Hi, I am Robby Dawkins, and I have Robby Dawkins Ministry and I want to welcome you to God Today. This is an exciting time where we have so many opportunities around us and so many ways that we can communicate and demonstrate the love of God. One of the things that immediately we start to think and the process is, “How can I do this where I feel at ease with it?” or “I want to do it when I feel easy…” Well, let me tell you something. Shake that off. There is never a time where it is going to feel easy or it is going to feel comfortable until you push back that initial opposition that the enemy comes at you with intimidation.
An intimidation tactic of the enemy is always to say, “This is going to make somebody feel uncomfortable, this is going to make somebody feel uneasy.” What he is really trying to tempt us with is us staying in our comfort zone. And, rather than protecting someone else from being uncomfortable, he is trying to get us to back away and to hide in our comfort zones. It is a big mistake. All of a sudden, we will see one of the greatest encounters that can bring people to Christ. We will see that missed if we move to the place of being comfortable.
I was recently, in the past 6 months, in Russia. I was preaching and Vladimir Putin, the president there, had just passed a law that you cannot share the gospel outside of a church in Russia. Now, this church had gone to a great extent, gathered all the pastors in the city, it was in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in the northern part of Russia. And they had just passed this law and one of the pastors came to me right beforehand and he goes, “We’ve got 2,000 people coming, we are excited about this event, we’ve been training all week long, but this was primarily focused as a Gospel presentation.”
Well, we couldn’t share the Gospel outside of the church because this is not a church, it is in a civic center that seats 2,000 people. And so, we were strategizing trying to figure out what to do, how to do this, and I said, “Guys, just trust the Lord, let me do this.” And so, I got up at the end of the message, preached this message that was a pull and a call to come into relationship with Jesus Christ. And at the end of it, I just stopped, and iI said, “Now, I know there are a lot of people here, and you are feeling that pull of God. You are feeling God calling you to come and go all-in for Him.” And I said, “If you want to do that, I want you to stand to your feet and come to the front right now.”
The pastors started getting squirmy, and talking to each other, trying to figure out what to do. My friend, Mikhail, ended up coming around backstage, and I thought, “I have about 45 seconds before they take the stage away from me, because they are afraid. They told me right before there were two government spies there in the audience that night.” Well, what ended up happening, by the grace of God, is that by the time Mikhail came out, I said, “Come to the front as quickly as possible.” He looked down and his eyes got really big, and he turned back and he pointed to this woman and he said, “She is one of the spies.”
Now, the amazing thing that happened was one of the spies had come forward to accept Christ. Now, the whole meeting ended up – Mikhail started saying, Anybody else? Anybody else, come now, come now!” Rather than moving to a safe place, he decided, “Wait a minute. This is God. Let’s push out into this. Let’s challenge what is opposing God and move into that place of radical abandonment and radical risk. Because that is the place where God is working.” God is not working in the comfortable areas. He is not working in the safe areas. He is working in the extreme areas. We had that night, 100s of people that came forward to give their lives to Christ. For sure one of the spies, even possibly the other spy came forward too. But it was never reported. Why? Because we didn’t stay in the comfortable place.
Maybe the comfort zone is you at work. Maybe it’s you being in a place with family, that you are worried about what they think of you or what they are going to feel about you. I want to encourage you. Don’t stay in the comfort zone because that is not where God is at. God is in the risky zone. He is in the place and He is calling out to you, “Come out to me.” This is what He was doing with Peter when He was on the water, and He was walking on the water beckoning to Peter, “Get out of the boat!” It was a massive risk, but you are only going to take a massive risk to see an even greater miracle. It was so good being with you! I am Robby Dawkins and this is God Today.