Complacency is a killer disease for would-be disciples. As soon as you think you are in a great place with your disciplines and in your relationship with God, you are in trouble. Unfortunately, I have learned this (more than once) the hard way. Each time I think I’ve grown so close to Christ I could never fall away, I’ve quickly found myself spiraling downward. It’s not as if you wake up one day and decide to walk the opposite direction.
It always happens subtlety and slowly. You won’t even recognize it’s happening. You skip your morning prayer time, “just today”, because of something else going on in your life. Then you find yourself putting your needs ahead of others. The next morning you skip prayer time again. And so, the spiral begins…
The good spiritual habits we put in place in our lives do not earn us brownie points with God. What they do, however, is develop the mindset we need to forge a relationship with Christ. As an example, I get up early each morning to pray. Every day I sequester myself in the same place and put on the same meditative music. As soon as the first strains of music begin to play, I am immediately calmed and find myself being drawn into the presence of God. My mind knows what’s coming. This is the precursor to talking with the lover and Creator of my soul. It is the most awesome place. It is the space I was designed to inhabit.
As amazing as this time with God always is, life can come flooding in and tempt you to disrupt even such a positive and ingrained discipline. This is what Satan does. He looks for the positive spiritual habits in our lives and attempts to derail them. If he did this with force or blatant temptation, we’d recognize it for what it was and slam the door on the devil; but he’s far more clever. Unless we are ruthlessly diligent in being on guard against the dark forces, he will put the tiniest distractions in our path which will compound over time and sneak behind our defenses.
Which brings me back to complacency; a complacent Christian will never be a disciple. Disciples are meticulous in their decisions and actions. They relentlessly pursue love, perfection, and truth. They do so because Jesus is the epitome of these things. Disciples instill positive spiritual habits and disciplines in their lives and guard them to their death.
Have you given into complacency? Have you allowed good habits and disciplines to erode in your life? Worst of all, do you consider yourself above falling away from God at your current level of maturity? Complacency kills and must be guarded against always. We all are easy targets and susceptible to this insidious poison. If complacency has intruded upon your heart, set about weeding it out at once. The surest way to defeat complacency is to act. Wherever you’ve gotten lazy, get moving. Whatever habit you know you need to develop, begin immediately. Complacency cannot survive amid intentional activity. Do you wish to be a disciple? Get busy and destroy complacency.