Pastor Simmie Richard
The Lord always wants to do so much more than we have ever experienced!
Isaiah 55:8 reveals His “wanting to do more” heart,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. (9) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
I believe that He wants us to stretch our ability to receive from Him even the more.
“O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!”(Romans 11:33).
Ezekiel saw a vision of God’s temple in heaven in Ezekiel 47:1-10. Water flowed from under the threshold of the temple, and the further it went the deeper it became. The water rose from ankle deep to over his head.
Everything that the water touched was healed. I believe that this scripture can easily be applied to today. God is in the process of pouring out His Spirit on all flesh, and He will continue to manifest Himself in an ever-increasing way until the catching away of the church! We need to keep ourselves open to receive more from Him, and not be satisfied with our present relationship with Him.
Complacency will hinder us from receiving His best in these days! We all have the tendency to be content with where we are in God, and He wants to push us to receive more! You may think that things are “good” now between you and the Lord, and that “good” is really the enemy of God’s “best” for you an me!
Jesus spoke to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2. These folk had “good” works (vs.2). They were busy about kingdom business. They were spiritually mature; they knew the false from the real (vs. 3). They patiently worked and were not “weary in well doing” (vs. 3). But Jesus rebuked this hard-working, busy church! He told them that they had left their first love for Him (vs.4)! He told them to repent and be restored to their first affection for Him and the things of God. They had become COMPLACENT.
Webster’s dictionary defines COMPLACENT as, “marked by satisfaction and pleasure at one’s own personality, accomplishments, or situation; satisfaction about the security of one’s own position; careless acceptance of events around one; disinclined to act, to change, or to guard.”
COMPLACENCY is when the thrill of the new gives way to the SATISFACTION of the familiar. The chase is over. You feel that you have arrived. Just like the couple who are experiencing the “chase” of their “first love” for each other. They call, write, and just do little things to let their partner know how much they care. After they are married, in the satisfaction and contentment of having “caught” their lover, they seldom show the intensity of the love they once experienced together. We can easily do the same in our relationship with the Lord Jesus.
COMPLACENCY causes the heart to become like fallow ground. Jesus compared the Word to seed and the heart to ground in the parable of the sower in Mark 4. He said that the wayside, stony, and thorny ground kept the Word from producing fruit. The Word is full of power to heal, change, and deliver us! But it is limited by the soil it’s in as to how much fruit it can bear!
Hosea challenged complacent Israel in (Hosea-10:12, “Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it’s time to seek the Lord, til He comes and rains righteousness on you.” Fallow ground is untilled and uncultivated ground. It is undisturbed ground that does not change year after year. It has no new growth, and no fruit or harvest during the annual seasons. It’s unproductive.
When I was young, we lived in the country and several fields surrounded our house. Farmers cultivated some of the land annually, and some was left uncultivated. I could smell the cultivated soil each spring, and enjoyed watching the farmers plant their seeds in anticipation of harvest season. I noticed that the seeds that sometimes sprinkled onto the fallow, uncultivated ground would not sprout! The fallow ground had a crust on it maybe 1/8 of an inch thick. And no seed could permeate the soil.
There are two kinds of hearts, the fallow and the plowed. People with hearts that are fallow ground are content with where they are in life. They are satisfied with their present knowledge of and fellowship with Jesus, and simple aren’t interested in being disturbed out of their comfortable lifestyle! “Just give me a little something once a week on Sunday to keep me going, to satisfy my conscience, and I’ll be just fine,” they may reason. They never change, year after year as life goes on. There is no new growth spiritually, and no fruit or harvest to be shown. They don’t change, nor do they help others change. They lack zeal and the attitude of spiritual adventure. They are smug and satisfied.
In contrast, people whose hearts are cultivated or plowed are like the good ground hearer in Mark 4. They hear the Word and produce fruit, some 30, some 60, and some 100 times as much as the seed that was planted! They are those who have yielded to the plow of repentance and confession. Contrition and humility created by discontentment have broken up the soil of their hearts. Their hearts are ready for the seed of the Word.
Where are you right now in your relationship with Jesus? Are you satisfied? Do you even care? Perhaps COMPLACENCY has caused your heart to harden to the things of God. Are you excited about Jesus and what He is doing in you and in the world or have you honestly left your first love with Him and find yourself just “going through the motions” of church life week after week? Friend, there is so much more that He wants to do in you and through you. Would Jesus look at you and say as He did to the church in Ephesus, “I have somewhat against you because you have left your first love?” He would also say to you, “Remember from where you have fallen, change your heart and mind (repent) and begin to chase after me the way you once did.” He longs to have the “first” place in your life instead of the last. Would you pray this prayer of repentance with me right now and allow the Holy Spirit to break up the fallow ground of your heart?
“Dear Heavenly Father, I confess to you that I have allowed myself to become COMPLACENT and SATISFIED with my relationship with you. I confess that I have left my first love with you. I earnestly desire a fresh start. I ask you to forgive me for every sin that I have committed in thought, in word, in action, or in motive. Thank you for forgiveness and cleansing now by the blood of the Lord Jesus. I ask you to create in me a hunger for you and your word. Draw me to yourself and stir up a fresh passion in my heart for you. Thank you for forgiveness, cleansing, freedom, and for restoring my first love to you, In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”
