Breaking Comfort Zones

Sunday, January 16th, 2022

All I know, is that if I'm willing to surrender the comforts that I have in my life to do what He's telling me to do, He'll show up.
Eddie Tait

TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, my name is Eddie Tate. I’m the Associate Leader at Bethel, Austin, and I’d like to welcome you to God Today. You know, I was just having a conversation with some friends and we were talking about kind of the radical side of God in our lives, and just the things that we’re willing to do for God. And, you know, some people are willing to be bold enough to tell someone that He’s real. Some people are willing to do a little bit crazier things than that. And then you’ve got the unique people like myself who are willing to do the extremes of God. 

You know, I don’t necessarily understand why God has designed me and made me the way that I am, but I’m thankful that He loves me and He’s done it. You know, one of the funniest stories I have is there was a time we were at a conference and there was a person that was praying. They had lined up people to just receive prayer and somebody was praying. And God, actually, I could just tell this sense He’s like, “Tackle him.”  And I thought, “I can’t tackle him. That just seems absurd.” And I’ve read the stories of Smith Wigglesworth and crazy revivalists that have done physical things that would scare most people. And I remember reading them going, that would be awesome. Please don’t ever do that with me. But I think God designed me differently. So I looked at my leader, Joaquin, who I was with and I just said, “Hey, God’s telling me to do this.” And he said, “Go,”  ‘cause I think there was something in my eyes. And there’s something about the way I’m designed that he looked at me and said, “If I’m thinking and feeling that, it’s outside of my comfort zone, but God would probably want to honor that.”  So I just turned and ran full speed, jumped through the air and tackled this person that was praying over these lines of people. Funny thing was, is that about 40 people went out in the Spirit, a whole line of people just fell out in the Spirit. 

Now, do I understand why it happened like that? No. Do I know why He asked me to do that? No. Does it make sense in my mind? Why I would tackle somebody? No. All I know is that if I’m willing to surrender the comforts that I have in my life to do what He’s telling me to do, He’ll show up. See for me, I’m pretty radical. I need that radical thing that God’s going to put out there for me to actually feel like I’m breaking my comfort zone. You know, there’ve been multiple times. I tackled a friend in the middle of a service, looked over at him and he knew it was coming and he just closed his eyes, and I hit him. He hit a pillar, fell down. When he stood up, his knee was completely healed that he’d hurt playing basketball. I tackled another person in a prayer meeting, hit him, knocked him about eight feet. He got up, said he didn’t even feel a thing. He never even felt the impact of my tackle. But then when he got home, he texted me later and said at that exact moment, his entire family actually encountered God. They were just in the house and the presence of God hit their home. 

Why does that happen? I don’t know. I have no idea. I’m, I’m nervously excited about what God’s going to ask me to do next. But it’s not about that as much as it is about breaking the comfort zones, breaking the barriers of what you are willing to do, surrendered to God, to see Him get the glory. Because I don’t get glory from tackling someone. It makes no sense. But when I do, He shows up. Now is it something I just decide to do? No, it’s something that I’m led to do. I know when it’s God, and it’s being attuned to what He’s saying, allowing Him to say, “Hey, I want you to take this step outside of your norm, outside of the things that make you comfortable. I want you to do this, and I’ll be there when you do.” 

So Father, I just thank you for that. I thank you that you’ve done this in my life, but I thank you that every one of us has a place of comfort that we need to be broken out of. God, I thank you that He’s whispering and speaking loudly sometimes, and God, I pray that we would tune our ears and our hearts to hear what He is asking of us so that we can break past the comfort zones to see Him manifest, to see Him glorified in every way. I bless you with that, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.