Embracing the Unfamiliar: God's Call to Growth

Sep 14, 2025

Devotional

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“As this world gets more and more violent like that, we have to remember as believers that the Lord has a higher goal than we have. We tend to have a goal of survival, of comfort and ease. That is not God's goal. His goal is to save souls for all of eternity and to draw us into relationship. And that is going to come in very hard ways at times because we are very hard people. We are people who do not easily succumb to the spiritual, do not easily think beyond ourselves.”
“We have to be, in one sense, mindful of having our minds on things above, our hearts set on things above rather than the things of this world because it's very easy to get set on this world. So I ask again, and I want you to answer with it. yourself how are you in your relationship with the lord how are you doing spiritually how are you doing in terms of your decisions because your decisions going forward are going to dictate in many ways how you live how you respond to these things how you feel even day to day if you live in fear or anger or peace even in this midst of these things.”
“Keep in mind that we can get to the place where we let the world get so big that you want to solve and deal with every problem out there and all the enemy wants you to do is get focused on a bunch of things that you can do nothing about so that you neglect the things that god has actually called you to do so love your neighbor love your family love the stranger that you come across love your enemies these are the things god commands us and these are the things god gives us opportunities in various ways so don't don't be surprised at the fiery trials don't be surprised that the anger and violence in this world this is what this world is and this is why christ came to save us from it.”
“You will be laboring either for yourself or for the Lord. You will be laboring for your own comforts, your own desires, your own pride, your own goals, or you'll be laboring for the Lord. But as the notes go on, sadly, we usually choose that fantasy of the immediate sense of familiarity, comfort, laziness, and procrastination, even knowing it results in the same frustrations.”
“I want us to recognize where we procrastinate, where we, we tend towards the familiar, where we are lazy in our relationships with each other and our relationship with the Lord because it shows up there a lot. Cause again, we can, we can quantify how lazy you are with your dishes by how full the sink is. True. How many of you would kind of go, yes. You know, like, you know, your sink gets full, you know, it's time to do the dishes. So it goes, well, I've may have been a little lazy lately. We can kind of quantify that. If you procrastinate too long, it's, it's when the dishes are no longer dishes, but they are, are, are, uh, Petri dishes. You know, you've procrastinated too long when things are growing up and off the dish.”
“We become familiar and we lend ourselves to that because anything outside that familiarity, even if what we're familiar with is unpleasant, anything that's not familiar, we find distressing. Think of it this way. Now I know some of you would, you know, you got all kinds of reasons and I get it, but if you're used to being in conflict with your spouse or your family and one day one family member or your spouse decides to be nice, this does not comfort you. This makes you what? Uncomfortable, suspicious, going what's going on, right? Because we immediately go, this is not what I'm used to.”
“We tend to not want to do the work to get to fit, but we'd want that. But see, even in that, it's, oh, well, this is a new routine. Oh, that's hard. That's difficult. It's not fun. Something comes up and it's just easy to go right back to the life you had. And we do this in our relationships. I'm not going to complain anymore. I'm not going to look at pornography anymore. You know what? I'm not going to lie anymore. You know what? I'm going to be kind now. I'm not going to be mean anymore. I'm not going to... And we do all these things as if that alone will make it happen. I've just decided I'm not going to do that. And then we...slip right back into it and we become a dog returning to the vomit we know where it ends up.”
“What's blessed, the work of the lord is a good thing it produces good things for us but it's unfamiliar it feels strange to us and it actually distresses us when we start to do it.”
“More often than not how many of us live our lives trying to distract ourselves from the very thing we really need to do the very thing and i'm not talking about the tasks the chores i'm talking about the relationship issues within our lives within our marriage within the church within our jobs whatever place but we often want to get distracted from those things rather than come to the realization i would dare say and guys don't take this wrong but i would dare say even the tragedies of the news often are are loved because it distracts us from our own tragedies we'd rather live off of someone else's tragedy and go well at least mine's not as bad as that and we we delve into that rather than taking care of the things we need to it happens.”
