Complacent Christianity in the Last Days of the Church
by Joel Krooswyk
Chapter Five
- Credibility -
How can you be sure that what I've described can actually happen in your life? How can you know that what I've talked about isn't just my opinion? Several things point to the fact that you can become a fully devoted follower of God who doesn't look back.
First, I am a prime example that God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. I'm an electrical engineer, not a writer or a teacher, yet God used me to write this book. God is using me to strengthen and develop followers of Christ. How can this be? It still surprises me to this day, but it's very exciting.
I grew up in the church, a Christian all my life. However, I was complacent in so many ways. Reading the Bible was almost a chore. I had no interest in doing it. Church was more of an expected weekly appointment than anything else. I gave God a few bucks when I had the cash leftover that month. I didn't volunteer very often. Enough other people were giving of their time, so I shouldn't have to. My attitude was poor and my outlook was often negative. I found it easy to talk down about other people when they weren't around. I had no control over my anger, and I didn't care because I was usually right, or so I thought.
God convicted me of my sins of complacency, primarily through three different things. First, He used my guilt. I knew I wasn't complying with God's law. I knew I wasn't keeping many of God's commands. I wasn't keeping God's law even in my own eyes. God's moral standards are so much higher than humanity's standards. Once I really understood that, my level of guilt was not something I could ignore, much less create an excuse for!
Secondly, God used eternity to convict me of complacency. When was the last time you thought about how long eternity is? To humanity, a century is a long time. According to the Bible, the span of a man's life is 70 years, or 80, if he has the strength. In the scheme of things, that's not very long. Think about a thousand years. That's a long time to us. That's nearly 15 generations of life if each generation spans 70 years. To us, that is a very long time, but God has lived and will live forever.
Think about the fact that most people alive today don't remember life without automobiles, although they are a recent invention when thought of in reference to the rest of recorded history. God was here before there was an earth for us to create roads on! Eternity is so long that we cannot comprehend it. While we are alive, we plan for tomorrow, fully expecting it to come 24 hours from today. However, after our number of 24-hour days is up, we have to face an eternal destination. Death has a nearly 100% success rate (Elijah is an exception). None of us can escape it.
Do you even want to spend a single day in the fires of hell? How much worse would a week, year, or a century be in hell? Now imagine you can never escape from there and you are stuck in that place forever. I can't even imagine pain and suffering like that every day for eternity.
Choose God and your reward will come in full after this life. However, you must completely choose Him, not complacently worship Him. Otherwise, God will not call you into His kingdom on that final day of judgement.
The last thing God used to convict me of my complacency was fellow Christians. My eyes were opened, and I saw that there are so many different "levels" of Christianity today. I see mature Christians in many levels, including re-awakened Christians, life-long Christians, on-fire Christians, go-through-the-motions Christians, refuse-to-get-involved Christians, and the Christians who talk the talk but don't walk the walk. God showed me the hypocrisy of our acceptance of these levels. These levels indicate that we are not all really fully devoted followers of God! God told me that I need to strive to meet His requirements every day, 24 hours a day. I shared many of these requirements with you in the earlier chapters of this book.
God desires for His church to be strong and unified, yet in many areas of the world the church is weakening. Other areas of the world are seeing revival in the church, and this is encouraging! We need the church to be a unified body of devoted, complacency-free Christians in order to make a difference and shine our light in this world!
"So," you say, "great - you've become a better Christian. How else can I know that I need to go through this?" The only answer I can give is that you need to look to the scriptures. God will open your eyes if you ask Him! Read about how Jesus addresses the Pharisees in his time here on earth. They all knew about God, and they knew all about the law, but they didn't really know God. They used their knowledge of the law to display their pride. This was a form of complacent living. They knew the law but they were so proud, they didn't see the need to know God personally.
Next, think about Judas, who betrayed Jesus. You are probably thinking that that is a real stretch to compare Judas to you! Judas betrayed the Savior, which you would never do! Let's just compare the life of Judas to our lives though. He went through all the motions, just like the rest of the disciples. He had seen the same miracles and healings that the other disciples had seen, but he was so complacent that he chose money over the life of his Savior. Money (greed) became his god. He later hanged himself, realizing that he could have done no more damaging thing. If we aren't giving God 100%, are we not denying His supremeness as Creator of everything? If we are complacent in our relationship with Him, we have obviously chosen something else to be more important, whether it be money or some other god, even if we don't see it right away.
Another person we can reference is the rich young man who approached Jesus about what he had to do to be saved. Jesus told him to keep all the law, which the young man had. Then Jesus told him to give away all his wealth and follow him. You probably remember that the young man chose his wealth over Jesus, because he had a lot of wealth. He went back to his pious life. You can read this story in the gospel of Mark in chapter 10.
I'm going to guess that you see some relevance in these stories to your own life, just as I did. There are hundreds of stories like this in the Bible, giving us examples of how we should and should not live our lives. Simply read through the gospels some time with this in mind and you can't help but notice how many times Jesus gave us examples of complacency to avoid in our own lives.
God won't accept anything less than your absolute best. He made it very clear way back at the beginning of the Bible when He frowned on Cain's offering in Genesis 4. Cain didn't offer his best crops to the Lord. Cain became upset, but the Lord said to Cain, in verses 6-7,
"Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
God made it clear to Cain that when he didn't offer his best to the Lord, that the Lord wouldn't accept it. How much clearer do we really need it? This is just a single example that makes it very clear that unless we give our very best to God, he frowns on it and on us.
Our eternal God is as alive today as He was back then, so why risk anything better than your all? God knows your heart and all your thoughts. Make sure you are honest with God and yourself.
God identifies us if we are complacent, and labels us "dead". In Revelation 3:1-3, an angel tells John to write the following message to the church in Sardis:
"...I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God."
Even if we are viewed as "alive" by others, we still can't fool God. We may be able to impress others on this earth, and we may be viewed as "alive" by fellow Christians, but if our heart is not in it, God knows, and He will condemn us. In fact, the text says that if we do not wake up, we are about to die. This refers to a spiritual death, or the second death referred to often in Revelation. This death has only one future - the lake of fire. Complacency leads to this death.
Go on to Chapter 6
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