Untitled Sermon

Intro

• Navy SEAL training → Hell Week

Hell Week is a notoriously brutal, 5 ½ day crucible with intense physical and mental stress, crazy sleep deprivation (a maximum of 4 hrs sleep total), cold, hunger, and constant challenges like carrying boats and crawling through mud under fire. Hell week is designed to break the recruits mentally and weed out the weak. Only about 25% succeed.

• Extreme discomfort by design

• Most quit due to discomfort, not inability.

Most people who quit SEAL training don’t quit because they don’t have the physical endurance to finish. Studies and interviews show that most of them quit because the discomfort becomes overwhelming. Not because something is broken. Not because they are incapable. But because staying in it becomes unbearable.

• Goal isn’t to break people, but form resilience.

• Phrase: “Get Comfortable with the Uncomfortable ”

There’s even a phrase used in military training that sums it up.

• Some discomfort is intentional.

• Staying grows strength.

Running from the discomfort doesn’t make you stronger. Staying does.

• Question: What if discomfort is part of how God forms us?

Tension

• We want results without discomfort

• Want:

• Muscles without training

• Success without effort

• Faith without discipline

• Growth feels uncomfortable:

• Waiting

•Trying again

• Being unnoticed

• We assume discomfort = something is wrong.

• Early church believed the opposite.

They saw hardship not as a sign they were off track, but as a sign they were following Jesus faithfully in a broken world.

• Ignatius of Antioch:

discipled by the apostle John in the years immediately following Jesus’ death and resurrection, wrote this around the year 107 AD as he was headed to his execution:

• “Now I begin to be a disciple.”

On his way to be martyred for his faith, he proclaims, “NOW I begin to be a disciple.” For him, discomfort wasn’t proof that God was gone. It was proof his faith was real.

Hear me, I’m not saying you and I need to die for our faith to become true disciples, but talk about ‘Get comfortable with the Uncomfortable.’ Ignatius probably got this idea from Paul’s letter to the Romans where he says:

• Romans 5:3–4 “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.”

• Suffering → perseverance → character → hope

• Research confirms: • Grit > talent

Psychologist Angela Duckworth, who studies success and perseverance, found that endurance and grit are more predictive of long-term growth than talent. In other words, the people who grow the most are not always the most gifted. They are the ones who stay in it.

• Discomfort is unavoidable.

Our instinct is to escape it, numb it, or distract ourselves from it. But nothing meaningful grows without it. Comfort feels safe, but it rarely changes us.

• Question: What do you do when it shows up?

Truth

• Read 1 Peter 5:10 “In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.”

• He doesn’t say if… he says after. “After you have suffered” = season, not failure and seasons are temporary

Before that, Peter says: “In this kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 5:10 NLT).

• Grace = God present in the process. He does not abandon us in the discomfort.

• Peter says something powerful...God Himself: • Restores • Strengthens • Establishes

• Growth is personal, intentional.

• Muscles grow through resistance.

• Discomfort has purpose.

Application:

• Identify current discomfort:

• Relationships

• Faith questions

• School pressure

• Anxiety

Identity

• Challenge: Stay, don’t run

• Luke 9:23 “Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” :

• Take up your cross daily.

• Staying ≠ abuse or danger

• Staying looks like:

• Praying again

• Showing up again

• Building habits

• Habits shape faith. (James Clear)

• Growth happens over time.

Landing

• Discomfort ≠ God’s absence

• Discomfort = formation

• Growth requires:

• Time

• Discomfort

• God’s grace

• Comfort keeps you safe.

• Discomfort makes you strong

• Galatians 6:9 “So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”

• Don’t give up.

Invitation- Stay with God in the process