Comfort.

We all want it.

We take loans out for it. We work for it. We tell certain people no for it. We say yes for it. We lie for it. We steal for it.

I have been on this hamster wheel chasing comfort. Sometimes I lie to myself and say that I’m not. But when there is a choice to be made, I almost always choose comfort. I’ll work hard for something with the promise of comfort at the end, only to be disappointed when comfort is not found.

When comfort arrives, the zest and zeal that was used in the pursuit of comfort remains when the comfort is satisfied.

Restlessness remains.

And this comfort aches and hurts because it tastes too much like apathy. It’s about has bitter as the feeling of lukewarm.

I chase this thing called the American Dream, that tells me if I work hard enough I will be able to obtain a happy and successful life that will give me, comfort.

I look around me and everyone is chasing comfort; the American Dream.

Often I also find that this is how I chase God, without fully realizing it. I see God as my American Dream. Except maybe I just look at Him as my God Dream. If I just work hard to please Him enough, obey Him enough, then He will grant me life long happiness with a golden arch to walk through with angels playing harps and my life will be happily ever after.

So simple and neat.

God is my American Dream.

A pathetic and self-centered comfort chaser, I relentlessly chase God.

I chase Him in the same way comfort leaves me feeling unsatisfied. I look at where I am at. I have nothing to complain about. There is no devastating illness consuming my family. No feelings of physical needs unmet. A house with three happy children, a wife who loves me, a secure job and a white picket fence to conclude the comfort.

Somehow in my ‘comfort’ I feel restless.

I wonder if the restlessness is how God intends it to be. If I could satisfy my American dream and achieve comfort, a real satisfying comfort, then…

I might not need God at all.

A cool spring day meets me in the morning. In Memphis, Tennessee I find myself sitting on an upright cinderblock inside a barren windowless building. The roof is rotted through and the warm morning light shines in.

I become increasingly uneasy. Something is moving in my spirit and I’m restless. I lose control and bury my head in my hands, sobbing uncontrollably. The most defining untangible feeling washes over me.

Looking around, I hope no one sees me as I am on my first spring break trip with a bunch of other college students. 19 years young, I feel God breaking me, or is it Him gently and gracefully allowing me to give up and seek Him? For He has been there all along. Kindly and patiently waiting for me, always pursuing me, never giving up on me.

I had spent all of my high school years passively walking the fence. Never venturing too far to the one side where the ‘heathens’ lived, but enough to taste of their fruit. On the contrary, I never ventured too far to full blown Christendom where D.C. Talk shirts were worn with pride and Brio Magazines were read cover-to-cover by friends.

A wandering nomad was more my title. I fit in more with the experimenting pot smokers than I did with the Bible carrying clicks that consumed the local youth group. To be honest, I never felt ‘in place’ with either.

The nomadic fence walker was I, the one who held loosely to truth but tight enough to not fall off the fence completely.

And in the abandoned building in Memphis, is where God became real to me. I felt Him wash over me. A soothing and loving way, He moved in my soul. And I could not contain my emotions.

It was there I felt loved by my Maker.

Even when I had held Him at arms length.

He still cared for me.

He cares for me when we I’m ‘running from Him’. He doesn’t turn His back on me in my rebellion.

He patiently waits.

In the waiting, He is actively pursuing my heart.

I wonder if the longer and further I run from Him the closer I draw near to Him.

In my running, I exhaust all my options of self-seeking gratification ’till I hit the bottom.

In the bottom is where I am left only with He and I.

When I was running away from God, I was running towards Him.

-Jesse Hoover, JesseHoover.com

Every evening when darkness fell, I climbed into bed anticipating the steps of my dad entering my room.

At six years old I would listen as footsteps made their way up and down the hall. Sometimes my room first, other times my sisters’ room.

And so it went every evening my dad would read to me from the Bible followed by singing and praying. One of my favorite songs I heard, was this chorus line we sung together:

“Jesus paid it all,

all to Him I owe,

Sin had a left a crimson stain,

He washed it white as snow.”

I’m not sure why this song has been my favorite for so long. Maybe it’s the simplicity of it. Maybe it’s because the older I get the more meaning it has. When “Jesus paid it all”, there is more all today then there was yesterday. With each passing day there is more all that has been paid. The more all, the more I owe.

Or do I really owe Him?

Pure theologians might argue that we don’t really owe Him anything. This is true, but I think the phrase captures the reality that when He paid it all, there is a debt I cannot pay, which makes my gratitude greater. Knowing that I don’t have to pay Him, increases my gratitude all the more.

I sing this song to my own children, in hopes they too grasp how simple the gospel is, yet how great the impact it has. To know that our sins are like crimson stains that He has washed white as the purest snow. I want them to know that God views us as the purest snow that falls in the winter. I want them to see others the way God sees us.

When sin and heartache ravage people’s lives and families, I want my children to remember, that Jesus has paid it all. Not just part of it or when they repent or get it together. But all of it. For who really has it all together.

He has paid it all yesterday, today and tomorrow.

When I sing this song now, I ask myself: “Do I live like I believe that He has paid it all?” And when I look at others, especially those I go to church with, am I willing to say that Jesus has paid their all.

All of them, all of their sins.

Their present sins.

The sins they will commit tomorrow.

The sins they are to afraid to confess and admit to you.

Are we people who will trust God with the sins of others?

Can we be their friend, not their God.