> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.takeonestepforward.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Get Out of the Rut - URL: https://www.takeonestepforward.org/get-out-of-the-rut/ - Published: 2026-08-28T22:19:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-28T22:25:51.000Z - Author: Christopher Lyman - Tags: Christian Living, Purpose Every house has a junk drawer. You know the one. It starts innocently enough. A couple of batteries. Some tape. Maybe a screwdriver. Things you genuinely might need someday. Six years later, the drawer contains three dead pens, seventeen mystery keys, a birthday candle shaped like the number four, instructions for an appliance you no longer own, one chopstick, and a charging cable that hasn't fit a phone since 2013\. And still, you keep everything because apparently throwing away a two-inch piece of string feels irresponsible. Eventually the drawer becomes so full that it won't close. So you do what any rational adult would do. You move the scissors, shove something toward the back, give the drawer a good hip-check, and— There. Problem solved. Except you haven't solved anything. **You've just figured out how to keep living with it.** I wonder how often we do something similar with our lives. We don't wake up one morning and decide, *I think I'm going to stop growing now.* We simply settle into routines that work. We get good at our jobs, comfortable in our relationships, and familiar with our schedules. We figure out what we're good at, what we aren't, and what we'd rather let somebody else handle. Nothing is necessarily wrong. **We just stop stretching.** And because nothing hurts badly enough to force us to change, years can pass before we realize we've become really good at living exactly the same way. ## **Comfort Isn't the Enemy** I love camping. Give me the mountains, a campfire, and a few days away from everything, and I'm happy. But I've reached the age where **loving camping and loving sleeping on a mat are no longer the same thing.** When I was younger, I could sleep on the ground and wake up ready for the day. Now I wake up and have to convince several parts of my body that we're all still on the same team. At some point, you start looking at the people climbing out of their RV in the morning—with their mattress, coffee maker, and functioning spinal columns—and think, *Maybe they're onto something.* Comfort isn't bad. But while comfort is a wonderful place to rest, **it's a terrible place to grow.** There's a difference between enjoying comfort and arranging our lives around avoiding discomfort. If we only do what we already know how to do, accept responsibilities we know we can handle, and stay within the boundaries of what feels familiar, eventually we stop growing. So maybe a question worth asking occasionally is: **When was the last time I attempted something I wasn't completely sure I could do?** Not something reckless. Something that required me to stretch, learn, risk failing, or ask for help. Something that might even make me pray, *God, I'm going to need You for this.* ## **What About Paul?** Think about the apostle Paul. Imagine if, after helping establish a community of believers, he had looked around and thought, *Well, that went pretty well.* He could have stayed. He could have taught the same people, eaten dinner with the same friends, slept in the same bed, and spent the next several years telling stories about what God had already done. He had already taken enormous risks for the gospel. Nobody could have accused him of doing nothing. But Paul kept going—another city, another group of people, another journey, another opportunity to depend on God. **Paul didn't treat yesterday's faithfulness as permission to coast today.** That doesn't mean we're all supposed to quit our jobs, sell our houses, and start wandering from city to city. God doesn't expect us to manufacture difficulty just to prove how spiritual we are. **Discomfort isn't the goal. Growth is.** Maybe there should regularly be something in our lives that makes us think, *I'm not completely sure I can do this.* Those places make us listen differently, pray differently, and learn differently. They expose weaknesses we didn't know we had and gifts we didn't know we possessed. And sometimes they remind us of something comfort can quietly allow us to forget: **we need God.** ## **Living Intentionally** Intentional living doesn't mean constantly chasing a bigger, more exciting life. Sometimes it's much simpler. Take the class. Apply for the position. Invite the neighbor over. Mentor someone. Go on the mission trip. Start exercising. Learn the skill. Volunteer for something you don't feel completely qualified to do. Read the book that's been sitting on your nightstand long enough to become part of the furniture. Try something you're probably going to be bad at for a while. Maybe it's your marriage. **You pursued each other long enough to get the ring—but are you still pursuing each other now?** Somewhere between work, kids, bills, schedules, and everything else life piled on, maybe you stopped doing some of the things that made you fall in love in the first place. Maybe it's your faith. You love God, but your spiritual life has become predictable and comfortable. Maybe it's your work. You're competent enough to do your job without really stretching anymore. Or maybe you've talked about doing something for years but keep waiting until the timing feels right. **Let's just be honest: if you're waiting for the perfect season, you're probably not going to do it.** There will always be something. Work will be busy. Money will be tight. The kids will need you. Something unexpected will come up. Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts it simply: *“Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.”* There are certainly times when wisdom tells us to wait. But if we're always waiting for the wind to settle and the clouds to clear, we may spend our whole lives preparing to start. **Sometimes the right season is simply the one we're in.