  Youth on Jan. 17 and My Comfort Zone Theories Youth was really good for me this weekend. It was kinda weird because Pastor Rick's older d-group was gone, minus Nathan and Michael, so we had the regular backup singers, then Tom, Aaron, Weston, and Madison playing for the guys who were gone. Practice went pretty well, although we had to go over some stuff that the jv-band guys didn't know, or stuff like Obsession, which the varsity people didn't know. I was actually kind of surprised, because although I know that these guys are really good musicians, but they caught on really well.
Of course things were different because Bobby and Scott weren't there and all that, but everything flowed actually better than I thought, though I'm a little sad to say I may have underestimated the younger guys. They really did well. As I get better at keys, I find myself wishing I had a really good keyboard. I mean, the one I play is fine, but the keys aren't weighted, and I don't care what people say-- the pedal does nothing !!
It's really nice to feel more confident in my playing, though. It probably doesn't show that I feel better when I play, but I notice it. Every weekend I'm less afraid to try something I don't always do. Every weekend I'm less concerned when I make a mistake. This weekend, Michael asked me to keep playing some piano stuff during Obsession, which was unusually fine....typically I'm like, sitting there, trying not to panic, but it was fine, once I knew what he was talking about. The more I play, the more I really enjoy doing it. It makes me "step out of my comfort zone," as so many people are prone to saying.
However, I think that that phrase is rather erroneously stated. You see, I've been playing keys for a couple of years now, and most of that time has been spent being encouraged by others to let God cultivate some kind of gifting, which I have done. Each weekend, God gives me a little bit of something that I never had before, and I can't really explain what that's like, but it's as though he's giving me the pieces of a puzzle, which, once I accumulate the right pieces, I can put together quite easily. So each weekend, if he gives me something, I don't just sit there and brood about it--I try to use it.
That is supposed to be "stepping out of my comfort zone. " But I'm not so sure about that. I mean, if you think about think about it, we never really leave our comfort zones. For a Christian, when we are saved, our best and most reliable comfort zone is automatically God, because of the new life and outlook on that life that he gives us.
So we're saved, and after we've gained a bit of understanding of what this new life is, we start to share it with others in many ways. These are ministries. So if you're in a ministry, such as worship, there will be times when God asks you to do something you're not quite sure you have the resources to do--something you're not quite comfortable doing. When God tells me to do something on keys, sometimes it's easy and almost entirely effortless. And there are times when what he wants isn't what I would really like to do.
So I might hesitate, but eventually, I will do it--I feel like I'm standing on a diving board and God's asking me to jump in. Eventually, though it may be rather grudgingly, I will lift one foot off the board, lean forward, close my eyes, and jump--well, ok, maybe just step off. But the anticipation of the water, the fear of not feeling something solid beneath me only lasts a few seconds, and then, quite a bit more suddenly than I anticipated, I'm in the water, in one piece and thinking I was an idiot for fearing such a small thing. That's what I sometimes feel like when I do something God wants. But when I think about it, I never stepped out of my comfort zone, I expanded it.
I didn't step out of this nice, warm, safe comfort zone into this harsh, cold, unforgiving world of doing God's will. It's not like that. I took the step, yes, and it was temporarily scary, but when I hit the water, I realized that I was comfortable there. In the same way, if we take a step out into God's will, he won't leave us there alone, scared, and unarmed--he is with us every step of the way, and therefore, this new place is actually not so very unlike the one we just left.
The discomfort we felt before was our blindness to the fact that our original comfort zone--God--never leaves us, nor does he shove us into doing these things without his help. He's with us every step of the way, and our huge, terrifying leap out of our wills is really just a small hop into another realm of God's will and his love for us--that original comfort zone. ~Erika <> 
