It is natural for us to make our lives as comfortable as possible. A comfortable life would involve many different things. Having a good home, secure and good paying job, successful career, ability to buy the latest and the greatest toys, living in a prosperous society, a happy and healthy family may be few of the things that would make one's life comfortable.

But can that desire for comfort silence the true calling of God for my life?

Though we may profess to follow Jesus we often forget the life Jesus promised us on this earth. For instance, Jesus said in John 16:33, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

I am living in Australia, a country that has received migrants with open arms. People from different countries have made Australia their home. Almost all of them have taken that decision for just one reason, to have a comfortable life.

I have come to realize that even though we profess to be followers of Jesus, we first want to make our lives comfortable before we serve Jesus. In other words, we want to serve Jesus in comfort. We wind our Christian service around our comfortable lives.

Missionaries who left the comfort of their home and country to remote places of the world to proclaim the good news seem to only belong to the Christian stories section. We love to read them and talk about their sacrifices and glory in them all the while living in our comfortable abodes.

I am not suggesting that we leave our comfort behind and go to some remote corner of the world and suffer. But I am afraid that if God really wanted me to do that I will miss that calling because I am not sensitive to such a leading from God.

I once heard a leader of an Evangelical Church say that he does not want his child to be a missionary but rather want him to be a doctor. We would rather support missionaries with a fraction of our earnings while we live our comfortable lives in a prosperous country rather than heed the masters call to serve in a far away land.

Even when God makes our paths narrow hoping that our affliction would make us hear His mission call, we are busy praying, asking God to enlarge us, deliver us and make us comfortable again. Our ears and eyes are tuned for a miracle rather than a calling. Like prophet Jonah, we are focused on our deliverance and not on God's mission. We will even fast and pray to get out of the belly of the fish (our troubles) but even in our wildest dreams will not consider that this fish (trouble) might be a means through which God is leading us to His mission.

It is my prayer that God would make our ears sensitive to His calling and not to our comfort.