What God and a Movie Taught Me About Life, Love, and Comfort Zones

Ma: You’re gonna love it.

Jack: What?

Ma: The world.

-Room

God likes to speak to me through many things: His top three are probably songs, through other people, and with metaphors. I once learned the equivalent of a semester’s worth of theology classes from a bag of skittles and a revelation from God. No joke.

Somewhere between airplane meals, dozing off, and reading the entire airline magazine twice, I watched the movie Room on the plane to New Delhi. You can guess–today, I realized something important about Room and the way the story reflects the way we often live.

In the movie, a young boy named Jack and his mother are imprisoned by a man in his backyard shed. Jack is 5, and he doesn’t realize there is an outside world. He was born and raised in Room, and he knows no other life. He believes that Room is the only place that exists and everything else is only on TV. The outside world is unknown, scary, something that Jack can’t define in his terms–so he doesn’t.

Often, we find ourselves stuck in a room–a place of complacency and apathy in our lives. It’s a room we may have grown up in; we love it, we know every inch of it, we feel comfortable in it. Even if it’s a room that we are imprisoned in against our will, we grow used to the routine and comfortable in our cage. Sometimes, we don’t even realize there is a bigger, brighter, infinitely more interesting world right outside if only we step out the door.

God wants to show us that world–His world. He calls us into endless freedom and joy with Him, running through fields and jumping through waterfalls and lying barefoot in squishy, loamy grass. There is more than the four concrete walls we erect around our mind. So much more!!! We settle into habits of complacency–sitting in our room, eating, reading, working, studying, sleeping, maybe exercising if you’re more disciplined than me. Rinse and repeat. But there is so much more God has planned for us!! We just don’t realize it’s right in front of our noses, right outside the door to our room.

Will you let God call you into a life of daring adventure? Of vast, infinite spaces filled with beauty and new things to explore? Of bright colors and sunshine and intimacy with Him in the secret places? Of radical, relentless, and powerful love?

It might be uncomfortable at times. You might not be used to the sun quite yet–it could burn. Or you may get sick, since there are germs and viruses out there you weren’t previously exposed to. Lies of the enemy you may hear. Struggles and hardships that didn’t exist in your room.

But if we step outside, we allow God to be God in big, mighty ways. We don’t keep Him confined in our rooms anymore. We experience Him and His Spirit anew, and we reap so much more than we could ever imagine. No pleasure or comfort of the flesh can even come close to comparing to the eternal and immeasurable gift of the Spirit.

If we allow God to work through us without restraints, we can break chains; we can set captives free; we can heal the sick, raise the dead, make the lame walk, all in the name of Christ!

And He is with us and within us. There is no need to be afraid or fearful of the unknown–God is always with us. (see Joshua 1:9, Isaiah 41:10, Deuteronomy 31:6, Matthew 28:19-20, etc.)

Friends, it might be time to break out of your room and step into the unknown with your Father. Trust His heart and the wonders He has in store for you. His ways are always higher, and His love always perfect. Rest in that, and know that there is more to life than just your room. There is joy and love uncontainable right outside the door of your comfort zone.

Just step outside.