The Complacency Trap

This article appeared in the October, 2011 newsletter of the Wheatland Parish.

            I wrote last time about all the things this parish is doing.  I wrote that we should celebrate those things, and we should.  We should always celebrate the positive things that are going on, both in our lives and in the life of the church.

            There is a danger, though.  The danger is that, in celebrating what we’ve done, we’ll start to get complacent.  We’ll start to think, well, what we’re doing is good enough.  We don’t really need to do any more.

            That’s a trap.  Sometimes I think that’s one of the biggest traps Satan lays for us as Christians.  You see, one of the facts about life is that we can move forward or we can move backward, but we are never allowed to stand still.  As soon as we say we’re doing enough, we’ve stopped ourselves from moving forward.  Once we do that, we’ve guaranteed that we’re going to start moving backward.  We may not see that right away, but eventually we will.  When we stop going forward, it’s inevitable that we’ll start going backward.

            How do we keep from thinking we’ve already done enough?  By making sure that joy is a part of the things we do.  By making sure that we stay enthusiastic about the things we’re doing, that we enjoy them and find satisfaction in them.

            When our service to God is joyful, when we have fun and feel satisfaction from serving God, we don’t feel like we’ve done enough.  We want to do more, because we want to keep feeling that joy and satisfaction.  We want to keep finding more ways to serve, because we want to have more fun doing it.

            Any time our service to God seems like a burden or a chore, we’re in trouble.  We may finish that project we’re working on, but we won’t take on another one, because no one wants or needs to take on more burdens and more chores.  If you’re working on a project that starts to feel that way, something needs to change, because that’s not how our service to God is supposed to feel.

            God wants our service to be loving and joyful, not reluctant and depressing.  Let’s keep finding more ways to have fun and serve God.  If we do, this parish will keep moving forward, and it will be the parish God wants it to be.