ins. Rather than watching the movie, maybe we pick up the phone, and we call somebody that you haven’t talked with them in the church for a long time. You know what, brethren? You may be changing their lives because of that. Because I guarantee you, it’s changing your life when you choose that more challenging path.

We can choose in life to make sure that we store up snacks and things like this. We go to the store and make sure we have all these snacks at work, or whatever you like to do. Or we could say, you know what? I’m going to cut that budget in half, or I’m going to cut it out altogether and use that money to benefit God’s Work instead, or something to that effect. Where can we go above and beyond in our lives? Is the question that we ought to ask ourselves. And it’s the perfect time to ask it because we’re here during the Days of Unleavened Bread. We all know where we are weakest because we just examined ourselves.

So what can we do to move the needle in those areas of our lives where we see that we are already weakened, that we need to improve? It’s those areas where we can start to make incremental changes, push ourselves outside of our comfort zone again, put our own pressure on ourselves. Trials and tribulation, through much tribulation, we’re going to enter the Kingdom of God. They don’t always have to be external. We can build our own trials on ourselves if we put ourselves through them. And brethren, you’re going to benefit from it. I promise you that.

Romans chapter five. Romans five, verse one. Let’s look at this verse through a new lens. Now that we understand that trials aren’t necessarily things that have to come from the outside in, that we can put trials on ourselves, we can put pressure on ourselves to do better. Romans chapter five, let’s read it through that new lens. “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we glory in tribulations.”

Do we glory in tribulations that come at us from the outside in? We say, you know what, I was treated unjustly at work. I’m going to glory in that because I know that that means that I’m part of God’s church. I’m a servant of God. That means that I’m going to be developing character. But do we glory also in tribulations that we put on ourselves? The pressure that we put on ourselves to do better. To reach to the next level. To overcome something that we’ve never overcome before.

You can lift way more than five hundred kilograms. You can do way more than Eddie Hall can do. Because Eddie Hall, as strong as he is, doesn’t have the Holy Spirit and can’t overcome the things that you and I can. It takes work. Verse three, “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also knowing that tribulation works patience and patience experience and experience hope and hope makes not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.”

By pushing our boundaries, it doesn’t mean that we have to be the first person to break the four-minute mile or reach the top of Mount Everest. Pushing ourselves to do more in small ways first is key because that’s where true change can be made. We’re not trying to take our ceiling from twelve feet all the way up to twenty feet. We might be first trying to take our ceiling from twelve feet to twelve foot one inch. If you can push that ceiling in any way, that’s important because you’re overcoming. You’re getting better. You’re improving yourself. You’re not regressing.

But the key is that you and I feel discomfort, that we get comfortable feeling uncomfortable, both from outside sources and the pressure we put on ourselves. James chapter one, one final verse in this section. Go on to the last point. James chapter one. And verse two, is this how we view trials? When we put trials on ourselves, is this how we view them? “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various temptations, knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience, but let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.”

The more we go through trials in life, the more we get used to feeling uncomfortable in life, and the more that we have a good outlook on those trials, that we actually have joy when they come, the more character you and I are going to be building. Which leads to the final point. Gradually escalate. Gradually escalate. If you have decided that I want to take my ceiling from twelve foot to twelve foot one inch, you have decided to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. That’s good. But brethren, here’s the point. At a point, at some point, you will get used to and it will feel natural to have your ceiling at twelve foot one inch. Is that enough? Is it enough to say, “I have pushed my limits, now I’m just going to remain at twelve-foot one inch?”

Once we start feeling comfortable with pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone, we can fall back into feeling comfortable again. So what do we do then? Push beyond that. Take the next step. That’s why this last point is “gradually escalate.” Do more and then do a little bit more. And then when that becomes easy, do a little bit more than that. Proverbs chapter nine. Proverbs nine and verse eight. “Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate you.” Okay, I mean, people who are scoffers, people who scoff at everything that you say. If you come to them with wisdom, you come to them with correction, they’ll look at you, and they’ll scoff, and they won’t learn anything. In fact, it’ll probably turn on you, other verses say.

