There is a famous story by Richard Connell, published back in 1924. It's about a hunter who fills an island with prey to hunt...only his quarry isn't animals. It's humans. Killing other people, Connell's story says, is the most dangerous game.
But is it really? Sure, Connell’s most dangerous game can destroy our physical bodies, but there are even more dangerous games that can destroy our souls and our relationship with Jesus.
The five I’ll focus on in this devotional series are: comparison, conceit, complacency, compromise, and conformity.
Day 3: Complacency
We talked about how pride is the enemy of growth yesterday, but there’s another sneaky enemy of growth: stagnation and complacency. Stagnation may make a person unaware that he or she has plateaued, but complacency is when he or she is fine with no growth.
When you play this dangerous game, you are okay with not growing more towards Jesus.
Being a Christian is continually about growth. It is about fixing our eyes on Heaven and Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and striving to be more Christlike with every breath we breathe. But growth is painful. Growth is not easy. One of my favorite hymns comes from a verse in Psalms, chapter 139:23-24. It says this: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 51:2 goes a step farther: “cleanse me from my sin.”
Cleanse me. Search me. Test me. These are not easy things. They will shake up your status quo. They will lead you into unsafe waters, just as Jesus called Peter out to walk on the water. But it wasn’t easy for Peter to walk on water, just as it is not easy for us to look at ourselves and realize that there might still be some sin in us. There might be some comparison, some conceit, some complacency, some compromise, and conformity. Romans 3:23 reminds us that we have ALL sinned. Which means that, at any given time, there is ALL something that we could be doing better. Maybe we could be spending our time more wisely. Maybe we could be showing love to more people. Maybe we need to cleanse our impure thoughts, our tongues, our actions, our lifestyles. The Bible says lots of things that are not safe, and, without Jesus, they are impossible for us. It is impossible for us to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and grow without a Heavenly Hand reaching down to strengthen us.
But we must never settle for where we are if we wish to get where we are supposed to go.
When you play this dangerous game, you are okay with backsliding, so long as your status quo is not shaken up.
Another downside of complacency is that we can love our little, safe bubble way too much. We can make ourselves right at home and not bother to pick the weeds that are growing up around us. Our whole lives, our whole houses can be on fire, but as long as we don’t have to deal with anything painful, anything to push us out of our “okay comfort zone,” then we won’t budge from our chairs.
In essence, we become the living representation of this meme:
We become friends with our sin. We accept it. We welcome it in, shake its hand, and say, “hey, where ya been?” Because it’s so much easier to let it drag us down than to close our door. Because that will make Satan angry, and when Satan is angry, things get bad. Of course, while Satan’s wrath can last a while, it can never compare to the wrath of God, holy and just. And God is reaching out for us. He’s the one with this water in the meme! He’s holding the door open for you, calling for you! Satan wants you to slam the door and die in the flames, but God offers a way out.
But we’ll have to walk through the flames we already lit first.
We may have to cut some people that are bad influences out of our lives. We may have to go through a drug withdrawal. We may have to go to rehab, that Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, we may have to break up a relationship that goes against God’s Word.
And, quite frankly, it will hurt. But it is better than eternal compromise to keep that complacency—something that we’ll go into tomorrow.
We must be willing to make painful sacrifices in order to get rid of the silent monster called complacency.
How to win this dangerous game: replace complacency with change.
Bible verses:
(Hebrews 12:2)
(Psalms 139:23-24)
(Psalms 51:2)
(Romans 3:23)
(1 Corinthians 6:9-20)
(Colossians 3:5-6)
(Romans 12)
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