Revive Spiritual Growth: Contentment Versus Complacency

The renewed mindset show with Rick U-Haas can be heard every Sunday morning at 9 am Eastern right here on WDJY 99.1. Straight Talk Today on Renewed Mindsets. Are you living in self-sufficiency and prioritizing your desires over God's? Do you feel spiritually satisfied without truly being aware of your relationship with Him? In this episode, we'll explore the consequences of complacency, such as losing intimacy with Christ and missing out on His purposes for us. Don't worry, we've got some suggestions to help combat complacency and ensure you're prepared for the future Right now. Let's go, boys. Hey, welcome to Renewed Mindsets. I'm Rick and I'm so glad you're here. Today. We're talking about the difference between complacency and contentment. Complacency is satisfied with where you are today, but puts no effort into trying to improve and grow tomorrow. Content is satisfied and puts forth great effort to move towards the goal. Let's go. So a few days ago, I was given a lot of thought to stagnant water. It was probably all the rain that we've had over the past few days and it was finally getting to me, but I found myself staring at this little pond of water by the edge of where I parked my truck. It didn't have anywhere to go. The hole was created when I drove too far up into the parking space and off the edge of the concrete and right into the yard. Hey, are you crazy? Are you crazy All of that stuff that would have been dangerous for a good driver? This hole filled with water, not because of its shape, but because it had nowhere to go. There was no groove in the hole for the water to escape, so it just sat there and that little pond had leaves left over from the fall and there was dirt. The water was all muddy and thick and gross. It's easy for me to picture how unhealthy it would be to drink out of a puddle like this and why I would think about drinking out of a nasty puddle. I don't know. But most of us would know that you don't need to look at that puddle and go grab a straw and Think, and this is going to be delicious. But how many of us drink from stagnant water in our own life, in our spiritual life? A Lot of us have. What I'm going to be talking about Today is spiritual complacency. Complacency, spiritual complacency, is when our spiritual life has become so stagnant that we get satisfied with the things that are less Than what God has planned for us. Now. This is different than being content, because God wants us to be content. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi and tells them that he has learned to be content in whatever situation he finds himself in. It says not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have Learned, in whatever situation I am in, to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound, and in every circumstance I have learned the secret facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need, I can do all things. Through him who strengthens me. That's Philippians, chapter 4, verses 11 through 13. Paul also tells Timothy that there's a great gain in godliness with contentment. In Timothy, chapter 6, contemptment in the Lord is a good thing. God wants to be our sole source for all of our needs, physical and spiritual. He wants us to be content with him. What he doesn't want it's for us to grow complacent. Complacency is the enemy of growth and if we want to see growth in our lives, we can't afford to grow complacent. When we're complacent in our spiritual lives, we're like that puddle. We've created a great place for the water of the spirit to puddle up in our lives instead of a riverbed for it to flow through. We're not meant to take what God has given us and just hold on to it. We were created to be channels of his holy spirit and as he pours into us, we should be pouring into others. Spiritual complacency is a dangerous spiritual condition. It leaves us vulnerable to the spiritual dangers around us and it leads to apathy. And sometimes it leads to outright rejection of Christ and his word and what it's called Time for a Star Wars joke. What's the internal temperature of a tauntaun? Luke warm, I guess you could say lukewarm nests. I'm such an idiot sometimes. In Revelation, chapter 3, verses 14 through 22, there's a letter written to the church at Laodicea. It's claimed to fame, according to Christ is that they were lukewarm, luke. Warmness is a spiritual condition that apparently Jesus can't stand. Another name for it might be complacency. Hmm, complacency is not contentment. Where contentment is finding joy in the blessings of walking with God. Complacency has stopped walking. I've got four signs of complacency here, and this is not an exhaustive list. There's probably a thousand, but I just want to get the ball rolling and maybe each one of you can ask yourself am I becoming complacent? The first one is that we view ourselves higher than what God determines to be true. In other words, we think we're doing okay spiritually when in fact we're not. We compare ourselves with others or even with our past failures, and we sense success, but instead Scripture encourages us to compare ourselves with the holiness of Jesus. That's from Luke, chapter 18. The second one would be we live in an attitude of self-sufficiency. You see it all the time. When you're reading Facebook, people are making posts I can handle life and what it brings me. That's what they say Every day. We trust in our own ability to understand, decide and act, believing that constant dependence on God is either a dream or a nightmare. This kind of dependence is not a reality we should experience. And you want to know how wise that statement is. It's in Proverbs, chapter 3, verse 5 and 6. If it's in Proverbs, it's wisdom. The third one is we are comfortable in the culture in which we live. But I'm telling you that a disciple of Jesus is never comfortable this side of heaven. And when we align ourselves too closely with political philosophies, groups, systems, lifestyles, we stop thinking and evaluating critically and spiritually. If we're too settled, we no longer strive for the kingdom of God, and then we miss out on what that kingdom promises. That's 1 John, chapter 2, verses 15 through 17. And finally, the fourth one is we're spiritually satisfied without real spiritual awareness. Jesus saved us, but we don't understand or desire a life with Him. Our faith is about who gets to go to