So reproving a scorner will not end well, “But rebuke a wise man, and he’ll love you.” What separates somebody who’s a scoffer, a scorner, versus a wise person? Scoffers don’t want to change. They want to stay the same. They want to stay at twelve feet. If not, maybe even better, let’s just lower it. Let’s take that ceiling down to ten feet, maybe even eight feet. Scoffers don’t want to learn anything. They don’t want to go outside of their comfort zones. Wise people do.

Verse nine. “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser. Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.” The difference is when you’re wise, and you know that suffering kicks the learning mechanism into gear, if I could use that term again. If you know that and you know that you want to push yourself outside your comfort zone, you’ll want to constantly keep increasing and becoming more and more and more learned. Wise. Wise people don’t just hear instruction and reproof. They want it over and over and over again so that they can constantly increase in learning. They know that their learning will be done when either the kingdom comes or the grave occurs. They enter the grave.

First Thessalonians chapter three. First Thessalonians three. Read verse eleven. “Now God Himself and our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you, and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one to another and toward all men even as we do toward you.” Increasing is the way of a Christian. We’re supposed to constantly grow. Whatever, even in the areas that we’ve examined ourselves and said, “You know what? I’m doing pretty well in that area.” Maybe there’s a way that we could do even better.

Let’s say it’s not a hard thing for you to, you know, have brotherly love. You just naturally are an affectionate person. You think about other people all the time. You’re constantly putting yourself out there. Just because you naturally might have more brotherly love than other people, that doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to stop where you are. You can still push your ceiling in that area, too.

Where can we constantly do more? How can we stretch ourselves and increase? Verse thirteen, “To the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.” Chapter four, “Furthermore, then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more.” We’re supposed to abound more and more in life. Constantly growing. Never being satisfied with where we are. Yes, we’re supposed to be content in all things, whether we’re going through trials or prosperity, but at the same time, we’re supposed to constantly be trying to grow.

Growth means we don’t just endure pressure or discomfort once or twice and then stop. We must do it repeatedly. You remember where it said daily? We must suffer daily. Every day. Now think. Think about physical muscles. We all have them. Men have larger muscles than women. Don’t tell that to society today. They won’t agree with you. But muscles will grow when you exercise them. Eddie Hall, let’s just look at him with his deadlift. He didn’t get to the point where he was by just all of a sudden having that massive strength. He worked toward it.

At a point, four hundred and sixty-five kilograms felt like it was doable for him. You could say easy. Wouldn’t be easy to any of us. But the more that he worked his muscle, the stronger he got, and he then had to raise the ceiling again. He kept pushing. He kept going further. That’s the principle that you and I have to apply in our Christian lives. We have to do the same thing. We have to constantly be pushing our boundaries. Because eventually, if you’re used to doing a thirty-pound weight, that thirty-pound weight won’t feel too hard. You got to jump up to thirty-five. You got to jump up to forty pounds.

Eventually, forty pounds won’t feel too hard. Then you can jump up to forty-five or fifty. When before, thinking about a forty-five or fifty-pound weight is just not possible. “I can’t do it.” You can if you work yourself toward it. Step by step. Constantly and gradually escalating. Let’s turn over to Luke chapter nineteen. The parable of the pounds. Of course, this has application prophetically, but let’s consider the principles in it. How they apply to us, too. Luke nineteen and verse twelve. “He said therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. And he called his ten servants and delivered them ten pounds, said to them, ‘Occupy till I come.’”

What do they do with those pounds? “But his citizens hated him and sent a message after them saying, ‘We will not have this man reign over us.’ And it came to pass that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, that he commanded these servants to be called unto him to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.”

What did you do with that pound? What did they do? How did they handle it? Did they take the pound and push through limits, push through the ceiling, go above and beyond, finding every way possible to grow that pound? Or did they keep it, sit on the couch, live cushy lives, try and just get along with society, and not do anything with it? We all know what happens. We all know the outcome of those who did grow their pound and those who didn’t. Some got ten, some grew it tenfold, so they got ten cities, some grew it fivefold, they got five cities. And the last one, he decided he’s not going to do anything with it, and he lost out.

