Complacency

The complacency of fools will destroy them.

I’m fine.

I’ve got it together.

I don’t need help!

Be careful, these are lies from Hell.

We sojourn in this world. Wait! Sojourn? We don’t even know what that means today. Do you? Do you Gordon? (Why do I talk at myself?) It means we are temporary residents here.

Through the grace of God, we realize we are just passing through. Passing through what? We are passing through our home, Earth. We seem to forget that at times. We get comfortable in this skin of ours. We get comfortable about our place in this world; doing everything we do and enjoying everything we have. We love our easy content feeling of safety and security. It can be individually or corporately. We kick back and look at what we have and say, “Awe, the fruit of my labor! Isn’t it nice?”

Watch out! This means we are getting hard. This attitude of complacency is a hardening of our hearts. It’s like the cooling of a HOT liquid metal as it cools; it’s slowly becomes solid and can no longer move.

I love analogies. We can read one thing and see another too. Not that the first view, the literal reading was wrong or incomplete. No! Not at all! Yet, looking at one thing and seeing a deeper meaning or comparison is exciting. That’s what I’m talking about with this picture of steel as it cools. Heated, it’s flexible and moldable. Metals in liquid form seep and penetrate into places they cannot go as a solid.

Hot Christians, rather than lukewarm or cold, are liquid ready to fill in where others won’t. They gladly pour out into the world to spread the heat from the Word of God, through the love of God expressed: the Gospel of Jesus. Aren’t we to melt personally and mold into the image of Christ? In liquid form we do that, we penetrate our surroundings, with the love of God. The sad thing is that Christians become complacent, resting on their laurels. They become the lees. Yeah, I had to look it up too.

Lees.

Easton’s Bible Dictionary, define this as:

(Hebrews shemarim), from a word meaning to keep or preserve. It was applied to "lees" from the custom of allowing wine to stand on the lees that it might thereby be better preserved (Isaiah 25:6). "Men settled on their lees" (Zephaniah 1:12) are men "hardened or crusted." The image is derived from the crust formed at the bottom of wines long left undisturbed (Jeremiah 48:11). The effect of wealthy undisturbed ease on the ungodly is hardening. They become stupidly secure (Comp. Psalm 55:19;Amos 6:1). To drink the lees (Psalm 75:8) denotes severe suffering.

Christians in the Western world easily become complacent.  Complacent or Complacency is closely related to lees. Our cooling off as Christians makes us too comfortable in this world. We forget we are just temporary residents here.

Our cooling off as Christians causes the Gospel message to slow in its spread to the entire world. Resting on our comfortable 401ks or other retirement plans, insurance plans and everything else we rely on rather than God. Taking advantage of such gifts in life is not only fine, it is wise. Yet, in doing so, the deceit of riches allows an open door to temp the influential. Don’t become a victim of self reliance and seductively lulled into being that Church Jesus described. You know the one that is poor, miserable and blind. Though they are collectively the rich of this world, they are paupers in the Kingdom of Heaven. Revelation 3:18 NIV

I have to stop. My daughter’s home!

Bye!

Though she may not think so, she's a higher priority than this!