DEATH BY COMFORT

By John Stallings

Do you know who made the following statement; “I’ve made over 9,000 bad shots, lost over 300 games, and been trusted with 26 shots to determine the outcome of the game, and missed them. I’ve had so many failures; I guess it’s why I’m so successful?”

Basketball legend Michael Jordon, perhaps the quintessential winner of all time, spoke those words.

Because of his joy and enthusiasm, when you watch him you feel as if you’re seeing history in the making. Jordan was cut from his high school team but persisted, and became one of the best athletes of all time.

Michael makes playing basketball look easy, but it took a lot of pain to play with that ease.


I remember the first time I saw Elvis Presley on television. He was singing “Heartbreak Hotel,” and he looked like he owned that stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. Nobody hit like Elvis hit. In those early days, he sang with such fervor that people could hardly believe what they were seeing. He blew a hole in the music world forever.


Just a few short years later, we all watched, painfully embarrassed, as a bloated Elvis sang and danced through his mediocre movies. I asked a thousand times, as many did; Elvis, what happened?

Looking back now, I know what happen.

Elvis succumbed to the promise that drugs made to him. They promised to make things easy and let him live in a hazy, rose-colored world with no pain; not having to follow the path of other mortals.

Elvis could afford it, so he bought the dream.

But what the drugs couldn’t do for Elvis was save him from “the law of diminishing returns.” After a while, it took bigger amounts of drugs just to make Elvis feel like he used to feel without them. Boy, how those drugs cheated Elvis. They ushered him to a comfortable death.

What happened to Elvis was that he got lost in a promise that life’s greatest reward is to be comfortable.

IT WAS DEATH BY COMFORT.

What a tragedy. What the human spirit yearns for is not comfort; but the feeling of accomplishment and the enthusiasm that comes from setting goals and seeing them fulfilled.

One of the saddest things I see is people looking forward with such relish to the idea of total retirement, only to arrive and find it not so great. I once had a friend who was always making the statement that he’d be happy to see the day when “he wouldn’t have to hit a lick at a snake.” When he finally retired, he didn’t live but a short time.

I had another friend who was reared in relative poverty and worked hard to get out of it. By age 49 he was wealthy and comfortable. One day he lay down for a mid-day nap and died in his sleep. His wife told me he never moved the covers she had put around him as he slept. I wonder if he felt he’d achieved it all and nothing was left for him

I’m not saying retirement is wrong, but what I am saying is that it’s not what the human spirit thrives on. To retire from one thing may be just fine, but to seek out a rocking chair will probably not be as satisfying as we might think; and it may be fatal.

Do you know the nation which has the best, most comfortable standard of living for its citizens of any nation in the world?

Denmark.

Do you know the nation with the highest percentage of suicides of any nation in the world?

Denmark.

What does that tell you? It tells me that you can meet every need and solve every problem that people have and it still doesn’t make them content. All you’ve done is remove the very thing it takes to make a person happy and that is, a problem. Sound strange?

Well it’s not strange; it’s our nature.

Many companies have had to remove the video games from their computers because employees were getting hooked on the games. Stop and ask yourself why intelligent people like video games. It’s simple. The challenge of trying to beat a game and winning is what our nature loves.

Recently studies have shown that Nuns in Catholic monasteries live longer than their contemporaries outside and the reason is they are constantly challenging their minds with, study, writing letters, games and other mental stimulus that it keeps them alive. It’s like saying; “as long as the brain is doing something, the body will stay alive to see what happens.”

I once read a story about a man who tried to commit suicide by running. He figured that if he ran himself to death it would look like death from over- exertion and his family could collect his insurance. The first day he ran until he was exhausted and fell in a heap, but he didn’t die. The next day he ran a little farther and fell, but still didn’t die. After about a week of trying to run himself to death, he was able to run so far that he amazed himself. At the end of the first ten days, his body and spirit were so pumped that he didn’t want to die any more.

Neither our bodies nor our spirits want retirement and ease; they want a feeling of accomplishment. I’m not saying we should stick to a tired old regimen or stay with the same old things in life but we can reinvent ourselves at any age and be productive, instead of withering away.