So, what’s the lesson here? And how does it apply to gradually escalating? Well, our goal in life shouldn’t necessarily be, if we could use the pounds parable as an example, our goal in life shouldn’t be right off the bat, “I’m going to become a ten-pound person. I weigh a lot more than ten pounds, but I’m going to become a one-pound person, a two-pound person. I’m going to take the one pound that I have, I’m not going to strive for ten off the bat, I’m going to strive for two.”

Once you’ve gotten used to stretching yourself beyond your reasonable limits and two pounds is now easy, “I’m going to strive for five, I’m going to strive for three or four.” You don’t become somebody who is a ten-pound person to receive ten cities by just jumping up and all of a sudden receiving ten pounds. Because they worked toward it, they escalated, they grew themselves, they pushed themselves beyond limits.

Climbing a ladder, if you will, it’s like that. It’s not like jumping up onto a building, you have to climb up the ladder. Incrementally, we must stretch our ceiling, and it will become easy. It’s like stretching in real life. You know, when you have a tight hamstring, you can’t just all of a sudden become very flexible, you might tear something. You can stretch it and then stretch it a little bit further, and then when you become a little bit more flexible, you stretch it even further. That’s how life works, that’s how everything works that way.

And the same is true with our character. Christians should daily push themselves outside of our comfort zones. Find little ways to do more, to give more of our time to others, for others, or for God’s work. How do we spend our time? What do we do with our time? These are practical things that you and I can effectively change if we push outside of our comfort zones. We can use our time in any way that we want.

How do we use it? Do we decide, “Right now, I’m going to actually use this time not for something that’s not profitable, I am going to use this time in a profitable way. I’m going to study. I’m going to pray. I’m going to go out and serve. I’m going to go help somebody. I’m going to pick up the phone and call one of the brethren. I’m going to think about ways that I can help God’s work.” What do we do with our time? Find little ways to sacrifice and instead spend money, we’ve talked about this earlier, but spend that money to help get one of God’s youth to their camp or something.

Think about all of the ways that we can fundraise, that we can build up the work of God. Doesn’t matter how much time is left. We have today to work, and God sees your attitude. That’s what’s most important. What is your attitude? If our attitude is, “I’m going to sacrifice now, today, or tomorrow so that I can benefit God’s work in some way,” do I do it or do I miss out on that opportunity?

Find little ways to improve all manner of areas in your life. Let’s imagine that we’re not very clean, naturally, or organized. If we’re not clean or organized, we know that we might be falling short in that area. It might be something that we saw in the pre-Passover examination. What are we doing to effectively change? Something as simple as before bed, do I spend five or ten minutes extra before going to bed? Instead of sitting there on the couch, do I go get up and I start cleaning a little bit? Five or ten minutes, that’s all it would take. And if you do that every single day, think about how much cleaner your house could be. Think about how much more organized you would be. You’d wake up, and you’d actually feel good rather than waking up into a mess.

How can you change areas where you might be weak in your marriage or weak with your children? What can we do? What little things can we do that effectively move the needle and push ourselves out of our comfort zones? If we’re not good at handling our finances, what do we do to change that? There’s sermons, there’s booklets, there’s all kinds of ways that we can go online on rcg.org and find ways to help us change. I guarantee you “The Greatest Questions. Plain Answers.” is the slogan.

Type into the search bar anything that you want to learn about. “How do I do better at my finances?” There’s pillar articles, everything... There’s sermons. Whatever you’re looking for, brethren, there are answers to it. If you aren’t managing your health properly, there are ways that you can do better to change what you’re eating, to change your diet, to change your exercise, and so forth.

So brethren, we’re not trying... You and I are not trying to become the next Roger Bannister. We’re not trying to do that. We’re trying to become something far greater than that. Our goal is not to become something as small as breaking the four-minute mile, lifting five hundred kilograms off the floor. That’s nothing compared to what you and I can do if we put our minds to it.

Remember that we have to start by asking for God’s help and leaning on Him and Him alone to give us the strength, the will, and the ability to change and push ourselves. And just like that muscle that we talked about that gets used to lifting certain weight, when we make a habit of pushing ourselves in little ways, we’ll be able to find we can do more and more and more and more. So I’ll close with this. Let’s get out there and get uncomfortable.