I recently spoke to a young woman who told me her world had been recently rocked. Her boyfriend of two years had ended their relationship. She was at a loss; the plans for her future all involved him. “Now what?” she was asking. She was inquiring of the right person, for my world has been rocked so many times over the years, I am an expert.As I wrote last week, we are all creatures of comfort. Our bent is to seek out what makes us feel good, and to resist that which brings discomfort. Yet, God routinely ignores what we want so as to give us what we need. So he will occasionally allow our worlds to be rocked, disturb our comfort, and leave us with a sense of desperation. Is it because he is mean? No. It is because he loves us so deeply.Our comfort can be a blessing and often is. I am so thankful for my wife, my home, my car, my well-stocked fridge, my ministry. Yet, there is always a danger to my comfort. I can rely on it rather than the Lord. It can become a substitute for him. Subtly, as my comfort is increased, I can move away from relying on the Lord and instead on my well-being for security.As the Lord told Moses, he is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14). Not in a bad way, mind you, but because he wants the very best for us and he created us to be in a committed relationship with him. Anyone or anything encroaching on that is dangerous because we were created by the Lord and for him. To replace him with someone or something else is akin to running a diesel engine with unleaded gasoline. It causes great damage.Thus, because he is protective of us, he sometimes allows our worlds to be rocked so as to encourage us to return to our first love. He is not committed to our short-term comfort, but rather to our preparation for Eternity. There, he will be the sole focus of our attentions. Nothing else will matter. So if he has to rock our world to prepare us, he will do that.The young lady with whom I spoke probably doesn’t realize that her boyfriend had become her idol, her source of security. She probably doesn’t yet realize the Lord is protecting her. But she will, if she continues to seek him. Looking back, she will see his protective hand at work, just as I have seen it in all of my world-rocking experiences. And she will thank him for the painful experience because she will recognize she needed it.I revealed none of this to her. I merely listened, shared with her an appropriate Scripture, and then prayed for her. That is what she most needed. When our worlds are rocked, it takes time for us to regain our bearings and to figure out the meaning of it all. I left it to the Holy Spirit to do the revealing in his own time. Make no mistake, however, the rocking of her world, and of ours, is meant for our good, even if it is very painful in the present. His love for us is that deep.© Jim Musser 2019