Are you
comfortable? Is life rolling along for
you from day to day with no major upheaval?
You’re blessed with financial stability, generally good health in your
family, decent relationships with family members, and you enjoy some close
friendships. Sure, there are daily
irritations, unpleasant events or people at work and periodic colds or viruses
in the family to deal with, but overall life is good. If this in any way describes you, be
thankful. But if you are a follower of
Jesus, I also have a word of warning for you…
Danger ahead! I, for one, know we don’t like
to hear this, but I must tell you that your life is going to change. If you’re going to grow spiritually and
become mature in the faith, there seems to be only one way God uses to make
that happen. And He wants you to be
mature, like His Son Jesus. The problem
with human nature (the Bible calls this “the old self”) is that when everything
seems to be going well, we tend to neglect God and become slack in our disciplines
of prayer and Bible study. Our times
with the Lord become dry and we are pulled away by worldly distractions. (I can speak from experience.)
The Scriptures tell us plainly that “…those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,
and He scourges every son whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:6). In
fact, if you go a long time without His discipline, it might be cause for
concern because the same passage also says, “But if you are without discipline,
of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not
sons” (Hebrews 12:8).
None of us are immune to taking God’s copious blessings on our lives for
granted. When we do that, there always seems
to be the potential for a downward progression from that point into
indifference, then apathy and finally complacency. Complacency is the worst because, not only do
we become numb (lacking emotional feeling) to our drift away from God and give tolerance
to sin in our lives, but we even adopt an air of self-satisfaction about our
state. In truth, our self-satisfaction
is self-deception.
Jesus had strong words to address this condition in His Church. The risen, glorified Christ as He revealed
Himself to the Apostle John, dictated letters to seven churches, which John
recorded in the book of Revelation. The
last of those letters was to the church at Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) where
complacency had gained a stronghold. It
seems that complacency has a way of becoming contagious, infecting whole church
congregations. He severely rebuked this church
for being neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm.
Even more, in their complacency they apparently had great material
blessings, thinking of themselves as self-sufficient and having “need of
nothing.”
Jesus bluntly counters their arrogance with His critique on their condition. His reaction is quite graphic. Like tepid coffee or lemonade, they are
sickening to His taste, and He tells them He will spit (the literal word here
is vomit) them out of His mouth.
Contrary to what they thought of themselves,
He said, “You do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and
blind and naked.” He reminds them that those
whom he loves he reproves and disciplines, and He warns them, therefore, to be
zealous and repent.
There is a divine purpose, then, in trials.
Though the Lord is not the author of evil, He may well permit the evil
to fall on us, as He did with Job, to develop godly character in us. As long as we think life is basically under
control (meaning our control), we are not likely to be fully dependent upon God
and trusting Him moment by moment with our whole life.
When the inevitable times of testing come, may God grant us the grace and help our faith to say,
like Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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