AMOS 6:1 SAYS, ---"WOE TO THEM THAT ARE AT EASE IN ZION."

In Genesis 12; 1-4, God told Abraham to get up and leave his country and go to a land he would show him. Notice, God didn’t tell him, like Moses, that he was going to the Promised Land; it was just a land he would show him.

Please understand; Abraham was 75 years old. He’d lived in Hebron all his life. He had gotten his beard trimmed at the same place for decades, probably just across the street from the high school where he graduated All his relatives were buried there in Hebron. From now on, instead of being called “Abraham of Hebron,” he’d be, “Abraham of someplace God will show me.”

Not only that, Abraham had no children, and at 75 probably had given up the idea.

God’s promise was that he was going to make him A Great Nation. God told him to look up at the canopy of stars at night, and his seed would be as numerous as those stars.

Moses was 80 when God called him from the burning bush in the Egyptian desert. He had gone to the backside of the desert because he had killed a man and his picture was in all the Egyptian Post offices.

At a time in life when most people think about sitting down, Moses began his great life’s work.

Caleb was 85 years old when he looked at a big mountain and said to God, “Give me this mountain.”

I’ve always admired Abraham Lincoln. He ran for public office several times and was defeated. He didn’t give up and was finally elected to the presidency of the United States and became renowned as one of America’s greatest leaders.

Another one of my modern day hero’s was Winston Churchill. Had he died on his 65th birthday, history would have recorded him a failure. However, shortly after that, the Second World War broke out and Briton chose him to lead them during those dark years.

Coronal Harland Sanders received his first social security check at 65 and saw it wasn’t enough to live on, so he started the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

Treutt Kathy, after losing his two brothers in a plane crash, was lying in bed after a cancer operation and got a vision of the Chich-fil-a chicken sandwich, which later in his life made him a millionaire.

None of these people quit when the going got tough, and were able to do exploits with their lives.

Instead of quitting, we can turn our mistakes into stepping stones and turn negative situations around. But if we take the road of ease, and give up, our lives will turn into aggravation and frustration that will eat like a canker.

One thing we’ll get free each year we live is a trip around the sun. But in reality, it isn’t a “free lunch,” for life on Planet Earth is a series of hardships and much hard work with many obstacles. Most of the time our successes come on the heels of disappointment and failure. There’s a lot of grinding day-to day living to do and most of us will never win the lottery.

BUT AGAIN, EASE, NOT HARD WORK, IS WHAT KILLS NOT ONLY THE BODY, BUT THE SPIRIT OF MAN.

Strain, stress and sweat won’t hurt us but idleness will.

We should think often of the old adage, “When at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.”

If things do get hard for us we can remember that Paul stated emphatically, I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me. (Phil. 4:13.)

Jesus said, all things are possible to him that believeth. (Mark 9:23)

In Mark 10:27 Jesus said, …….. For with God all things are possible.

THOUGH IT’S NOT A SCRIPTURE VERSE, I LIKE THE MAXIM, "IT AIN'T OVER TILL IT’S OVER."

You may have been through so much that every cell and microbe in your body screams “give up” but that’s the one thing we must not do.

The man (he’s an imaginary man—but is he?) saw people love each other and he saw that love made strenuous demands on them. He noticed that love required sacrifice and self-denial. He observed that love produced arguments and sometimes terrible anguish. The man decided that love cost too much and involved unacceptable risks. So the man decided not to allow himself to be hurt; he figured that the risk was too great.

The man saw people striving for great goals. He saw men and women striving for great ideals and he also noticed that their striving was mixed with great disappointment and carried great hurts. So the man decided that the great ideals and goals were to costly for him to be involved in. He came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be wise for him to burden his life with this unnecessary striving.


The man looked around him and saw people serving others and giving to the poor and spending time in the care of the homeless and hopeless. He saw the more they helped the more their help seemed to be needed. He saw ungrateful receivers and worn out workers. So the man made the decision not to soil his life with striving and serving people, and to save his self that hurt.

Then the man died and went to the presence of God and presented his comfortable life to God; Whereupon God looked at him and said,

WHAT LIFE?

John