Becoming
Sometimes we don't realise it, but comfort serves as a sort of idol for us, and this episode is about breaking free from that state because it's necessary for you to become all God would have you be.
My IG handle: kj.nifemi
My X handle: Holyplaywright
Hi, hi, hi. Welcome to the Rooted podcasts.
And let me first start by saying Happy New Year.
Welcome to 2026. I think it still feels so you're
saying it like, oh, we're in 2026, but yeah, welcome to 2026.
I pray that it's a blessed year for you and I pray that the joy
of the Lord is always manifest in your life all through this
year, in good times and in seemingly bad times.
Amen. So that aside, I want to say a
big thank you to everyone who was part of the Rooted podcast
last year. I started this podcast on the
7th of November last year, 2025, and I didn't know how things
would be. I wasn't sure of so many things.
I was skeptical, I was scared. I was definitely scared.
I was shy a lot of the time, but God didn't have me do it.
So I went ahead and of course, with the support of my friends
and family community, I did it. And here we are in 2026 is
actually the 10th episode, the first double digit episode like
Milestone Crockett. But yeah, I'm very, very happy
about that. I want to say big thank you to
all of you who have been listening to the episodes of you
who follow, all of you who have your notifications turned on.
I've seen a big thank you to you.
I'm saying a very big thank you to you.
I did not take it for granted. I know time is such an important
thing. You know, literally you can use
15 minutes an exam to determine whether you're going to pass or
fail an exam. So in fact, that you can give me
some, some minutes of your time each week.
Listen to my episodes. I'm grateful.
I'm grateful is what I'm trying to say.
I'm really grateful. Some of you, I would see you
maybe share some of the episodes.
Maybe you'd say something. Some of my friends would tell
me, oh, somebody shared an episode and I'm like, oh wow,
are people actually being blessed by what I'm saying?
I mean, that's the goal, but it's still surprising.
Someone listened to me that she was listening to an episode and
after she listened to the episode, she prayed for me and I
was really touched by it. There was an episode I actually
wanted to see. Oh, I would love it if you all
would pray for me. Whenever I come to your mind or
if it comes to your mind, just say what a prayer for me.
Like, Lord, help this boy. Lord, continue to strengthen him
for the work that you're using him to do and things like that.
But I was too shy, so I didn't see it.
But I think I'm saying it now. Please, if it comes from, I just
say word of prayer for me. I mean, man at bests.
So I run by the strength of God. So yes.
But again, I'm really grateful to you all, to all of you, to
all of you. I love you all so much.
If you could see me, I'd be blushing.
I'd love to meet some of you again.
If you ever feel like you want to ask me something or maybe you
just resonate to my episode, you can always DM me on X on IG.
You can always DM me. I'll try and like put a link to
my handles in the description of this episode.
I think I would do that because honestly speaking, I don't
remember my handles of head. So yeah, that's that.
And if you're new here, maybe you're joining us in this year.
I want to say welcome to the Rooted podcast here.
Timeless biblical truth is brought in a way that is real,
that is clear, that is heartfelt, that's a define.
And I hope that is your experience here.
I want to encourage you to stick around. 10106 is loaded.
There are going to be a lot of interesting things that will be
talked about here. So yeah, stay around.
I don't want you to miss out on that.
So join us and be rooted. So anyway, today's episode or
what I want to talk about South. Funnily enough, this was about
two months back as well. I think around the same time
when I started this podcast actually.
So God made me realize that I had made comfort and idol.
It was a hard pill to swallow, but I I knew, I was sure of it
that I had made comfort and idol.
He was using the whole story of the exodus to just explain some
things to me, which I'll explain a bit.
But I want you to imagine this. I want to like explain some how
to make something clear. So there's one scenario where
maybe a person is an addict and they of course, they have an
addiction that they're dealing with.
So he's like, they know that the addiction is affecting the
amount of his sudden, but they know that getting out of that
addiction or dealing with that addiction will require them to
leave their comfort zone. And because that's they just
stay with the addiction. So it's like they want to leave
or because of the discomfort, it will 'cause they don't leave.
But The thing is in that case people are around like if a
person is really dealing with an addiction, eventually it will
become clear to those around them that there's an issue.
So in such a situation, you can say, OK, you know what?
You've made comfort and idol in that situation.
It's like you're so comfortable with situation that you don't
care what happens. You don't care how bad it is for
you. There's that and it's quite
easy, not quite easy possible. It's it's somewhat clear.
You can tell that OK, you know what, this is a situation where
you are allowing comfort to hurt you.
Then there's another situation where you're not doing bad.
