We were not created for complacency. Today is a call to action as we examine our lives through the lens of scripture.
Tribe, A Jesus Revival
S4 E15: Complacency.
Hey everyone! It's Britt Vega, host of the Tribe Podcast. Here at Tribe, we believe that we are all called to live, love, and pursue our God-given purpose within the context of a tribe. Not only were we created by a God that is community, love is our identity and calling. It's literally in our DNA. If you want to hear real stories of God's great love and faithfulness, you're in the right place. Let's get into our message for today. - Hey everyone! Welcome back to the Tribe Podcast. I am so excited that y'all are here. Today we are talking about complacency. And I know that as we're listening to this and we're all in different seasons in our life, that word creates many different feelings for all of us. And for me, I get excited because I know that God did not create us to be comfortable and to become complacent in any area of our lives. So it feels like a challenge and I love being challenged to grow. Complacency by definition. And this is not the biblical definition. It's a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger or defect. It also says smug satisfaction with an existing situation. Wow. I mean, I read that and I think, yeah, I don't want to be like that. That's not the legacy that I'm leaving behind. It's not who God has called me to be as one of his children. Honestly, I see it as kind of like a dead end, one where our spiritual growth isn't happening because we are just so comfortable sitting in our own mess. And in preparation for this message, I started doing a little bit of research into like, why do people become complacent? And here's a list that I put together. Obviously, this is not like a complete list and it doesn't really have any backing. It's just the research that I did. But it came down to four things. And these four words kept coming up as I was looking into it and digging into like why people become complacent in their lives. And they are safety, insecurity, habit and fear. And I want to kind of briefly just touch on these four things because I believe that they are things that we've all wrestled with like in one season or another. And what happens is when we become so comfortable with who we are or with what our days look like in our routines and we take God out of that equation, the result is that we have a false sense of security and safety because true safety and security comes from the Lord. And when we take him out of the equation, he's absent. And the only way to fix this is to reconnect with God because he is our source. He is life and truth and grace. When we get into this mindset of having habits and hear me say that habits are great. In fact, Pastor Jackson preached on this exact topic on the podcast over the summer, habits are good and they can be so life giving, but only when they are aligned with where God wants us to be because habits outside of the will of God or who he has called us to be aren't going to get us to heaven. And I know that sounds harsh, but that's the reality of it. Like when we get to heaven, God's not going to ask us if we went to the gym every single day. Or if we ate gluten, I mean, like it's these little things that we get fixated on that aren't inherently good or bad. They just are. But if they're outside of the will of God, they can be viewed as sinful or as skewed from where God is calling us to be fear. Wow, I could preach a whole message on this. So fear is tied so closely to our level of trust in our creator. And most of us either know that and don't care have never heard of it or are just too scared to take our relationship with the Lord to the next level. But at the end of the day, y'all, when we are worrying or we are fearful about something going on in our lives, we can take a moment or two to do a little self reflection and processing to realize that it is tied to our level of faith and whether or not we believe that God is for us and is going to make it good and work it out on our behalf. And I mean, that's every area of life. That is our finances. It's our relationships. It's our relationships with our relationship with Jesus. It's politics. I mean, again, across the board. Okay. So about a year ago, my friend Cassia sent me a video on what I would call a really good visual of complacency. And I shared about it previously on a wellness Wednesday for those of you that are faithful listeners, you'll get to hear the story again. But it's a good one. Essentially, there was a guy preaching on stage in front of a big group of people. And he asked a few men from the audience to come up to the stage and make a circle around him. So he was standing in the middle by himself. And then his volunteers from the audience were holding hands with one another and they were in a circle around him. And he said that when he was in seasons where his people were healthy and he was hearing from God and God was saying move. And he was telling his friends that his circle moved with him. And he kind of demonstrated this like he used the stage and he moved from one area to another and the group moved with him. But he said in seasons where there was dysfunction or things were out of order, that circle of friends became his cage because they were no longer moving when he felt led or called by God to go in a direction or to move. And y'all, that is the epitome of complacency. It is settling for the friends around us or our tribe because it's easier to do that than to move on. But when we choose to essentially stay stuck like that, what happens is it limits our