It has been years since a TCE™ Level One Course has been held in the county~ and what a blessing it was! There were only three students: Linda McCarthy, Bill Engelhardt, and Mary Engelhardt. Instructors came from the following counties: Delaware, Philadelphia, and Greater Lehigh to help me instruct the course. Mary and Bill traveled from Lebanon County even in a snowstorm in order to complete the thirty-three hour course on schedule. Mary left me a note which reads, “I’ve been completely stretched! Thank you so much for doing this course for us. It has made a lifelong difference.”
When was the last time you were stretched? You know what I mean, going outside your comfort zone and doing something radically different because you know God wants you to? I am sure Esther wasn’t comfortable going before the king to plead for her people. And Daniel, who when he was only a teenager, “resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine he drank, Therefore he asked the chief of eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.” (Daniel 1:8) Isaiah probably didn’t feel like he was in his comfort zone when he was told by God, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your waist and take off your sandals from your feet,’ and he did so, walking naked and barefoot.” Isaiah 20:2
Here’s the thing with comfort zones, God likes to make them bigger, because He is a big God and He can do anything. What helps me see God’s bigness is when I see how small I am. When He has me step out of my comfort zone~ boy do I feel small!
Are you in need of a good stretch? Then ask the Lord what He would have you to do. Maybe it will be to serve as a team leader at Good News Day Camp, or to begin hosting and teaching a Good News Club® in your neighborhood, (children do have a way of taking us out of our comfort zones), or participating in a two hour prayer and worship time to seek God on behalf of the county. It could be that God wants you to do something different, something that has nothing to do with CEF (I can’t imagine that, but He is God and I am not).
Pray about it~ and then go. You, too will see how big our God is as He stretches you outside your comfort zone.
Shelley Hikes
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