Now that title screams oxymoron does it not? If God is gracious…and He is…shouldn’t His grace seek to remove all of my hardship and replace it with pleasures multiplied? How in the world could the grace of God be discomforting in a culture that seeks personal comfort as the ultimate end? Even in the church we are inundated with messages from theologically barren pulpits that preach the life of the Christian is lived in a region bound on the north by material prosperity, the south by relational success, the east by physical health and well-being, and on the west by every comfort and convenience Western society can offer.
Yet, God’s grace is a discomforting grace and it must be because we have a comfort agenda that consumes our minds and controls our hearts. We will do anything in our power to trade a life of rigorous activity for relaxing ease regardless of the cost, even when the cost is communion with God. To be sure, we are rebels by nature on the run from God. In my pastor Tullian’s newest book, Surprised by Grace, he writes, “When we run from God, his response is more likely to be stormy and upsetting than quiet and subtle.” This is the grace of discomfort.
Our desire to live lives within a zone of comfort causes us to seek security and safety at the expense of service and submission to the will of God. God’s will more often than not, forces us out of our zones of comfort by leading us down the road of discomforting grace. God knows that we will by nature seek the path of least resistance which is often in the opposite direction from the path God would have us travel. Therefore he will make us as uncomfortable as we need to be made in order to make us zealous for the only Comfort in both life and death…the Lord Jesus Christ! God will tolerate no rival.
Life with Christ is not a comfortable life. It was Jesus who said, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). We have been promised a life of discomfort not because the One who promised it is unable to keep it from happing. Omnipotence is sending us His grace of discomfort to drive us to the cross where we find a greater rescue than a rescue rooted in nothing more than a life of predictable pain free pleasure. The grace of discomfort dislodges from our grasp everything except our desperate need for God. This is the gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!
Grace for the Race 