ability to do kingdom work because these friends are holding us back from all that God has created us to be and to do quite frankly in the brief time that we have in this world. I mean, scripture is so clear. We're here for just a minute. And when we are attached to the vine, Jesus teaches us who can and can't be in our lives. So as we're kind of going through this weeding process and choosing not to live a complacent life, God doesn't just leave us by our own and say good luck, you know, I hope everything goes well. No, when we are attached to the vine and we have that personal relationship with Jesus, he is going to make it abundantly clear who should and should not be in our lives. And hear me say that one of the hardest things that we will ever go through in life is trying to decide or decipher if we are going to hold on to people or if we're going to hold on to God. Because oftentimes we cannot do both at the same time. So we have to decide where we're going to sacrifice. You know, I think a big part of getting stuck in the cycle of complacency is sort of twofold. It's harboring unforgiveness and it's letting go of control. And I'll just tell you right out of the gate, I am speaking from experience in both of these areas. Like I have lived probably more seasons in these two categories than I have in what I would call this like healthier version of my life and walking out my faith and leading my children that I'm going through right now. So let's kind of break these down and I'll tell you what I mean. The first is harboring unforgiveness. So instead of loving and releasing and letting go of our need to be right and have our side of the story explained, we hold on to the hurt. We make it a point to treat the other person who hurt us differently instead of choosing to do the work to heal in our own lives and then to move on. And the problem with this mindset, well, honestly, there are a lot of problems with this mindset. But the main issue that I see with holding on unforgiveness is that it keeps us in this unhealthy cycle of never being able to break free and move on. Like, I don't know how else to say it. We aren't loving like Jesus and continuing to meet together. Instead, we're choosing to be different and create separation. And what we're doing, whether we're doing it subconsciously or we're aware of what we're doing is we're letting the enemy and y'all, we are giving him a seat at a table that he was never meant to sit at, harboring unforgiveness keeps us stuck in the crazy cycle. And it makes it really, really hard to get out of which is why harboring unforgiveness and complacency go hand in hand. The second thing is the idea of letting go of control. It's giving up every area of our lives and choosing the lift for Jesus. When we fall into the unhealthy pattern and the mindset of saying things like, well, this is just how I am, like you can take it or leave it. I've been like this my whole life. This is just what I do. And this is what I don't do. It's just as unhealthy as harboring unforgiveness and it keeps us stuck. In fact, this type of mindset can be completely detrimental to our faith life. It keeps us from living out all that God has planned and prepared for our lives. And I'm going to give you a couple of real life examples. I know this first one sounds small, but it's so big for me because I am breaking these little chains in my own life. And then I'm seeing the fruit that's being produced from it. Ever since I had my oldest son, Noah, I have not been a good sleeper. And that could just be a product of the circumstances. I was a single mom with my oldest son, so I was wearing a lot of hats in that season, but I just was not a good sleeper. And for a long time, I settled for that. Like I actually would tell people I labeled myself as a bad sleeper and I became complacent with that title. But then one day I just decided like, okay, that's not who I want to be. And there are things that I can do and steps that I can take to be different. So I went through multiple sleep studies and tests and I met with my entire team of doctors who decided that for a short season, I was going to need to start a prescription sleeping pill. And we all agreed like that was going to be a good step for me. So I started taking it and took it for a long time and literally thought like I would never be able to stop taking this medicine because I told myself for so long like I can't sleep without it. And I'm not a good sleeper. Again, like labels that I put on myself. So after seven or eight years, you see what I mean? Like it wasn't short term. It was a long time. I took my time to like come off of the medicine. And again, I met with my team of doctors and make sure I understand like what my body was going to be feeling and what that was going to look like. And y'all, I have not taken any kind of sleep aid for a really long time, like years now. But what happened is I went through a season of settling and putting labels on myself and complacency before I decided that I wanted to be different. And I wanted to make a change in my habits. And I'm going to give y'all a little more serious and maybe relatable example. The friends that I used to hang out with gossiped constantly like they found their identity in it. So I chose to separate myself from those types of people because I found that I was doing the exact same thing. Y'all have heard me say before, Maurice Claret says, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. And I mean, my future was going to be gossiping. And like, y'all, I thought I was going to be friends with these people with this group of friends forever. So I