Means Leaving your Comfort Zone
What’s new with YLI Coach, Constant Adzomani
For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation…
-2 Corinthians 1:5-6a
When thinking about world missions what often comes to mind is Americans leaving the comforts of air conditioned homes, beloved churches, grandparents and Chick-fil-a milkshakes to live cross culturally in a country like Ghana. While I do experience physical discomfort, annoying illnesses and missing my family when I travel, it pales in comparison to what some African YLI leaders endure cross culturally for the gospel. Ghana and Nigeria are made up of many different cultures, languages, and standards of living. Working cross culturally requires great sacrifice for them as well.
Constant Adzomani comes from a middle class Christian home in southern Ghana but lives in simple accommodations with his new bride in a remote northern Muslim village that also has a foreign language. Before they could get married Lillian had to discern her own call to missions, go away for two years of missionary training in Nigeria, and learn a new language. Life is difficult for them and they work tirelessly.
It’s easy to default to an expectation that somehow God should allow us a certain level of comfort in life. Didn’t the apostle Paul write in second Corinthians that God is the “God of all comfort?” That sounds wonderful, but Paul’s life was anything but comfortable. Following Jesus around the world led him into all kinds of trouble including an actual shipwreck, personal betrayals, violent beatings and martyrdom. God didn’t allow Paul a comfortable life, but God was his comfort in affliction. Paul did not hesitate to take on all of that suffering in exchange for God’s comfort. Paul proclaimed that it is a privilege to join in the suffering of Jesus! Trouble is to be expected by Jesus’ followers, but Jesus is right there with us amid the trials.
Just like with American Christians, young Africans can easily live in a “Christian bubble” insulated not only from trials, but from the very people God intends for them to reach with the gospel. YLI’s teaching on Incarnational Evangelism strongly challenges young people to leave their “comfort zone” and go rub shoulders with people who make them uncomfortable in places they would not otherwise go. It may be the only way they ever learn how much God loves them. Leaving one’s comfort zone isn’t our natural inclination. We all need to be willing, like Constant and our other YLI leaders, to step out of our cozy environments anytime God urges us to do so. When we do, God promises to be right there with us.
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