280 The Unfamiliar Cold: Trading Comfort for Covenant One Step at a Time
On Hearing, Hesitating, and the Humble Obedience That Actually Moves Mountains
Good morning, and hello friends.
This article was partly inspired by the below Joyce Stafford’s series, See link at the end of this article.
Let’s start with a verse that has been sanding down the rough edges of my own soul lately: “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14, ESV). Discernment is not a gift you are simply given. It is a skill you earn, a muscle you build through constant practice. It is the daily, often unglamorous work of learning to tell the difference between the Shepherd’s voice and the static of your own fear, between the next faithful step and the endless, looping analysis of the next fifty.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this because I am standing at a threshold. The caregiving assignment here in my mom’s South Florida home is complete. The house is quiet. The urgent, all-consuming rhythm of service has given way to a different, more spacious quiet. And into that quiet, a question has begun to form, not with words, but as a gentle, persistent pressure on my spirit. It’s the same question Abraham heard: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1, ESV). For me, it’s not a literal “land” yet, but a leaving nonetheless. A leaving of the familiar, the comfortable, the known warmth of this season for an unfamiliar and, frankly, cold next one. A place with no family, no established friends, just an obedience.
And I’ve noticed my own mind, trained by a world that worships certainty, rebelling. It doesn’t want to go. It wants a guarantee. It wants to see the whole route, the weather forecast for the entire journey, and a full inventory of the accommodations before it will even tie its shoes.
We pray. God answers. This is the bedrock truth. But His answer is often a quiet command placed in a heart that is still buzzing with the noise of the world. We miss it because we are waiting for the spectacular…the burning bush, the talking donkey, the angelic visitation. Yet, as I wrote in “The Master Artist’s Curriculum,” God’s work is more often intimate and incremental than it is theatrical. He speaks in the whispers that follow the stillness. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10, ESV). The knowing comes after the stillness. Not before.
So, we must learn to silence the noise. This is where the practice begins. It’s the intentional, daily work of withdrawing, as Yahusha did, to solitary places. It’s creating margins in the morning before the world’ voices flood in. It is in that cultivated quiet that we can begin to examine our heart’s posture with brutal honesty. As Coach Joyce notes in her series, we must ask the hard questions of our own motivations. This isn’t navel-gazing; it’s spiritual diagnostics.
What is our heart posture in moving forward? Is it surrender, or is it a covert negotiation? Are we making decisions out of fear or faith? This is the crux. Overthinking, that endless churn of “what-ifs” and “but-what-about,” is rarely wisdom. It is almost always fear in a clever disguise. Fear is a counterfeit guide that never introduces itself honestly. It whispers, “Be prudent,” when it means “Stay safe.” It says, “Wait until you have more money, more security, more clarity,” when its true goal is to have you wait forever. The spirit we have been given is “not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV).
This is where I’ve been stuck. “I will move when I have more money.” That one has held me in stasis. I am in a comfortable place. I left the corporate world because a series of events brought me to a boiling point, and this season of caregiving provided a holy pause. But now the pause is stretching into a holding pattern. And as I explored in “The Myth of the Holding Pattern,” what looks like God’s waiting room is often His workshop. He is working on us in the delay, sanding down our reliance on everything but Him.
We pray things like, “Father, if you really want me to take this step, show me what the next ten steps look like first.” We want the blueprint, the five year plan, the divine business plan. But God does not engineer spiritual transformation through identical, replicable templates. He builds it through the small, obedient steps, moment by moment, day by day. He gave Abraham a destination, but not a map. He told Peter to come, but didn’t explain hydrodynamics. His word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105, ESV). A lamp illuminates the next step, not the entire valley. Sometimes, His mercy is in only showing us what we need to know for today.
If we want to grow our faith, to truly have it move from concept to muscle memory, we obey the small, day-by-day, moment-by-moment commands. We forgive the petty offense. We speak the kind word. We choose integrity in the unseen transaction. We sit with Him in the 3 a.m. quiet when He wakes us. In doing that, trust grows. Faith is fortified. As that trust solidifies, then the larger commands are issued. Look at the pattern: Moses was tending sheep before he confronted Pharaoh. Joshua had followed Moses for decades before he led Israel across the Jordan. The faith for the giant leap is built on the foundation of a thousand small obediences.
This is the “constant practice” of Hebrews 5:14. It’s training our spiritual senses. And this training requires a framework. We must learn to interrogate our own thoughts, to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5, ESV). Here are the questions I am learning to ask, the diagnostic tools for discernment:
1. Does this align with God’s revealed Word and character? He will never contradict His own nature or commands. A prompting to abandon my family, to act in malice, or to hoard out of anxiety fails this test instantly.