“How many of us go deliberately sinning and then we wonder why we're always fearful why we're always tense why we're always living in suspense why we are terrified of the very next tragedy that might come and maybe this time will come for me why do we think that way because a lot of us as christians have knowledge of what we should be doing but we've decided i'm not doing it and all that you have left at that point is a fearful expectation.”
“The scary part is guys, this is so many believers. When we have the salvation of Christ, we have an advocate with the father. We have forgiveness of sins. We are free and there is no condemnation. And yet this is how we experience life. It is. It shouldn't be right. That's what Judith is saying. It shouldn't be that way. In the morning, you will say, if only it were evening in the evening, if only it were morning, how many of you are always looking for the next thing to just distract from the now? Because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.”
“If we're living for this life, you're going to miss out on what God does. But we still choose it because it feels like we get some kind of control over it. It feels familiar. It feels like it's hopeless to try. It feels like it's better just to give up and live in the despair and the anger and the fear. It feels more familiar because that's what we're used to. But God says there's a different way.”
“No discipline seems pleasant at the time. Duh, right? When you're being disciplined, it's not pleasant. But I love that God put this in there because now I can go, oh, okay. So I'm not supposed to be like, this is a pleasure. Every time I face discipline, I just love it. No, it's not pleasant. Right? It's not pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who've been trained by it.”
“If you're looking for the perfect atmosphere for yourself, you're never going to find it in any church. And I'll even say this church. You're not going to find it here, because you're going to find other sinners here. I'm sorry, Judith, you're a sinner, right? You're going to find other sinners, and they're going to rub you wrong, and they're going to hurt you, and they're going to fail you, they're going to disappoint you. But that is why God has his fellowship. It's not just so that we feel good about each other, but so that we get to practice with each other of how to deal with each other in a loving way.”
“We look for friendships because it's easy we like the same things we enjoy the same events we want to do all this instead of going no I have the same Lord that's enough and whether I really like the things you like or not we're gonna get to know each other and serve each other and love each other and let me tell you one of my closest friends is defined by the fact that we have nothing but the Lord in common literally.”
“One of the things that I note with friendship is one thing is we're committed to the Lord and we're committed to each other. It's the commitment. And how do you get there? Well, you have to work at it. And this is where he says it's not pleasant at a time, but later on it produces something.”
“You start reading the scriptures. It'll be unfamiliar. It'll be weird. I mean, you start reading the scriptures and the words that are used, the vernacular. I don't care if you read, like, the New Living Translation. You will read things where you're like, that is not normal, the way they're describing things. All right, because it's not written with a Western mindset. It's written with an Eastern mindset, and it's very different than ours. And so you would read it and go, this is weird. It's unfamiliar. Don't quit. Work at it.”
“Praying. That is weird. How many of you have ever felt like praying is weird? You know, it's one thing to throw up like the, thank you for this food, amen, kind of prayer. Doing that in public is a little awkward. But doing that for real, like, when you sit down or kneel down or something, and you commit yourself to prayer, it's almost like, what am I doing? I'm just talking. Do I talk with this tone? Or do I talk with this tone? Or do I talk with this tone? Or do I talk with this tone? And you start doing, and you're not even talking. You're just thinking in your head, but you have to have a tone in your head to talk to God. And have you ever noticed that with yourself? Listen to yourself pray sometime in your head. Sometimes you'll be like, this is how I talk. And then in my head, it's like, dear God, you know, and it's like, is that me? Is that me? Is that how I sound? Is that, you know, like, we're weird. And it's like, I don't, but it's unfamiliar. So we quit. It's like, I'm not a prayer warrior. That's for better prayers than me. No, you're just quitting because it's unfamiliar.”
“If we're going to serve the Lord, you can't live your life trying not to mess up. You live your life trying not to mess up, you are going to mess up. Not because it's just inevitable, it's just you're going to mess up, period. But if you're so focused on not messing up, saying just the right thing at just the right time, in just the right way, so that people think you're great, and that so people think you have wisdom, and people, you're going to constantly be stepping on your own toes, eating the foot of your, in your mouth, you know, I mean, like, you're just, it's going to, like this, you're going to do that. You're going to just constantly mess up. But if you just go, you know what, it doesn't matter if I mess up or not, it doesn't matter if I fail or not, I'm going to seek to do God's will, I'm going to seek to do good, I'm going to excel in the work of the Lord.”
