My box? Most times I prefer being alone and quiet, just staring afar, letting my mind run free. All this while being aware that Jesus is beside me, accompanying me in my spiritual strolling and wandering, and you never get lost while doing it with him. That's my comfort zone, my "box" as it were. I don't want to think outside of it.
Photo by Thai Nguyen on Unsplash.
Sometimes, too, I snap out of that and busy myself with things to be done, like doing my blogs, promoting my health and inspirational FB pages, or simply interacting on other pages and groups to improve my algorithm which requires a lot of mental stretches and research. That, too, is my "comfort zone" or my "box." I didn't get out of any box or comfort zone when I switched preferences. I remained in my relaxed zone. It's a big, limitless box.
Think Outside the Box?
Smart Alecks often talk about getting out of the box, or getting out of your comfort zones. You cannot. Because whatever you get out from and get inside of is another box. Your new box. Whatever activity you start doing for a change is still your comfort zone. You became uncomfortable with a previous comfort zone and transferred to a new one. That change of zones is simply a change of comfort zone. What you have now is still a comfort zone.
Whatever your preferences are--good or bad, happy or sad, lackadaisical or enthusiastic, action or inaction, hard work or easy work, stress or relaxation, neutrality or partiality, positive or negative, busyness or "chillaxing," activeness or idleness---they're all done to satisfy something within. For easement or relief. A comfort zone. Whatever your preference is makes you happy and once deprived of it, you suffer. We all have our comfort zones. We all stay in our boxes.
What satisfies becomes a preference.
Even those who like working the hard way, hating easy work and shortcuts, and are not content unless they do excruciating work. Once they start doing that and settle there, it becomes their comfort zone. They say a comfort zone is a station in life where you get stuck there and have no progress, but you just stay there anyway. They urge you to get out and try something that gives you better results. Problem is, who are they to decide what's "no progress," and what's "better results" for you? Progress and better results are often subjective. What's progress and better results for you (or for the majority) may mean the exact opposite for another (or for a few).
De gustibus non disputandum est
The majority doesn't always mean they're right. Often, it just means all the idiots are on the same side. You may have all the progress you think you have and you think I don't, but we're all entitled to our own beliefs and perceptions. In matters of preferences there should be no dispute. Live and let live. Because often, I think all the progress lots of people brag about just stinks. I see them as garbage, and no offense meant. I'm just being honest. I keep it to myself and not urge people to take my views and make it their own. I don't think all my views are right for others. So the best thing here is, mind your own business. Because as far as I'm concerned, we're all just in some stupid box or comfort zones. Don't think yours is better than mine. It isn't.
1 Corinthians 4.5: Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.
Even Jesus said that many take the broad way to destruction because they believe numbers determine correctness. When the idea demonizing comfort zones and thinking in boxes became trending, the majority took that route and condemned anyone who opted to remain in their old zones and boxes. So you often heard them say, "Think outside the box," or "get out of your comfort zones."
Sometimes, with the right discernment from the Holy Spirit, true wisdom is when you stay in the usual paths, the ancient mindsets, the old ways established by God and proven timelessly safe and effective---even if their good results are often invisible to the eyes. Right discernment will also tell you when to leave the old ways and transfer to the new. It must be based on right discernment, not trending, smart Aleck mentality.
Jeremiah 6.16: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.'
Those who cannot settle for the same things but move on to look for something new or better. They say they do that to get out of their comfort zones or get out of the box, not realizing the "something new or better" is just another box. It's nothing but another comfort zone. Nothing new under the sun. As long as you think you find something worth living for and fit yourself into it, you've boxed yourself into it.
When you stay doing anything you like doing, you're boxed in.
All Boxes are Successes
No such thing as getting out of comfort zones or "the box." It's just your limited, narrow imagination that makes you think there is. But here's the good news. Truth is, all our opted boxes or zones afford us freedom and success. They all result to productivity, if you see life correctly. If you've been a sales clerk in a small shop all your life, for instance, and retired with a small retirement pay, you are successful if you're happy, healthy and intimate with the Lord. You stayed in your box or comfort zones and you finished with big succes, though many others may see otherwise. But so what?
If you're a minister and your ministry remained "small" all your life, it doesn't mean staying in your comfort zone was disobedience to God. Stay faithful where God puts you, and be comfortable about it. God is a God of all comfort and no one can tell you that your station in life and ministry is wrong just because you're comfortabe about it and they're not. Fact is, God wants us to be comfortable about where he puts us. To be rested.
