For the past week and a half the Lord has kept talking about complacency in the Church. This is a hearty topic, at least in my mind it is, so I have given it quite a bit of prayer. What is complacency? According to Websters, it is self satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies; smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc. The word that really jumps out at me is ‘smug’ – smug people are usually arrogant or prideful people. Individual believer’s make up the Church so for a church body to become complacent, it first begins in the lives of the individual believers. If as believer’s we have become satisfied in our spiritual journey, or with the way programs are working in our “churches” than we are becoming comfortable in our faith in Christ. We might be becoming stagnant in our individual walk with the Lord, this is a dangerous place to be as the Church. Complacency implies a lack of spiritual growth, a lack of growth means a lack of maturing believers, a lack of maturing believers means a lack in multiplying more mature believers. This can open the church up to deception and deception is alive and well.

When I think of the complacency of the Church, a scene from a movie my boys used to watch keeps coming to mind. In the scene, three teenagers are on the hunt for a pearl and they end up in a casino where there should be a third pearl, while they look around for it they are constantly offered a cookie, so as they eat these cookies they become more and more comfortable in the environment of the casino, and they begin to forget what their mission was, the whole purpose as to why they were there in the first place. Their enemy used tainted cookies to deceive them, they had to wake up. We have to wake up! Church, complacency is a sin. If we have forgotten who we are and what our purpose is we are in TROUBLE. Look what Christ has to say to the church in Laodicea regarding their complacency. “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other.” (Rev. 3:15) I hope that stings a little! We can not be lukewarm. We can not straddle the fence. We are either all in with Him or we are not! They were more satisfied with their material well being to the point they were completely unaware of how great their spiritual need had become. We cannot grow in spiritual maturity if we are only living for worldly things and are lazy in our pursuit of knowing Jesus deeply and intimately. Hebrews 5:12 “You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again about the basic things of God’s word.” We have to wake up. We have to start growing up. Today is the day of salvation! Today is the day to repent! (2 Cor. 6:2, Mark 6:12, Luke 24:47) If you have been living your walk with the Lord in a stagnant, self-satisfied state, you are complacent, and you need to repent. That’s it. StraightUp!

“Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. “ A. W. Tozer