So, yesterday I joined my church’s missions committee. It was something totally out of the blue. I was sitting in service listening to a missionary talk about the work he and his family have done in Japan for the last several years, and I suddenly felt God nudging me to join the missions committee.

It was weird because 1) I honestly already have too much to do, since I’m on the Sunday worship team and working with the youth group every Saturday night, and 2) I hadn’t had any interest in the missions committee before yesterday. It wasn’t even a blip on my radar. But it was pretty clear to me while I was sitting in the pew that God wanted me to join the missions committee. Even my husband was shocked when I told him about it, but since it was God talking to me, well, He must have a reason for it.

What’s most interesting to me is how much God has changed what I care about in the past few months. Several months ago, I clearly heard God telling me that He wanted me to write my latest book specifically for the non-Christians in Japan. Since then, I’ve started being more interested in my ethnic culture, whereas I hadn’t had much interest in it at all for most of my life. I’ve also been more interested in missionaries to Japan, of which our church has several. So I guess being interested in the missions committee is a natural extension of that new interest.

I think this new interest in these things is from God because of what He wants me to do with my fiction writing. He steered me in a new direction and now He’s opening my curiosity to things with a passion and fervor I hadn’t had before. I’m really enjoying what I’m learning and stepping outside my comfort zone.

I think I’ve always been afraid of stepping outside my comfort zone because I always assumed it would be very uncomfortable. The idea of doing new things is uncomfortable, but actually doing those things is nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be. And I’ve found myself changing so that doing these new things isn’t as difficult as they would have been only a year ago.

All that to say, I want to encourage you to think about things that are outside your comfort zone. It might be scary to consider, but God does watch over us. I’ve been surprisingly pleased and excited about what’s happening in my life and the new directions I’m going. I can’t guarantee that would be the same for you, but God does want us to serve Him with a joyful heart. And right now, unexpectedly, my heart is overflowing with excitement.