If you don't have peace of mind about where you are and what you're doing now, Jesus says you should "Come to me all who are tired and heavey laden, I will give you rest." What is that if it's not a comfort zone he was talking of? Remaining in Christ means remaining in the comfort zone he provides, for he gives us rest. Many church ministers today are tired and sickly, forfeited of real rest, because they choose what they believe is their "success" box or zone which requires them hard works and quotas, as Pharoah required them of his enslaved Jews. They never learn what Jesus told Martha, how there's only one thing needed, which Mary opted for. And that was simply resting at his feet and listening to him.
We all have preferences, what we'd rather be doing, and actually keep doing, and these preferences become our chosen lot in life, keeping us settled and comfortable there. Boxed in. What they do in us provides our sense of contentment, giving us meaning, purpose and comfort. We don't want to get out of that box no matter if we claim we're "out of the box." Because as long as we keep doing what we prefer doing, we keep ourselves in a box.
Reality is that, there's a variety of boxes in life (one for each of us), you have yours and I have mine, (no one is exempt), and "getting out of the box" is just a myth we imagine we do to make ourselves sound and look great and better than others. No wonder, because greatness is also a myth. It's all ego, and garbage, therefore.
Galatians 6.3: If anyone thinks he is important when he really is not, he is only fooling himself.
You Will Remain in Your Comfort Zone
Now, if your box or comfort zone is relentless hard work or rushing to make things happen, doing new things and pursuing after more achievements, then being in an easy, cool, relaxed, and rested activity will be dormancy for you. Less action or taking shortcuts is going to be hard, and you're going to stay out of it and judge it as a comfort zone fitted for the lazy or unimaginative. You will opt to "get out," and start a "productive path," which is hard work, living life the hard way, tiring yourself until you get very sick. But this only means that hardship, tons of works and unending pursuit of greatness and excellence is really your "comfort zone," which to those who love rest and relaxation, is nothing but "discomfort zone."
If we're intent on getting out of the box, and we're the kind that's addicted to excruciating hard work and great achievements, then we need to change lifestyle and start doing easy work, relaxing most of the time, bothered by nothing, and just quietly doing a few things here and there--limiting yourself to the very basics, what's really needed. If we do this, then we're out of the box and out of our comfort zone.
The New Creation
Like the new creation in Christ. It's just a box, like the old life is a box. The bible says, anyone in Christ has the old life gone, but there's a new one. You get inside that new "box." You cannot say, now that you're in Christ you have no "box" or "zone" because you're free (quoting what Jesus said about whom the Son frees is free indeed).
But you've got to be comfortable and settled in your new life in Christ (which, like it or not, is a new box or zone), governed by the "law of the Spirit of life." Those who think they can live without any box are the ones who continue enjoying sin, going in and out of it, thinking this to be the freedom in Christ, no limits, box or zone. However, the new life in Christ is a new box from God. It's still a box, but one that frees you totally from sin and the worldly box.
Romans 6.22: But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
You see the clear box transfer here? The "freedom in Christ" makes you a slave to God. You're boxed. That's the new box. Yes, you are set free indeed by the Son, but that freedom is now under the "LAW" of the Holy Spirit. Yes, there's a "law" that we're still under, not the law of the Old Covenant but the "law" of the Holy Spirit that "frees" us. That's our comfort zone now.
Romans 8.2: For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
Even Jesus was in a box
Jesus was genuinely out of the box, the box all of us love to be in. Because keeping ourselves in our preferred boxes is universal, we persecute and even murder those stay in theirs, especially if they refuse the box that we want for them. The box Jesus should be in was the greatest of all boxes--box for a King--but he opted out. He did everything opposite of what could be found in the comfort zone of a King. Instead of the box of greatness (which we all pursue after), he chose the box for the least, and declared that the least is the greatest, something that the church today still cannot grasp.
People hated him for it. We all hate the "least" box (this is why we pursue titles and degrees and wealth---we hate being the least---though we claim we're not for the prosperity gospel). Just look at how church denominations outdo each other owning huge properties, facilities and properties. That's the denominational box. Being all sinners, we create our ideal box and want everybody to be in it because we believe it's the only correct box there is.
Jesus boxed himself in the box or zone that the Father boxed himself with: "The Son can do nothing exept what he sees the Father doing."
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