** Sometimes we need to stop waiting for life to force us to grow and **choose growth intentionally**. Not because busier is better or our current life isn't good enough, but because God has graciously given us abilities, opportunities, relationships, resources, and time. **I don't want to reach the end of my life with regrets that I wasted the time God graciously gave me.** ## **Content, But Not Finished** This is where the idea gets complicated, because Scripture doesn't teach us to spend our lives constantly dissatisfied, always searching for something bigger and better. It teaches us contentment. Paul wrote, *“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances”* (Philippians 4:11). But the same Paul also wrote, *“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on...”* (Philippians 3:13–14). **Contentment and forward movement lived in the same man.** Paul could be grateful for where God had him without believing he had arrived. Maybe that's the posture we're supposed to develop: content, but not finished. Grateful, but still growing. Satisfied in God, but still willing to be stretched. Faithful with what we have, while remaining willing to follow Him somewhere new. Contentment says, *God, thank You for what You've given me.* Complacency says, *This is good enough. Why should I grow?* Those aren't the same thing. ## **What Is God Doing Here?** As a father, I want good things for my children. But imagine giving your child something he's been asking for, only to watch him immediately look at his brother's. *Why did he get that?* So you give him something else. Now he wants the bigger one. Give him that, and a week later it's, *Is this all I get?* At some point, you realize you could keep giving him more and still never give him enough. **The problem isn't what he has. It's that he hasn't learned to be content with it.** Sometimes being a good father means not giving your child the next thing he wants. It means helping him recognize the good that's already sitting right in front of him. I wonder how often God is doing the same thing with us. *God, give me a better job.* But how am I treating the job I already have? *Give me more influence.* What am I doing with the people already listening? *Give me more money.* How am I stewarding what's already been provided? *Give me a bigger opportunity.* What am I doing with the opportunity already in front of me? We shouldn't turn this into a formula and say God always waits until we're content before He moves us forward. Scripture doesn't promise that. But Scripture repeatedly shows us that **God cares deeply about who we're becoming along the way.** David had sheep before he had a kingdom. Moses had decades in Midian before returning to Egypt. Joseph spent years serving in places he never would have chosen before stepping into leadership. Sometimes we're asking God, *When do I get to move on?* Maybe God is still doing something in us where we are. There may still be something to learn, something to develop, something to surrender—maybe even something to appreciate. ## **Be Careful What You Chase** Jesus described the road of following Him as narrow. I picture that road with a rut on either side. **Veer too far in either direction, and it's easy to get stuck.** On one side is complacency. We become so comfortable with where we are that we stop growing. But there's a rut on the other side too. We can hear *don't settle* and turn it into an excuse to endlessly chase more: more money, more recognition, a better position, a bigger business, a healthier body, a larger platform, a more impressive ministry. **The goal isn't to jump from one rut into the other. It's to stay on the road.** Something that began as healthy growth can slowly become the thing we're living for. Even something good—even something we genuinely believe God has called us to pursue—can begin occupying a place in our hearts that belongs only to Him. Jesus said, *“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness”* (Matthew 6:33). He wasn't condemning effort. **He was establishing the order of our pursuits.** God first. Everything else underneath Him. Our pursuit should **honor God, not become our god.** That leaves us with a difficult question: **If God never gives me the thing I'm pursuing, can I still be content with Him?** If the answer is no, maybe I need to examine what I'm chasing. Maybe I've started expecting that thing to give me something **only God can give me.** ## **Don't Miss the Father While Chasing the Gift** Imagine a child becoming so obsessed with earning his father's next gift that he stops enjoying his father's presence. **The gift was never supposed to become more important than the Father.** Neither is the thing we're chasing. So dream. Work hard. Learn. Grow. Set goals. Try something you're not completely sure you can do. Follow God into places where you don't already know exactly how everything is going to work out. **Keep stretching.** But don't do it because you believe the next accomplishment will finally make you enough. And don't become so focused on where you want God to take you that you miss what He's doing where you are. We can want tomorrow to be different without being ungrateful for today. We can pursue excellence without making achievement our identity. We can enjoy comfort without allowing comfort to determine how far we're willing to follow God. We can be satisfied in Him while still believing there is more to learn, more ways to serve, and more room to grow. **Content, but not finished.** Maybe you don't need to turn your entire life upside down. Maybe you just need to open the junk drawer and look at the parts of your life that have become so familiar you've stopped thinking about them. Find one place where you've gotten a little too comfortable. Start something. Learn something. Serve somewhere. Take a risk. **Take one step forward and say yes to something that makes you depend on God a little more than you did yesterday.** You don't have to see where the whole thing leads. **Just refuse to spend your life pushing the drawer closed and calling it good enough.**