I have been stewing around this word complacency for a while now. I have thought about it when it comes to many things in our lives. Our relationships, our careers, our time, our churches....as you can see this word and subject can be a killer. Let me explain on several fronts.
First off complacency can kill us when it comes to our lives......let's take our health. We can become complacent about our health, we can eat too much, we can smoke or drink too much, we don't exercise enough and the list can go on and on, but the end result is we cause ourselves more harm than good when we are complacent with our health.
Second....relationships. We can become complacent when it comes to our relationships. We can take our significant other for granted. we can just go through our life and not work at our relationships and then one day before you know it, the relationship is over. Work on your relationship with your significant other, if they do not reciprocate then that is another issue but my friends if we are complacent with our significant other, then that relationship is sure to fail. Some of my friends have lost their children to death. Some of them think the words..."What if I...." but the fact is it was too late to act on the "what if's". Friendships can be the same way, We need to not be complacent when it comes to our friendships. I am blessed that I have renewed several friendships with people from my high school and college years. That was a time when we were full of life and wanted to have someone to hang out with. Spend time being (I want to use this term) "aggressive" when it comes to our friendships. If you don't then maybe the friendship will just lie dormant.
Third, How about your career? Are you satisfied where you are? some of you may be and that is perfectly fine but the danger is when we become complacent in our career we just tend to "skate by". We don't put our all into our careers and then you will find yourself not being challenged and become lazy in your work. Let me tell you, that has happened to me on several occasions in my life and I work to give my employer 100% and more. It is challenging, it is rewarding and I am enjoying the fruits of my labor.
Fourth, our time. Do you sit around watching a lot of TV and not taking the time to use your time wisely. Most complacent people think....."I can do that later" I had a teacher in high school use the saying and I don't remember who he quoted "why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?" A person who is not complacent is one who says "why put it off til tomorrow, when I can do it today" (Ok so I became complacent about writing this blog....One strike of complacency against me).
Fifth (and my last for this blog) is in our spiritual life. Let's talk about the spiritual life in our church. I believe in the words that can kill a church.."We have never done it that way before" These seven words breed complacency like never before. They foster an attitude as if everything is ok, but folks, its not. Christianity is dying in our country. We push it out of our schools, we push it even out of the church.....(what's up with that?) We become comfortable in our churches and the problem with that is that is not what Jesus wanted us to do. Look at the Apostle Paul. He was not complacent with sharing the good news. He took an attitude of "Whatever it takes" We should do the same.
Now about our personal spiritual life, one that I find myself on a roller coaster on between faithful and complacent. Are you working on your own spiritual life? It is easy for us to say "I don't have time" or "I will get to it" but that fact is we never will have enough time. We have to MAKE THE TIME! Take the time to work on your relationship with Christ everyday (I am talking to myself here) No excuses!!! For those who work in the church (me part-time) our church work is NOT working on our personal spiritual life! That is time we spend working for Christ but not developing our personal relationship with him. Take time to close off life, work, and all the distractions and spend time in His word and prayer. Get to know our Savior personally. Don't be complacent!!!!!! I have seen many good people in my life be complacent when it comes to our personal relationship with Christ....ME INCLUDED!
I want to end with this, We sometimes put ourselves in a box. We think the box is where we have to stay but really the box is the box of complacency. I came across a saying from Deepak Chopra. "Instead of thinking outside the box...get rid of the box!" That is my new life motto!
Just some ramblings of a former minister....
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