The Danger of Comfort

This is a word for somebody who has gotten comfortable

in your dysfunction. In fact, I want to take you

to another passage real quick that shows you the devil's strategy.

How many of you would like to know the devil's

strategy for keeping you defeated?

Because Paul.

Writes something in Second Corinthians chapter one that I have

always loved as a counseling scripture. When people are going

through hard things, I will often share this verse with them,

because really the whole passage is good, but two verses

in particular, where it talks about how sometimes when you

go through something in your life, you're not going through

it for you, but there is somebody who will go

through something that will need what you will have after

you get through what you're going through, and you will have.

It to give them. It is the function of comfort.

It is the function of comfort.

Comfort has a specific function. The comfort of Christ comes

into our life not so that we can only be comforted,

but that we can comfort others. If you search the

scripture for comfort, you will find many commands to comfort others,

and you will find many promises that God will comfort you.

But you will never find permission to comfort yourself. What

the devil wants us to do is to learn to

run for comfort and cover.

To places outside of our calling, so that.

He can keep us comfortable in our dysfunction, so that

we will never see our destiny come to pass.

When Paul says it, he says.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord,

Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of

all comfort. Well, see, Pastor Stephen, you said that Jesus

didn't come to comfort us, and there Paul says that

he did. And so I'm going with Paul hang on

for another verse. See if you still want to sit

there and argue with me after I've been all over

in these.

Books all week.

Verse four says, who comforts us in all our dysfunction?

No, See, that's what the devil does.

The devil wants to comfort you in your dysfunction until

you no longer see it as a problem, until it

becomes so normal that you can go to church with

an evil spirit and take it to lunch and take

notes but not take action. But Christ came to confront

your dysfunction.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord.

Jeis Christ, Father Compassion, who comforts us in all our

give me the verse.

All our trouble, all our trouble.

Comfort can become dysfunctional when we get it from.

The wrong place. Some of us have comfort foods. Why

are you looking at me like you like you never

ate the whole bag?

Okay, let me try another route, since you're gonna be

all dietary about this point. Some of us have comfort friends.

Here we go, help me, holy ghosts. I feel demon

shrinking well, I preci this word.

Some of us have.

People in our lives who are good to us, but

they're not good for us.

I don't I don't mean to call.

You out, but could it be possible that your comfort

is keeping you from your calling, That you have put

yourself in a space that seems safe, but you are sabotaging,

silencing the power of God in your life because you

love comfort. Praise be to the God and Father of

our Lord, Jesus Christ, Father of all compassion and God

of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles.

In all our troubles, you mean God will use trouble

to bring me comfort. Yes, and not only that, but

God will disrupt my comfort to confront my dysfunction. So

when I'm going through trouble, let me be a little

slower to ask God to rebuke the devil. Maybe the

trouble is the means of transformation. When God calls you out.

Sometimes it is uncomfortable.

Sometimes. The way I gauge the presence of God when.

I'm preaching is by how uncomfortable people look in their seats.

I didn't do that when I first started preaching. When

I first start preaching, I thought they clapped. I was

doing good.

Now I understand when you squirm.

My favorite is when the Holy Spirit has you pinned

so up against your chair.

And I'm like about to send the medical team to

check your pulse. That's when the presence of God came

when you got most uncomfortable. As long as we associate

Jesus with comfort, we will miss him. Because Jesus comes

to confront, not to condemn. There's a difference. Confrontation has

the intent and the means to change you. Condemnation does

not God soul of the word. He gave a son

not to condemn.

The world, but that the world through him might be saved.

The spirit of Christ is not to condemn, but the

spirit of Christ will confront.

Confront.

And my question today is what have we allowed to

become too comfortable in our presence to occupy space that

belongs to God. That man sat in their synagogue week

after week, day after day, and the demon said nothing

until Jesus came. The evil spirit the dysfunction stayed silent.

But the proof of the presence of.

God is not always comfortable feelings.

Sometimes the proof of.

The presence of God is disruption. Sometimes the presence of

God is that one thing in your life dies so that.

Something else can come alive.

I don't think we recognize him when he comes because

we don't understand what.

He came for. But I'll show you one thing.

The demons knew more about who Jesus was than the

church people did. When Jesus spoke, they said, oh, you

came to get rid of us. Oh this is our eviction. Notice,

Oh this is the promised one. The church people were

still taking notes, and the demons were popping prozac. Because

the demons know the name at which every name must bow,

the name at which every tongue must confess that Jesus.

Christ is Lord.

And if he is Lord, fear has got to go

and if he is Lord, turn.

This back up.

And if he is Lord and has the keys of death,

hell and the grave, there is nothing. I think we

get too comfortable sometimes with our dysfunction. I do.

I think.

The devil doesn't want us to get uncomfortable because then.

We would change.

So he will make it so comfortable for us to

be dysfunctional that we don't seek anything different. I don't

hear a lot of people get into baptism tank and say,

you know, I got a raise, I got married, the

ring was seven carrots, and I went to elevation. I

hear a lot of times where they say something shifted

in my life. I lost something, I went through something,

I faced the consequence of something, and at that point

in my discomfort, God used my trouble to confront my dysfunction.

So can I say something to everybody who's in trouble today.

This is not just a test, This is a confrontation.

This is an.

Opportunity that God wants to use to confront what you

have called normal and to call you into something greater.

I believe the spirit of Jesus Christ is in you.

And if the spirit of Christ is in you, greater

is he that is in you than he that is

in the world. So we're going to take eighteen seconds

and issue the command to every insecurity, to every fear,

to every doubt, to every regret, come out in the

Enamel Jesus.

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