heaven when they die, whether or not Jesus is there. We live like forgiveness of sin as a one-time transaction, but we don't live in constant repentance and confession. Our prayers are for shallow, tangible blessings, but not spiritual victories over the forces of darkness. That's Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 18. So what's the danger of complacency? How could reading God's Word, studying it, even show me that a person is living a complacent life? How about if someone was reading and studying the Bible in their recliner in the middle of rush hour interstate traffic? What about that? Now, I realize that that is extreme, but is it? Hear me out? Sometimes we are so focused on the doing of something, even Bible study, that we forget that there are others in the world. Our great commission is to go out into the world and make disciples, but if we isolate ourselves, even for studying the Bible, we can't see who or what is around us, good or bad. And if we aren't paying attention, then we don't see the real spiritual danger around us, and the bad part of that is that we no longer have intimacy with Christ, we're no longer part of His purpose and we're no longer prepared for the future. And the future is coming. It's in John, chapter 5, 28 through 30. Remember, I'll put all these Bible verses in the show notes. So we need to move toward a renewed faith. For most of us, we have seasons where complacency seems to take over. Our faith is a little lackluster. It's something we keep in our back pocket but we don't hold it in our hands. Like our lives depend on it. Have you been complacent? Do you claim the promises of Jesus but not concern yourself with living in oneness with Him? What have you done to get out of complacency? John, chapter 7, verses 37 and 38, says If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Jesus tells his disciples that our hearts are meant to channel water, not hold it in. Jesus doesn't tell them there to become lakes of fresh water or ponds of dirty water, but rivers of living water. Rivers bring life to wherever they flow, and in the desert area that the disciples grew up in, they understood the power of a river and what it meant to be near that water. Now where I live in the southern United States, we take water for granted. We get plenty of rain, plenty of rivers around us bringing us water, but the disciples of Jesus didn't have this issue. They knew how scarce water was when they were living in that area. Water meant life and whole communities were built around a clean water source. If we want our spiritual lives to become a river rather than a puddle, we've got to find ways to pour out what God has given us, and the biggest need is for us to take time to love our neighbors. Right now, depression and anxiety are at all time highs. We need to be offering people hope and love. Our spiritual rivers should be flowing out towards our communities and our loved ones. Now is not the time to hold our love or to hold back when it comes to being salt and light in this world. Christians need to let the river flow. One of the ways that I break up complacency in my own life is that I make some sort of change, find a way to break the monotony of my daily routine. And if you do the same things every day or every week. It's easy to look back and see that you're being complacent. If you read your Bible every morning, switch it up and try reading it at night too. If you're not involved with a small group at church, get involved. If, after church, you go out to eat with the same people all the time, switch it around and invite somebody new along. Find a way to bring some change into your life. The other suggestion that I would have is to seek ways to share what God is speaking to you. Sometimes you have to seek out the open doors of opportunity. Sometimes you have to knock on those same doors. Sometimes you need to get creative. Write a blog here's one. Start a podcast or a YouTube channel. And don't think I can't do it, because my mother retired of I don't know 10, 15 years ago I don't even know. I know she's an old lady pushing 80 and she's got a YouTube channel with like 3,500 followers. It blows my mind, but it's put an excitement back in her life, a vigor that she didn't have for a while. She was just getting bored, sitting around the house watching TV, not really doing anything, and now there's this excitement and it it rubbed off on her kids, because I'm like, if my mother can have 3,500 followers on YouTube, then I need to get this podcast going. No, I'm not jealous of my mom. It's kind of cool. But let's get back to what we're talking about. If you seek ways to serve him, he'll open up doors that you never knew existed. So you need to get ready because he will supply everything you need if you're faithful to give it all away. The soul of the sluggered craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. And just so y'all think I'm not picking on just you, I'm going to show you five signs of church complacency. One of them is that the church is far too easily satisfied. When a church is complacent, they're satisfied with incremental growth and minor achievements. They're celebrated as big wins and seen as an affirmation of effectiveness, but it rings hollow because they're marginal. If your church's big win was getting new carpet in the sanctuary, then your big win was carpet. That's not a really tall hill in the kingdom. The second way churches are complacent is that they're quick to make excuses. When a church is complacent, they're very quick to offer all kinds of reasons why they're not growing, why they can't do anything new, why that wouldn't work, why you get the point. Challenges are allowed to become obstacles and obstacles are allowed to become barriers, and then barriers become excuses. It's very easy to hide out behind these excuses and just live with the status quo. The next way that churches are complacent is there's never enough time. When it comes to complacency in the church, there's activity, but it's kind of like Do you remember veneered furniture? You used to have solid wood furniture and then you could get veneer, which was cheap wood underneath, but the very thin layer of the top was pretty and beautiful hardwood and it made you think that the whole piece was solid and beautiful like that. That's the way it is in the church. There's a veneer of activity and busyness, but it's not very strategic. More often