You Are Not Your Comfort Zone — Purity 1956
— By M.T. Clark — 05/06/2026 — Purity 1956 Audio Podcast
Purity 1956 on YouTube:
Today’s photo of a vine-covered shed under a cloudless blue sky comes to us from yours yours truly, as I captured this contrasting scene of the old and the new on Sunday, April 26th, as I took one final walk down Freedom Road before going back to our former countryside rental home in Easton, for the last time, to clean up and to say goodbye to the house that had been my weekend home since the fall of 2021.
Well, it’s Wednesday — happy hump day! — and I share this weathered old structure as a reminder to appreciate the simple things in our lives that we so easily take for granted. The things that are here today and gone tomorrow. The familiar roads we may never travel again. TammyLyn and I have moved on to a new season in Glens Falls, and as I walked down that old dead-end farm road one last time, I realized I had no particular reason to ever make that trip again. That realization weighed on me for a moment — but I let it go lightly, trusting that the Lord will bring other sights to behold, other roads to walk, and other seasons full of His goodness.
I hope your Wednesday finds you grateful for where you are — and open to where God is taking you next.
We’ve been walking through a series called “Who You Are in Christ,” and so far we’ve settled on six truths. We have seen that:
- You are not what you did.
- You are not what was done to you.
- You are not what you feel.
- You are not alone.
- You are not your circumstances.
- And you are not your reputation.
Today I want to address a seventh lie — one that is subtle, quiet, and surprisingly comfortable: the belief that who you are is defined by where you have always been.
Some of us have quietly built our identity around the familiar. Around the places we’ve lived, the routines we’ve kept, the roles we’ve always played, and the people we’ve always been surrounded by. And when God begins to move us — out of a season, out of a place, out of a comfort zone we didn’t even realize had become a cage — we resist. Because somewhere along the way, we confused the familiar with the foundational.
We started to believe that we are the sum of our surroundings, that who we are is inseparable from where we are. That the road we’ve always traveled is the road we were always meant to travel.
But God wants you to know: You are not your comfort zone.
I learned this truth firsthand, more than once in my life, as I have been moved out of several comfort zones along the path of Christian discipleship — and each time, God used the transition to make me grow. The latest lesson came home to me last fall when I was very suddenly thrust out of my comfort zone as a telecommunications field technician. The truth be told, I had a good deal of pride about that job — but because of my own carelessness, I found myself summarily dismissed and had to scramble to make ends meet during the holiday season of 2025. The Lord provided for my needs, but a good portion of my identity as an employee, and my comfortable sense of financial security, were exposed as false comforts — dependent on God’s sovereign grace all along. I had a couple of photos of myself from my field tech days on the wall of my office, but after I lost the job, I took them down. I realized they were prideful displays of my own accomplishments — and they were no longer relevant to my life. I wasn’t a field tech anymore, and frankly, it was never an identity that fit all that well. But I had settled into it and grown complacent until the Lord moved me to the next chapter.
God never called us to be settlers. He called us to be pilgrims. So He humbled me and moved me along — and I find myself increasingly contemplating the day I go off the deep end into full-time ministry somehow. God is famous for taking us out of our comfort zones.
Abraham knew something about this. God called him to leave everything familiar — his country, his people, his father’s household — with nothing more than a promise and a direction. Hebrews 11:8 tells us that “by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” He didn’t know the destination. He just heard the call — and he answered it with action.
That is the life of faith. Not the life of familiar haunts, creature comforts, and the settled structures of complacency. But the life of the willing traveler, moving when God says move, releasing what God says to release, and trusting that the road ahead holds more than the road behind.
Here’s what I’ve learned both personally and in walking alongside others: one of the enemy’s most effective strategies is to use comfort to keep us from our calling. He doesn’t always come at us with obvious temptation. Sometimes he just lets us get very, very comfortable — in a job, a relationship, a neighborhood, a church, a routine — until the thought of change feels like loss rather than obedience.
And when God finally moves us, we grieve the familiar instead of embracing the new. We look back at the field we left and feel the weight of what we’re no longer passing by — rather than lifting our eyes to what lies ahead.
It’s been a season of changes, for sure. TammyLyn and I had been pretty well settled into our countryside rental home in Easton, but God moves time and space — and away we go to Glens Falls. I felt the weight of leaving things behind when I walked down Freedom Road that one last time. And I let it come. Grief over the good things God gives us and then asks us to release is not weakness — it is honesty. But I did not stay there. Because the God who led me down that road also led me away from it — and I trust Him with both.
Your identity is not rooted in your zip code, your routine, your familiar field, or your comfortable corner of the world. It is rooted in Christ — and Christ goes with you wherever God sends you.
You are not your comfort zone.
You are a pilgrim with a purpose, moving through this world in the company of a God who goes before you, walks beside you, and never asks you to go anywhere He hasn’t already been. Whatever familiar road He is asking you to release today — let it go lightly. The Lord will bring other sights to behold.
So, keep on walking and talking with God.
— M.T.
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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”
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