“If you don't try, if you don't make the excelling effort, it's always going to end up in a fearful expectation. Instead of going, you know, I'm just going to get better at what I know what I'm doing right now. I know how to read the Bible. I'll just read that better. I'll start to understand more. Or I pray pretty well. I'm going to pray more. You know what? I'm actually pretty good at helping with kids. I'm going to do that better. You know, I'm good at just sitting and listening. Then sit and listen. But you keep excelling. And what does he say? Instead of fearful expectation, what happens? Because you know, look, 1 Corinthians 15, 58, always excelling in the Lord's work because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. In other words, it comes to something.”
“We've got to stop being afraid of excelling in the Lord and stop getting our heads on the things of this world. Rather, start to serve the Lord and do good as best you can. Even if it's unfamiliar, even if you're really bad at it, even if it's something that's hard because it feels weird because you need that cigarette in your hand or you need that cup of coffee or you're so used to conflict that you don't know what to do otherwise. You're so used to complaining that you don't know what to say. Try to say something thankful then. Don't just stop sinning. Replace it with something as he says in Ephesians 4. Put off the old man. Be made new in the attitude of your mind and put on the new man which is created to be like Christ Jesus.”
“Whatever you're convicted on right now and going, boy, I need to do something about it. Don't give up because it feels weird when you start trying. Fight through it and go, there's hope on the other side of this. It's not in vain. I will continue to excel in this because if I do.”
“We think we know so much and we stay in the familiar and we come back to the same result. And what does Einstein say about doing the same thing, expecting a different result? Insanity, right? Whoever said it, Einstein. But let me tell you, the Bible puts it this way. You're like a pig returning to the mud. You're like a dog returning to vomit. And that's a weird picture none of us want to live out, is it?”
“You're going to be working hard either way. Why choose the hard that results in destruction and death instead of choosing the hard that has hope for something better coming? This is what we're called to. This is the hope God has called us to. This is the promise he has before us. Don't go back to the mud. Don't eat your own vomit. Change. Accept the unfamiliar and the hard, knowing that it's going to be good. Someday it's going to be good. Oh, it may take a while. But someday.”
“As this world gets more and more violent like that, we have to remember as believers that the Lord has a higher goal than we have. We tend to have a goal of survival, of comfort and ease. That is not God's goal. His goal is to save souls for all of eternity and to draw us into relationship. And that is going to come in very hard ways at times because we are very hard people. We are people who do not easily succumb to the spiritual, do not easily think beyond ourselves.”
“We have to be, in one sense, mindful of having our minds on things above, our hearts set on things above rather than the things of this world because it's very easy to get set on this world. So I ask again, and I want you to answer with it. yourself how are you in your relationship with the lord how are you doing spiritually how are you doing in terms of your decisions because your decisions going forward are going to dictate in many ways how you live how you respond to these things how you feel even day to day if you live in fear or anger or peace even in this midst of these things.”
“Keep in mind that we can get to the place where we let the world get so big that you want to solve and deal with every problem out there and all the enemy wants you to do is get focused on a bunch of things that you can do nothing about so that you neglect the things that god has actually called you to do so love your neighbor love your family love the stranger that you come across love your enemies these are the things god commands us and these are the things god gives us opportunities in various ways so don't don't be surprised at the fiery trials don't be surprised that the anger and violence in this world this is what this world is and this is why christ came to save us from it.”
“You will be laboring either for yourself or for the Lord. You will be laboring for your own comforts, your own desires, your own pride, your own goals, or you'll be laboring for the Lord. But as the notes go on, sadly, we usually choose that fantasy of the immediate sense of familiarity, comfort, laziness, and procrastination, even knowing it results in the same frustrations.”