than not, the 40 hours a week at church are spent doing what you enjoy and what gives you the most pats on the back, but not necessarily what advances the church. But since time's being filled, it's easy to dismiss it in other ways. You tell yourself there isn't enough time, but then you keep spending the time the way you always have and be in where you've always been, which, if you're living in a culture of complacency, that's perfectly fine. The fourth way that the church is complacent is when the church resists being pushed or challenged. In reality, you denounce these pushes or challenges, usually in the name of some superior sounding reason tied to some trivial theology or something that your denomination is very distinctive about. And even worse is when you reject new ideas based on your experience or knowledge as a seasoned leader. That's pride people. I had a friend in ministry who one time came up with a family Bible study and his reason to come up with this was that Sunday nights or Sundays themselves, the church tended to split people up. The men went to a group, the women went to a group, the kids split up and went to their own group and that was all day and there wasn't any time for the family on Sunday to gather and worship and study and be a family. So he thought it was a good idea to come up with this Bible study and went to his pastor and presented this to him and he said listen, for the people that have families that want to try this out, here's another option. And the pastor looked at him, didn't say this is a great idea. You worked really hard on this Nothing. He looked at my buddy and said, yeah, I'm not ready to give up Sunday night. Yet that's pride, pride, people. I'm not saying that you don't go to conferences or read books. You could be a book conference junkie. This is about openness to rethinking who you are, where you are and how you've done things, and even more, once you get a viable new approach, your idea, you have to be able to be willing to try it. Too often there seems to be an undertone implying that something new is An admission of being wrong in the past, so you don't implement anything that's new and cling to the old ways to protect your ego. And the final way that the church is complacent is when a church has had a measure of success and that's proven to be enough. Maybe your church was a church plant and you finally break the 200 member barrier, or you buy land or the building, or it's maybe when you finally go multi-staff or multi-service or multi-site, you can reach a certain level of success that pretty much fleshes out your initial vision. But what then? More baby on the line than you've realized. You've stopped dreaming, which means you've stopped pushing. I Remember a year or so ago I was watching ESPN when I was at the gym. Now, what's weird about that is I don't like sports and I hate the gym, but there was a interview with a coach I don't remember his name, but he was gonna coach the men's Olympic basketball team, so those of you that know know who I'm talking about. They asked him a lot of different questions, but one that stood out to me was about LeBron James finally winning his first championship with Miami and how he might compare to Michael Jordan, and the coach said that there was no comparing anyone to Michael Jordan. But then he said that the real question is how finally winning a championship would affect LeBron. Would it quell a fire or light a bonfire? Someone like LeBron James had craved the title for so long, and now that he had it, would he hunger for more or be satisfied and stop trying as hard as he did before? Would it be a catalyst? Would it make him coast along Far too many churches? Let the fires die. Now I'm gonna confess to y'all, so you don't think that I'm high and mighty and holier than now. I've been in what I would call active Christianity now for 30 years, give or take a few years, and when I say active Christianity at meetings, even 30 years ago, I thought I was at the pinnacle, because you know, that's what happens when you're in your early 20s. You think you got it all together, but over those 30 years, including 20 some years of ministry, I've had seasons of complacency. I wrote these five marks of complacency in the church easily, because I've either Manifested it or witnessed it all myself. But each and every time, if and when that complacency was broken, it was for one reason Someone realized it. So have you been a bit complacent lately? Maybe now you know, and that's a good thing. And now deep thoughts by Jack handy from Rick you house. If you ever crawl inside an old hollow log to go to sleep and while you're in there, some guys come and seal up Both ends and put it on a truck and take it to another city, boy, I don't know what to tell you. I just love to produce this show for you. I don't know if you can tell. The renewed mindset show is your show. My prayer is that you not only receive the message, but that you're entertained at the same time. I'm passionate about bringing you valuable content. Each week, many of you have reached out expressing a desire to support our ministry. If you resonate with our mission, visit our website at renewedmindsetscom and you can choose your preferred method Cash App, paypal, buy Me a Coffee. They're all there. It helps us continue this journey together. Thank you for being a part of the renewed mindsets community. Well, that is all for this episode of renewed mindsets. For a transcript of this show and scripture references, go to our website, renewedmindsetscom, and go to episode 112. While you're there, you can check out all our past episodes, read my blog about each show or click on that microphone on the bottom right corner of the main page. Leave Me a Voice Mail. I just may use it on a future show and if you like what you heard, do me a favor and tell somebody about it or text them a link. I can only do so much. From behind this microphone, you actually have the real influence over that person and their salvation. Until next time. I'm Rick. I love you, see ya. The intro and outro music for the renewed mindset show is Are you Ready? By Floodgate From the album Are you Ready? Copyright 2002, offbeat Ministries Incorporated. Floodgate can be found on Apple Music and iTunes. Rick, used with permission. The renewed mindset show with Rick Uhaas can be heard every Sunday morning at 9 am Eastern right here on WDJY 99.1. Say yo fuck you. Wellbeing.