2. What is producing this thought? Is it rooted in Truth, or in fear, insecurity, or pride? As Jeremiah 17:9 warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” We must trace the thought back to its source. Is this the Shepherd’s voice, or the echo of an old wound?
3. What fruit will this produce? “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16, ESV). Does this leading produce peace, love, trust, and a drawing closer to God? Or does it produce anxiety, isolation, self-reliance, and a turn inward? Self-reliance is a dead end.
4. Is this drawing me closer to God, or deeper into self? Does it require me to trust Him more, or to trust my own resources and cunning more? He often invites us into situations that require faith. Fear says, “Wait until you are completely ready.” Faith says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV).
5. Is there an underlying peace, even amid the difficulty? This is critical. God’s peace “surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). It is not the absence of external pressure. It is a settled confidence in Him that persists even when the path is steep and the wind is cold. Comfort and peace are not the same. God calls us out of our comfort zone, but He never leads us away from His peace.
6. Have I invited the Holy Spirit to search my heart? This is the final, humble surrender. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” (Psalm 139:23, ESV). We must open the door and let Him shine His light into the motivations we can’t even see ourselves.
This process is how we’re “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2, ESV). We surrender the mind to God. We invite Him into our thinking. We spend time in His Word, not to find a verse for our pre-decided path, but to become so familiar with His heart that we recognize what resonates with it and what clashes.
So, what does this look like practically, for someone like me (or perhaps you) standing at the edge of the known, feeling the call into the cold, uncertain and unfamiliar?
It means acknowledging the fear. It means feeling the pull of the comfortable chair in the familiar, warm room. It means hearing the enemy’s whisper: “You’ve done enough. Stay. Rest. This is your due.” And then, it means taking that fear, that desire for comfort, and holding it up to the six questions.
Is this call aligned with His character as a God who leads His people? Yes.
Is this thought produced by faith or fear? The initial tremor is fear, but the persistent, quiet conviction beneath it is faith.
What fruit will moving produce? It will require total dependence on Him, which is the best fruit there is.
Does it draw me closer to Him? Undoubtedly.
Is there a peace beneath the terrifying prospect? A strange, settled “yes.”
Have I invited Him to search me? Daily.
The answer, for me, is becoming clear. The next step is not a revelation of the destination. It is the obedient packing of a single box. It is the making of a single phone call to explore options. It is the small, faithful action taken in the direction of the “cold” while I am still in the “warmth.” This is how you move. You don’t wait for the fear to leave. You acknowledge it, you bring it to Him, and then you take the next small step your lamp illuminates.
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27, ESV). The hearing is for the following. We want destinations; God wants disciples. The destination is His business. The following is ours.
So, if you, like me, are hearing a call to leave a familiar place: be it a physical location, a job, a mindset, or a sin you’ve made a home…know this: the faith for the journey is found on the journey, not before it. Start with the small, practiced obedience of today. Train your discernment on the next step the lamp reveals. The unfamiliar cold awaits, but so does the faithful, warming presence of the One who calls you out. And He is better than every comfort left behind.
That is all, and thank you for reading.
This article was partly inspired by the below Joyce Stafford’s series, check it out.
I’m not affiliated with her nor do I personally know her. But I feel like God put her on my feed about eight months ago to show me some things He thought I needed to hear from her two series. You can find them both on her playlist from her YouTube Channel.
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I've been there. Many times. What I keep hearing within me is , "You'll know the first step, and you'll recognize where you are going when you arrive." There may be some intermediate pauses. Take this to the Lord and see if there is any truth here. It'll be a fun and glorious ride.
Morning, brother. I was warmed by the fire of comfort as well as challenge in these words. There is one thing I would add, not that you didn't say it wonderfully.
When we find ourselves in a place where we missed His word or responded to a word that wasn't Him we may not understand that this is what we did. We might feel like God didn't keep His word or if we know Him better than to think such an absurd thought we may not understand where we errored. This is where another step comes in. We set our circumstance before the body or fellow followers of Jesus and trust God one more time that He will use them to bring understanding. This is a major part of our growth as this is one of the most abused areas of our life. It is one of the most important areas to be able to trust God as it is where we are a light to the world. "They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another." It's more comfortable for our "flesh" if we go it alone but it's also more fulfilling when we experience Him in the impossible.