You're actually not doing bad. Like if a person sees you,
they'll say, oh, he's doing fine.
Or maybe deep down you know that there's room for more.
You know that you could actually do better.
You know that there's more potential inside you.
There are expressions of you or their sides to you that have not
seen the light of day, but for different reasons they haven't.
One of those reasons is the discomfort that will cost.
Like you just know that if you're going to have to put
yourself out there, you're going to have to discomfort yourself.
You're going to have to inconvenience yourself and call
that you decide. I'm not doing so bad after all.
In fact, some people even try and cover it up and it's like,
oh, I'm trying to be content again.
There's one language where oh, some people are so ambitious or
push themselves so much. It's like, oh, they want to do
this, they want to do that. And really it's just their own
ambition under. But then there's also the case
where you know you're actually capable of more than you're
doing now, or you know that you can be more than you are now,
but because of the discomfort, it will 'cause you decide not to
go ahead with it. There's that situation, even
though you're not necessarily doing bad where you are.
And that was me. So, you know, it could be
sometimes when I say comfort, comfort sometimes might be the
security that you have because sometimes doing some things will
require you to do it scared. So the security that you
normally have where you are, you no longer have that security.
You're doing something that you have not done before and all of
a sudden you're scared. In fact, in some situations,
it's almost like God gives you a vision.
It's like you want to manage things for God.
Like what if it does not happen? It's not good.
They're going to laugh at you. It's not good that they will
look at somehow it's me because of that, you just you kind of
close. I really hope that everything
I'm saying makes sense because a part of me is like, I don't
know, maybe people will not get it, but I really hope that you
get it. But the point is you're just
comfortable where you are. And because of that, maybe do
you have something I can do? But you procrastinate.
Like not every case of procrastination is really about
laziness. Sometimes it's fear.
It's like, oh, I'm scared of doing this thing.
I'm called that. You procrastinate.
Point is comfort becomes a God. And that was what happened with
me. So I I said I was going to talk
about the whole Exodus, Israelites, Egyptians, promised
lands and all that. Point is, the Israelites were in
slavery for years, decades. They were in slavery.
And so God hears a cry and he's like, I'm going to send you
help. I send Moses to lead them.
That's the Exodus, to lead them out of Egypt.
And so he's taking them to a promised land, the land that is
filled with milk and honey to normal common terms.
But never to get to that place, they have to go through a
wilderness. It's tough in the wilderness.
It's not comfortable. And all of a sudden, when things
get tough in the wilderness, they see it was better when you
were back in Egypt. I need you to kind of see the
parallel I'm trying to draw. Maybe there's a better version
of you ahead. But because what it would take
to get that version will really discomfort you so much, you're
willing to stay in Egypt. This was what was happening with
the Israelites and I think part of what makes it more difficult
is the fact that you've now got into that version or you've not
seen that version well enough. It's like the Israelites.
I think if the Israelites had seen the promise and if maybe
for example, they saw the horny or they had a sample, I don't
know how better to say that the sample of what the promise and
would be like. Maybe that would motivate them
more to go. But I think even at that, I
think they were quite an interesting bunch, human is
generally, but maybe that I motivated them, but they didn't
exactly have any. All they could go for was the
fact that God was leading them to a promised land in land that
had milk and honey. That was all that they had.
And maybe it's like that with you.
There's this vision that you have, but it's not tangible
enough. And so because of that, you're
like, do I really want to discomfort myself for this?
And so instead of going through the wilderness, you stay in
Egypt. And this was what was happening
to me. This is something that God was
making me understand. So try and pause and think, is
this you in any way? Are there probably potentials or
things or aspects to you that probably should have surfaced by
now, but because of the discomfort it will require they
haven't or it hasn't. So it was making me to
understand. It's about how I need to leave
my comfort zone. Sometimes you have to discomfort
yourself. Like if we look around the
world, literally the butterfly, first of all, has to, not the
butterfly, sorry. The Caterpillar has to first of
all. You know, I think I can run the
biological team by notes who end up being in a sort of cocoon
before eventually it breaks out as a butterfly.
There has to be some sort of oven that heats you up so that
you come out perfect or so that you come out in a better form.
So basically you have to go through the wilderness in order
for you to get to the promised land.
And here's The funny thing. When you think about David
speaking in psalmites, well, when he says, do I walk through
the value of the shadow of death, you are with me.
You have to realize or we have to remind ourselves of the fact
that the only reason why he can see that Jesus or God is with
him in the value of the shadow of death is because he is going
through the value of the shadow of death.
This is not a call or this is not me saying, oh, go and throw
yourself into suffering or go through stress.
