Welcome Discomfort

We love talking about growth until growth starts costing us something. Everybody wants to become stronger, wiser, more disciplined, more successful, and more faithful, but we don't always want the discomfort that comes with becoming any of those things. Athletics makes that contradiction pretty easy to understand because no serious athlete expects to improve while staying completely comfortable. You add weight, increase intensity, learn a new skill, compete against somebody better, accept correction, and keep working when progress is slower than you wanted. Yet outside of sports, we can spend an incredible amount of energy asking God to change our lives while fighting anything that disrupts what has become comfortable.

Exodus 5:19-21 gives us an important picture of discomfort, but we have to be careful with how we apply it. The Israelite foremen weren't resisting change because they were afraid to leave their comfort zones. They were enslaved people whose already brutal working conditions had just become worse. Pharaoh had stopped providing straw for making bricks while demanding the same production quota, and the foremen were being beaten when their workers couldn't meet it.

Exodus 5:20-21 (ESV) says, “They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; and they said to them, ‘The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.’”

Their fear wasn't imaginary, and their suffering wasn't the biblical equivalent of an athlete complaining because conditioning got harder. Things really had gotten worse.

That's actually what makes this story more meaningful. God had begun the process of delivering Israel, but from where the Israelites were standing, deliverance didn't look much like deliverance yet. Moses had obeyed God, confronted Pharaoh, and instead of everything immediately improving, Pharaoh tightened his grip.

That's a much more honest picture of what faith can sometimes feel like.

We have a tendency to assume that if we're following God, the road should start getting easier. We pray for direction and expect clarity. We make the right decision and expect peace. We step into something we believe God is calling us toward and expect doors to start opening. When resistance shows up instead, we immediately start wondering whether we screwed something up.

Exodus reminds us that difficulty isn't automatic proof that you're headed in the wrong direction.

That doesn't mean every uncomfortable situation is God's will, and Christians need to stop treating suffering as though discomfort itself is spiritually valuable. Sometimes discomfort is telling you that something is unhealthy, unsafe, abusive, or flat out wrong. Wisdom matters. The goal isn't to chase pain or stay in damaging situations because we've convinced ourselves God must be building character.

The point is that obedience isn't always comfortable, and comfort isn't always evidence that we're where God wants us.

That's where the athletic comparison becomes useful. Athletes understand that development requires appropriate stress. If you only train at the level you've already mastered, eventually you stop improving. You need resistance, correction, progressively greater demands, and situations that expose weaknesses you haven't fixed yet. The goal isn't pain for the sake of pain. The goal is growth, and sometimes growth requires doing things that don't feel particularly good while you're doing them.

The same principle can expose some uncomfortable truths about the rest of our lives. We say we want stronger relationships, but we avoid difficult conversations. We say we want to grow spiritually, but we keep giving God whatever time is left after everything else gets our attention. We say we want a different career, stronger leadership, better habits, or deeper purpose, but we're unwilling to risk being uncomfortable long enough to change anything.

At some point, you have to decide whether you actually want growth or whether you just like the idea of it.

Revelation 3:15-16 (ESV) says, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

This passage is frequently used to condemn Christians for lacking passion or motivation, but that's not quite what Jesus is saying. He's addressing the church in Laodicea, which had become spiritually complacent and self sufficient. A few verses later, they describe themselves as rich and needing nothing while Jesus exposes how spiritually poor they actually are. The problem isn't that they need to get more fired up about reaching their potential. They've become comfortable enough that they don't recognize how desperately they need God.

That's a much harder message.

Comfort can become dangerous when it convinces us we don't need to change. We can become comfortable with habits we know aren't good, relationships that need attention, spiritual disciplines we've neglected, attitudes we've justified, or areas of our character we stopped allowing anybody to challenge. Eventually, “that's just who I am” becomes an excuse for refusing to grow.

Christianity doesn't call us to mediocrity, but I also wouldn't say God's plan is for every person to achieve “greatness” in the way our culture usually defines it. Scripture doesn't promise exceptional careers, recognition, influence, wealth, championships, or some enormous destiny waiting to be unlocked if we're courageous enough to leave our comfort zones.

God calls us to faithfulness.

Colossians 3:23 (ESV) says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

That should absolutely push us toward excellence, but excellence and greatness aren't necessarily the same thing. You can faithfully give your best to work nobody applauds, serve people who can't advance your career, remain committed when nobody notices, and obey God in a life the world would never call extraordinary.

For competitive people, that's convicting because we like measurable progress. We want to know we're moving up, getting better, becoming more successful, and accomplishing something people can see. God isn't nearly as impressed with our scoreboard as we are.

Sometimes growth looks impressive, but sometimes growth is apologizing first. Sometimes it's finally having the conversation you've avoided for six months, admitting you need help, changing a habit you've defended for years, accepting correction without immediately explaining yourself, forgiving somebody who doesn't deserve it, or obeying God when absolutely nobody is going to congratulate you for doing it.

Those moments won't make a highlight reel, but they reveal character.

We also need to be careful with Ecclesiastes 3:11. The verse says God “has made everything beautiful in its time,” but that doesn't mean every difficult season is guaranteed to lead us toward the specific better future we've imagined. Ecclesiastes is wrestling with the limits of human understanding and God's sovereignty over time. In fact, the same verse says that although God has placed eternity in the human heart, mankind “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

That's not a promise that eventually we'll understand the plan. It's a reminder that we don't.

Trusting God isn't the same as trusting a coach's training plan because the athlete generally knows the objective. They know why they're lifting, conditioning, recovering, or practicing a particular skill, and they have a reasonable idea of where the program is supposed to take them. Faith doesn't always give us that luxury. Sometimes we don't know why something is happening, how long it will last, or what God intends to do through it.

That's where trust actually gets tested.

Exodus 5 is powerful precisely because Israel couldn't see Exodus 14 yet. They couldn't see the Red Sea opening, Pharaoh's army being defeated, or the freedom that was coming. All they could see in that moment was that they had obeyed Moses, Moses had confronted Pharaoh, and their lives had gotten harder.

We get the advantage of reading the next chapters.

They didn't.

There will be seasons when we don't either, and that's where this story hits hardest for me. We can work hard, pray, obey, make changes, and still find ourselves standing somewhere that doesn't look anything like where we thought God was taking us. Our instinct may be to retreat immediately toward whatever feels familiar because at least familiar feels controllable.

Sometimes retreat is wisdom. Sometimes changing direction is necessary. Sometimes the door really is closed.

But sometimes we're just uncomfortable.

We need enough self awareness and spiritual maturity to know the difference.

Growth doesn't require chasing suffering, and faith doesn't require pretending painful things are good. What faith does require is being willing to obey God when obedience disrupts our comfort, challenges our pride, exposes our weaknesses, or takes us somewhere we can't completely control.

Athletes already understand that you can't demand improvement while refusing every form of resistance. The same truth deserves attention in the rest of our lives. If we keep asking God to grow us while insisting that He leave every comfortable part of our lives untouched, we may not actually be asking for growth.

We may just be asking for better results without having to change.