“I want us to recognize where we procrastinate, where we, we tend towards the familiar, where we are lazy in our relationships with each other and our relationship with the Lord because it shows up there a lot. Cause again, we can, we can quantify how lazy you are with your dishes by how full the sink is. True. How many of you would kind of go, yes. You know, like, you know, your sink gets full, you know, it's time to do the dishes. So it goes, well, I've may have been a little lazy lately. We can kind of quantify that. If you procrastinate too long, it's, it's when the dishes are no longer dishes, but they are, are, are, uh, Petri dishes. You know, you've procrastinated too long when things are growing up and off the dish.”
“We become familiar and we lend ourselves to that because anything outside that familiarity, even if what we're familiar with is unpleasant, anything that's not familiar, we find distressing. Think of it this way. Now I know some of you would, you know, you got all kinds of reasons and I get it, but if you're used to being in conflict with your spouse or your family and one day one family member or your spouse decides to be nice, this does not comfort you. This makes you what? Uncomfortable, suspicious, going what's going on, right? Because we immediately go, this is not what I'm used to.”
“We tend to not want to do the work to get to fit, but we'd want that. But see, even in that, it's, oh, well, this is a new routine. Oh, that's hard. That's difficult. It's not fun. Something comes up and it's just easy to go right back to the life you had. And we do this in our relationships. I'm not going to complain anymore. I'm not going to look at pornography anymore. You know what? I'm not going to lie anymore. You know what? I'm going to be kind now. I'm not going to be mean anymore. I'm not going to... And we do all these things as if that alone will make it happen. I've just decided I'm not going to do that. And then we...slip right back into it and we become a dog returning to the vomit we know where it ends up.”
“What's blessed, the work of the lord is a good thing it produces good things for us but it's unfamiliar it feels strange to us and it actually distresses us when we start to do it.”
“More often than not how many of us live our lives trying to distract ourselves from the very thing we really need to do the very thing and i'm not talking about the tasks the chores i'm talking about the relationship issues within our lives within our marriage within the church within our jobs whatever place but we often want to get distracted from those things rather than come to the realization i would dare say and guys don't take this wrong but i would dare say even the tragedies of the news often are are loved because it distracts us from our own tragedies we'd rather live off of someone else's tragedy and go well at least mine's not as bad as that and we we delve into that rather than taking care of the things we need to it happens.”
“If you deliberately go on sinning, even when you have knowledge of truth, that is, you know, you're not doing what's right. You know, your attitude's wrong. You know, your actions are, are left unchecked, or you know, there's things that you're supposed to be doing. You know, you know, you know, because then all that's going to remain is something eating and gnawing at you. And this is how we live our life. Probably 90 % of the time.”
“The scary part is guys, this is so many believers. When we have the salvation of Christ, we have an advocate with the father. We have forgiveness of sins. We are free and there is no condemnation. And yet this is how we experience life. It is. It shouldn't be right. That's what Judith is saying. It shouldn't be that way. In the morning, you will say, if only it were evening in the evening, if only it were morning, how many of you are always looking for the next thing to just distract from the now? Because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.”
“If we're living for this life, you're going to miss out on what God does. But we still choose it because it feels like we get some kind of control over it. It feels familiar. It feels like it's hopeless to try. It feels like it's better just to give up and live in the despair and the anger and the fear. It feels more familiar because that's what we're used to. But God says there's a different way.”
“No discipline seems pleasant at the time. Duh, right? When you're being disciplined, it's not pleasant. But I love that God put this in there because now I can go, oh, okay. So I'm not supposed to be like, this is a pleasure. Every time I face discipline, I just love it. No, it's not pleasant. Right? It's not pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who've been trained by it.”
“If you're looking for the perfect atmosphere for yourself, you're never going to find it in any church. And I'll even say this church. You're not going to find it here, because you're going to find other sinners here. I'm sorry, Judith, you're a sinner, right? You're going to find other sinners, and they're going to rub you wrong, and they're going to hurt you, and they're going to fail you, they're going to disappoint you. But that is why God has his fellowship. It's not just so that we feel good about each other, but so that we get to practice with each other of how to deal with each other in a loving way.”
“We look for friendships because it's easy we like the same things we enjoy the same events we want to do all this instead of going no I have the same Lord that's enough and whether I really like the things you like or not we're gonna get to know each other and serve each other and love each other and let me tell you one of my closest friends is defined by the fact that we have nothing but the Lord in common literally.”