But it's a thing where by virtue of the world that we live in, if
we're really going to attain the good things, if we're really
going to get those good things, meet those visions that we have
are going to have to sort of struggle for them.
People in different levels and different measures, people will
have different struggles, but all together everyone will face
some sort of resistance or the other.
And honestly, there's no way you will know if God is with you if
you do not go through the resistance.
Imagine watching a movie, for example.
Imagine watching a movie. There's no conflict.
Everybody just comes smiles. There's no problem at all.
You just go through it. You just got to look at me like,
again, this is not me trying to glorify suffering.
I'm, I'm, I'm really trying not to come over as, oh, the most
suffering in your life, the better the outcome of your life.
I'm not trying to say that. My point is that one of the days
I make movies, basically the fact that there's a problem and
then they can overcome that problem.
And so there's a version of you, but in order to get to that
version of you or there's a skill that you know that you
have, but in order for that skill to really come out all
good and nice, there's some discomfort that you have to go
through. So there was a Rooted Whitney
Family podcast that was sitting on the shelf, but I had to go
through some discomfort in order for it to come to life.
I had to humble myself. I had to be scared.
I had to learn. And I really don't like being a
learner. I don't like when it's like
something new. I don't know everything and I
just have to start. I had to go through that.
And so this was one that was making me understand that I just
had to throw aside. And it was not just even, I
think that's where I think even career wise, I just need AI
could be doing a little better. But I was just very laid back.
And why It was because I felt scared.
I felt inadequate. I felt like while I might be
doing well academically, I don't know how well to translate into
the workspace. So instead of me facing the
problem, I tried to just stay in my comfort zone.
So basically that was it. He was he was using the I'm
talking about God, he was using the Exodus to explain that to me
about how these people were literally willing to leave a
land flowing with milk and honey, something better than
anything their descendants had or had experienced and willing
to go back to a place of slavery, saying that it was
better for them simply because the way comfortable it was
familiar. Maybe comfort is not the word
that's striking you. Maybe it's familiarity.
Egypt was familiar to them. I hate my password.
Tell me she wasn't talking to me directly.
She was talking to a bunch of us and she says baby steps are
actually bigger than we think. When you realize that a baby's
first steps are the baby actually doing something it has
never done before, he or she, I think it does not sound right.
Like when the baby takes his or her first steps, how is this
baby doing something that they have never done before?
So it's not just you doing something.
This small amount is doing something you've never done
before. So that's such a courageous
thing. We will have them to leave their
comfort zone because while they are familiar to sitting down,
while they are familiar to crawling on the floor, there's a
version of them that can walk, that can run, and so they have
to discomfort themselves. So what do we then do?
What's the resolution in all of this?
I think 1 is to embrace being a baby.
Over the holiday. I was at my cousin's place.
They have such a wonderful family and we have kids.
One of them is 2 years old and I loved how she would just always
go back to the mom. She would always go back to the
mom, always go back to the mom, always go back to the mom, even
when she does something wrong that maybe the mum scolds are
like, oh, wear your clothes or something like that.
Maybe after she cries, she would end up going back to the mum.
So he's like, whatever the case may be, whether I'm annoyed,
whether I'm not annoyed, this is the person that will help me.
This is the person who I will find my strength from.
And he was just reminding me it was re establishing all that the
word of God has already told us about how we should be childlike
before God. So it's that kind of thing where
I just keep on going back to God when it's comfortable, when it's
not comfortable, when he's chastising me, when He's
encouraging me, when he's correcting me, when his love me.
I just need to keep on going back to him because if I'm
actually going to progress, he's the one that's going to help me
progress. So if you're going to leave that
comfort zone, if you're going to get through the wilderness,
you're going to need to rely on God.
And really being in the wilderness is where you actually
begin to appreciate God more. You appreciate him more when
you're in the wilderness than when you're in Egypt, because
it's when you're in the wilderness that you get to see
him provide manner for you in such a supernatural way.
So I think that's pretty much it.
Embrace the wilderness, embrace the wilderness.
And I think I just want to add, pray a lot, right?
Just talk to God, talk to God, talk to God, talk to God, stay
in communication with him as much as possible, as frequent as
possible. He doesn't have to look a
setting where he does not always have to be perfect.
Or just do it. Just just show up.
Just show up. So I think that's what I want to
see. I think it will really help you
for this year, 2026. You can always come back to it.
I think it's something that's going to be relevant even six
months down the line. Embrace the wilderness.
That version that you know is waiting for you at the end of
the wilderness can be achieved. So that's a wrap on the episode.
Stay with it. Bye.
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