Sunday Morning - 2/15/2026

Uncomfortable [Revisited] - Sermon 1 Challengers to Comfort Matthew 16:24 John 16:33 Hebrews 4:12 "What we think we want from a church is almost never what we need. However challenging it may be to embrace, God's idea of church is far more glorious than any dream church we could conjure. It's not about finding a church that perfectly fits my [preferences]. It's about becoming like 'living stones' that are 'being built up as a spiritual house' focused on and held together by Jesus, the stone the builders rejected who became the cornerstone (1 Peter 2:4-7)." "The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half-built towers - the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. All too many people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of so-called nominal Christianity. In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become a little bit involved; enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder cynics complain of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism." Comfortable Christianity produces powerless disciples. Genesis 3:1-6 Sin is rarely presented as ugly. It is presented as reasonable, beneficial, and improving. Genesis 3:7-9 Psalm 51:4 James 5:16 Genesis 3:10-24 The lie: the enemy convinced them that what they wanted would actually be received by disobeying the very Word of God. Comfort didn't cause the fall - it made the fall worth it. I. OBEDIENCE CAN BE UNCOMFORTABLE 1 Samuel 15:22 "Each act of obedience by the Christian is a modest proof, unequivocal for all its imperfection, of the reality of what he attests." Philippians 2:5-8 II. STEADFASTNESS CAN BE UNCOMFORTABLE 1 Corinthians 15:58 "We live in what one writer has called the 'age of sensation.' We think that if we don't feel something, there can be no authenticity in doing it... Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship." "a long obedience in the same direction." Luke 9:23-26