Confident Courageous Christian

I heard Austin Price speak recently on being a confident, courageous Christian. The more I sit with it, the more I realize we’ve gotten this whole thing backwards.

We think the goal is to be comfortable, but I’m learning it’s better to be comforted by God rather than comfortable without Him, and trusting through discomfort is how you actually become more Christlike.

The struggle of human existence has become the pursuit of comfort. My experience has been that when I’m really comfortable, it’s the most dangerous place for me to be because I become careless, overconfident, and highly self-focused. The pursuit of comfort is a significantly selfish act, and in every endeavor I’ve been involved with that had significant meaning or where I have made significant change, I was extremely uncomfortable.

The pursuit of being comfortable, for me, usually means that I procrastinate, and delay making critical decisions and confronting problems and issues just to keep from being disturbed. That’s usually “the calm before the storm,” because the pursuit of comfort always brings, at least in my experience, a really big storm.

One of the things I love about Patrick Lenconi's Working Genius and Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy's 10x is Easier Than 2x is that the pursuit isn’t always comfortable, but because the pursuit is in living your life (the vast majority of the time) in the gifts God has given you—so much so that your impact is expanded 10x—it brings great fulfillment.

Compare that to how it feels when you work really hard at what you’re not gifted in because you’re trying to be more than what God created you to be. That’s when you end up being less than what He created you to be and pursue comfort even harder to make up for feeling so exhausted and drained.

I’ve had a lot of people over the last few years ask me when I was going to retire. My mindset has been, and continues to be, that retirement is when the first shovel of dirt is thrown on my casket. I think one of the most evil things that has happened is that we’ve become a society pursuing retirement, i.e., comfort. I can’t find anywhere in the Bible where that is God’s desire for us. As a matter of fact, all the examples of living a life as a confident, courageous Christian is the pursuit of our purpose, and that’s not always comfortable, but it is being truly fulfilled.

In each season of your life, living a life that’s purposeful and uncomfortable is energized by understanding your why: the thing God has for you to do to help others ultimately know Him more. Again, living in your working genius.

I want to tell you about someone who embodies this.

Valerie Gooch is the cofounder and executive director of the PARC, the Panhandle Adult Rebuilding Center, right here in Amarillo. She's someone I really admire, because she knows her why and she lives it every single day.

In 2014, Valerie and her cofounder Robert Lee, two people from completely different worlds, saw a gap that nobody else was filling. Plenty of agencies in Amarillo provided overnight shelter and meals, but during the day, people experiencing homelessness had nowhere to go to be known. Nowhere to find their identity or a place that treated them like they had potential and purpose rather than just a problem to manage.

So Valerie googled "how to write a business plan." She and Robert gathered what little money they had, opened an account, and started building something from nothing. They found a building that had been a swingers club, of all things, and saw nothing but possibilities. After months of uncertainty, answered prayers, setbacks, and hard work, the doors of the PARC opened.

What started out as a few hundred dollars and a dream is now a million-dollar facility — built almost entirely from donations — that can serve up to 178 people at a time. They've acquired multiple properties, torn down the original building, and rebuilt from the ground up. The new facility has a coffee bar, outdoor space, classrooms, and walls painted in shades of green because Valerie believes green is the color of hospitality and warmth, and because she believes that those experiencing homelessness deserve the most beautiful space the community can give them.

The thing is, in this entire journey, she has rarely been comfortable. Raising $225,000 by a deadline is not comfortable. Operating out of a temporary building during construction is not comfortable. Watching someone you've invested in relapse and having to ask them to leave, only to welcome them back the next day because at the PARC, you never run out of chances — none of that is comfortable.

Valerie is at an age where she could retire. She could be comfortable, have a garden, stay home, take it easy. Instead, she's living life as a confident, courageous Christian, showing love and grace to the homeless population of this city every single day. She's living in her working genius, and the fulfillment she experiences is something that comfort could never provide.

Being a Christian isn't about finding your comfort zone and staying there. It's about being a servant. Being courageous. Trusting that God's comfort is better than any comfort this world can offer.

The world says pursue comfort and you'll find peace. Scripture says pursue purpose — even when it's painful — and God will provide the comfort you need to keep going. Those are two very different promises, and only one of them delivers.

I'd rather be uncomfortable and fulfilled than comfortable and empty. And the people I admire most, like Valerie, are proof that when you stop chasing comfort and start chasing your why, God builds something through you that you could never have imagined on your own.