The morning started off perfect, everybody super excited to serve the Lord at church.  The welcoming crew was ready to go and had their smiles ready to love the people as they walked through the door.  There was nothing but smiles, hugs, and happy people!  They are all friends and have been for years.  They have been going for so long that they had their chairs picked out even before they walk through the door.   Things were good!  And extremely comfortable!  The satisfaction of knowing what to expect each week and knowing who to talk to seemed to be a pattern that was exciting for them.

But there was something last weekend that really challenged me and the others in the church.  I had been praying that God would stir up our comfort zone and allow new people to come in and experience that love of Christ that we get to experience.  The worship band was leading the congregation in glorifying Jesus through song, and all of a sudden a guy walks through the back door and sits on the floor.  Immediately I thought, this must be an answer to prayer because this guys is not our usual Sunday goer.

He was pretty rugged and didn’t sit in the confines of a typical stand between the lines type guy.  At any opportunity he was willing to voice his opinion loudly so that everybody knew that he was there.  The more he would speak up, the more you could see people around the church starting to feel uneasy.  The comfort zone became less and worry about what would happen next caused them to be pulled to the end of their chairs.

As the sermon began, still sitting on the ground, he decided he wanted to take off his shoes and socks.  As I was sitting in the back I felt like God was saying “LOVE HIM, This is your opportunity to break the comfort zone and love somebody the way that I loved you.”  So about half way through he gets up and goes into the kitchen.  Not sure what he was doing so I turned around and noticed he was taking silverware out of the drawers sticking them in his bag.  And then in slow motion, out came a knife from the drawer.  So a couple minutes later I grabbed one of the guys to go back and see what he was doing but warning him that he could have a knife.  So we cautiously went back there and when we got back there, he was sitting there empty handed, standing in his socks in a bucket of ice.

He didn’t really seem crazy, so I asked him “what’s up with the bucket of ice?”  He said he had some Australian mosquito bite disease that made his feet swell up and the only way to make it stop hurting is through numbing them.  Again I heard “Love Him!”  So I just started talking with him about life and how he ended up at church and the more I started talking to him the more I had a love for him like Christ loved me.  I just wanted to help him and somehow get him to keep coming to church.  No matter how different he looked or different he acted, He needed Christ just as much as I need Christ.

We have to be careful not to judge people outside the church because we don’t know their story or what they been through.  I was just excited that this guy was in our church! Another sinner like myself!

Remember that God looks at our heart, not our outward appearance.  So we need to do the same and love people regardless of how uncomfortable we are.  Can you imagine how uncomfortable it was when Jesus was beaten, scourged, and left on a cross, yet he was willing to do it out of love.  If we all stepped up and loved people that way, this world would be changed, but it takes us stepping out of our comfort zone into this messy world.  Be prepared for anything but get excited about the journey!

I hope this has encouraged you to rise up and change this world through the love of Christ.  If so please share with others and together we can all impact this world.