“One of the things that I note with friendship is one thing is we're committed to the Lord and we're committed to each other. It's the commitment. And how do you get there? Well, you have to work at it. And this is where he says it's not pleasant at a time, but later on it produces something.”
“You start reading the scriptures. It'll be unfamiliar. It'll be weird. I mean, you start reading the scriptures and the words that are used, the vernacular. I don't care if you read, like, the New Living Translation. You will read things where you're like, that is not normal, the way they're describing things. All right, because it's not written with a Western mindset. It's written with an Eastern mindset, and it's very different than ours. And so you would read it and go, this is weird. It's unfamiliar. Don't quit. Work at it.”
“Praying. That is weird. How many of you have ever felt like praying is weird? You know, it's one thing to throw up like the, thank you for this food, amen, kind of prayer. Doing that in public is a little awkward. But doing that for real, like, when you sit down or kneel down or something, and you commit yourself to prayer, it's almost like, what am I doing? I'm just talking. Do I talk with this tone? Or do I talk with this tone? Or do I talk with this tone? Or do I talk with this tone? And you start doing, and you're not even talking. You're just thinking in your head, but you have to have a tone in your head to talk to God. And have you ever noticed that with yourself? Listen to yourself pray sometime in your head. Sometimes you'll be like, this is how I talk. And then in my head, it's like, dear God, you know, and it's like, is that me? Is that me? Is that how I sound? Is that, you know, like, we're weird. And it's like, I don't, but it's unfamiliar. So we quit. It's like, I'm not a prayer warrior. That's for better prayers than me. No, you're just quitting because it's unfamiliar.”
“If you're so focused on not messing up, saying just the right thing at just the right time, in just the right way, so that people think you're great, and that so people think you have wisdom, and people, you're going to constantly be stepping on your own toes, eating the foot of your, in your mouth, you know, I mean, like, you're just, it's going to, like this, you're going to do that. You're going to just constantly mess up. But if you just go, you know what, it doesn't matter if I mess up or not, it doesn't matter if I fail or not, I'm going to seek to do God's will, I'm going to seek to do good, I'm going to excel in the work of the Lord.”
“We've got to stop being afraid of excelling in the Lord and stop getting our heads on the things of this world. Rather, start to serve the Lord and do good as best you can. Even if it's unfamiliar, even if you're really bad at it, even if it's something that's hard because it feels weird because you need that cigarette in your hand or you need that cup of coffee or you're so used to conflict that you don't know what to do otherwise. You're so used to complaining that you don't know what to say. Try to say something thankful then. Don't just stop sinning. Replace it with something as he says in Ephesians 4. Put off the old man. Be made new in the attitude of your mind and put on the new man which is created to be like Christ Jesus.”
“Whatever you're convicted on right now and going, boy, I need to do something about it. Don't give up because it feels weird when you start trying. Fight through it and go, there's hope on the other side of this. It's not in vain. I will continue to excel in this because if I do.”
“What I'm saying is whatever you're convicted in, be it easy or be it hard, be it feel like, oh, but I'm losing control or, ah, I'll look stupid or, ah, this could go bad. If you know what the good you're supposed to do and you don't do it, you're deliberately sinning and it'll just cause more fear. But when you start doing the good you ought to, even though it starts out feeling scary, you know what starts happening after you keep doing it? You start going, God knows what he's talking about. This is pretty good. That ended up way better.”
“We think we know so much and we stay in the familiar and we come back to the same result. And what does Einstein say about doing the same thing, expecting a different result? Insanity, right? Whoever said it, Einstein. But let me tell you, the Bible puts it this way. You're like a pig returning to the mud. You're like a dog returning to vomit. And that's a weird picture none of us want to live out, is it?”
“You're going to be working hard either way. Why choose the hard that results in destruction and death instead of choosing the hard that has hope for something better coming? This is what we're called to. This is the hope God has called us to. This is the promise he has before us. Don't go back to the mud. Don't eat your own vomit. Change. Accept the unfamiliar and the hard, knowing that it's going to be good. Someday it's going to be good. Oh, it may take a while. But someday.”
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