stayed and I continued to sin because I was afraid of losing friends. But just like taking the sleeping pill one day, I grew up and I made changes and I started to get to know who Jesus was and who he had called me and created me to be. And I decided that I don't want to be known as someone who talks about other people. And listen y'all, I am not saying I'm perfect. Like everyone else, I fall short every single day. We all have our bad days. But by intentionally choosing to surround myself with healthy friends, it made this transition easier because when I am with my inner circle of friends and we are at the lake house or we are shopping or we are praising Jesus at church in the front row or we are gathering together and we're breaking bread. Listen at me say this because a lot of you are probably going through something similar right now. We are not talking about other people. We are not wallowing in our circumstances. We are talking about the goodness and the faithfulness of God. And that's who I want to be known as. It's what I want my kids to know about me and to see in the way like that I live my life and it's the type of friend and sister and daughter that I want to be. Y'all, please hear me say that I know relationships are hard and I'm not trying to like dumb this down or simplify it. In fact, I know some of you listening right now are on the fence with a relationship, a friendship, a family member to in your own life. But hear me say, I thought I would always be friends with certain people. But when I broke free with Jesus from those unhealthy relationships, I started being able to love my friends and my family right where they are. But it was a choice and it took me giving up control and trusting God in the process. The grass is greener and healthier and thriving on the other side. And I hope that encourages someone today. And Devanaya, one verse 12, it says, "At that time, I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like the wine left on its drugs, who think the Lord will do nothing, either good or bad." Y'all, when I came across this reading that those who are complacent will be punished, it tells me that complacency is not pleasing to God. Y'all, I'm just going to tell you right now, he did not form us in our mother's wombs and create a purpose and a plan for our lives to just be mediocre, like to just wake up every day and to do the bare minimum and just be comfortable where we are. He does not want us to settle in our relationships or in our faith life or our finances. He wants us to grow up and branch out and be who he created us to be. And hear me say that this side of eternity, we all have work to do, me included. I am not here preaching from a place of high and mighty. In fact, I am sharing this message with you as a tool to use to learn where I have had to grow and where I have fallen short. Because I have lost and I have failed and I have sinned and I have mourned and I have fallen short and I have been complacent, which is why I know that we serve a big, big God that will carry us through. Because if he will save a sinner like me, y'all, he will do it again. One of the most heartbreaking lessons that I've learned is that there are consequences for being complacent. In fact, it limits our ability to love others the way that we were created to love and it holds us back from impacting the kingdom of God. It creates fear and insecurity and doubt in our own lives. And in some of my greatest seasons of heartbreak, I can literally look back at a God that was so faithful and loving and realize that I had grown complacent, but that God was still faithful to bring me through to the other side. And he does that because he loves us. He says that we are the apple of his eye, that we are his children and that we have been set apart to do good. And you know that video that I shared earlier about the circle and the cage, that speaker ended his message with a call to action and I'm going to do the same for y'all today. A lot of times we are sitting in the rut of complacency because we have not or are not willing to name our illness. We are literally just sitting in our mess. We are wallowing in the sickness and disease because it is easier to stay in that place of unhealthiness than it is to stand up and say, I want to be different. Y'all staying in that mess, whether it's control or bitterness or unforgiveness, it cripples us and it literally holds us back and steals our peace and our joy. All of the good things that God created for our lives, it holds us back from that. You know, God tells us that he has already given us everything that we need to go out and live for him. He literally equips the unequipped, but we have a choice to make. Are we going to accept the challenge and rise to the occasion? Are we going to stay comfortable? Are we going to stay sick or do we want to get healthy? Like do we want Jesus to be a part of our lives? Because I can tell you right now that God has already parted the waters and created a way for you to get up and be different. God has spoken it. He has declared it. He has gone before you and created a path where it otherwise seems like there was no way you just have to get up and walk it. We are only still sick because we have grown complacent, but we can get up today. We can name our illness and we can walk in a new direction. Y'all, today is the day that the Lord has made and it is time to get up and to be healed in the name of Jesus. So what are you going to choose for this next season of your life? Because God is saying that it's time to get up. Let's make heaven crowded. I'm praying for y'all and I'll see you next week.