Submitting to God’s call for your life itself is not that difficult. Yes, what He tasks us with sometimes may seem far-fetched if not impossible, but deep down we know that He’s more than able to help us walk it out.
What we object to, however, is the changes that are required both in and around us when we say ‘yes’. We resist these changes because, regardless of how destructive, draining, or distracting a thing, person, or habit is, we’ve become so comfortable with their presence that we view amputation as loss instead of liberation.
Why Saying "Yes" to God Feels Disruptive
But what if I told you that God isn’t prying what you’re comfortable with from your hands? What if I told you that your ‘yes’ was enough to disrupt your comfort from the inside out?
This disruption begins subtly, almost imperceptibly, but it happens.
What follows doesn’t look like chaos but a discomfort that cannot be articulated, mainly because you barely understand it.
It’s an internal struggle as the version of you that said ‘yes’ to God tries to resist becoming the version of you that will walk out your ‘yes’.
I know all of this can sound ominous and even daunting, but the good news is that at 40, I said ‘yes’ and can offer some insight into what to expect.
Several signs indicate you’re outgrowing your old life, but we’re going to explore 2 specific ones.
Sign #1: Losing interest in old habits
The internal struggle of becoming is a necessary part of the process to move us into alignment with the purpose we’ve committed to. This repositioning forces us to do two things:
Perform an Audit of What Competes for Your Attention
1. This audit doesn’t just tell us what these things are or where they exist, but how much of our time, effort, and energy they require. Perhaps, it’s not that we no longer find joy in the things we once did. Perhaps it’s that we are awakened to the fact that the return they provide when compared to the investment of time they require leaves us in a deficit. Fear of change often causes us to delay what we already know God has confirmed. I explored this further in Why We Delay What God Has Already Confirmed.
Identify the Broken Areas Your Habits Were Hiding
2. We don’t always hold on to things purely because of nostalgia. There are many habits, behaviors, and relationships we adopted as crutches. We’ve used them for so long that we’ve perfected the art of walking uncomfortably with a limp instead of addressing and fixing what’s been broken. Sometimes the habits we struggle to release are connected to unresolved emotional wounds. I wrote more about this in Signs Unhealed Emotions Are Affecting Your Daily Life.
The beauty of your ‘yes’ is that you aren’t repositioned while carrying your broken pieces, but you’re repositioned whole. Losing interest in old habits isn’t just that you’ve outgrown them but that you no longer need them.
We're learning how to live from our new identity in Christ rather than our old survival patterns.
2 Corinthians 5:17 is a declaration of this truth, revealing that old things have passed away and in Christ all things have been made new.
Sign # 2: You Begin Craving Depth.
Surface-Level Living No Longer Satisfies You
There’s a reason Instagram reels and TikTok impact us the way they do. They expose us to just enough of a curated image or video to pique our interest without revealing the truth. This is what makes sitting down with our devices in our hands so mind-numbingly addictive and also destructive. We scroll for hours, hoping something will hold our attention long enough for us to feel connected to the person on the screen.
When we begin to align our lives with what our ‘yes’ requires, surface-level anything no longer fits.
Who we were before we answered His call was a curated experience. It was a refined combination of our history, upbringing, goals, and desires. We built and revealed who we were based on the audience that was watching. How much or little of ourselves we exposed was contingent on their response.
Spiritual growth often exposes the subtle ways we avoid depth, discomfort, and honesty with ourselves. I explored this more in Recognizing Spiritual Avoidance in Your Life.
In this time of becoming, it’s different because we have no previous point of reference. We long for depth in relationships, conversations, and even entertainment because we want to extract some meaning from them to help us understand this new version of ourselves. Psalm 42:1 perfectly sums this up, describing the soul longing for God the way a deer pants for water.
In our longing for meaning, we’re no longer searching for an audience to confirm who we are but for direction that helps us understand how to walk and live in our new identity.
Growth Often Begins With Internal Discomfort
The greatest signal of growth is internal discomfort, but it’s necessary for you to become all that God had in mind when He called you.
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