Another Dissatisfied Day

Another Dissatisfied Day:  Thoughts on Complacency and Indifference

There is something about the combination of complacency and loneliness that silences a man.  This silence is not a relative of solitude, for in solitude is found contemplation, thought that engineers productivity, and eventually, the fulfillment of a purpose. The silence of complacency and loneliness is a haunting silence, quietly speaking that life is meant to be more, if but hope and faith could be found amidst the shadows of dissatisfaction and disappointment.

Complacency and loneliness can easily waste God’s gifts of time and the ability to think; they disdain the truth that it is not good for man to be alone as they engulf man’s desire to be anything but alone.  Complacency is the father of indifference.  And make no mistake for indifference is a choice.  To think otherwise would be lying. It is a voluntary paralysis of the will, a suspension of motivations and the discipline needed to see purpose and productivity brought to fruition.  Good intentions only get you so far but not nearly far enough.  A lazy and unused faith is worth less than any feeling used to justify complacency and indifference.  God will not honor a lazy and unused faith for faith without works is dead. (James 2:14-26)

Choosing to yield to complacency and to make excuses for indifference is to observe lying vanities.  It is an actively lazy choice without true justification and profits one in little to no way for “they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.”  (Jonah 2:8)  A merciful man does good to his own soul (Proverbs 11:17.)  But by not living and acting in faith and love, showing none to yourself and little to others is to forsake your own mercy while ignoring God’s.  Grace isn’t an excuse or license to live less than God desires but the power to live pleasing to Him.  By not continually seeking the Lord and  returning to the habitual desires, temptations, and influences that dull the spirit and quench the Holy Spirit is to shun His grace and the price Jesus paid to provide the way out of the path of complacency, indifference, and sin.  To yield to anything but His Spirit will eventually lead to a numbing complacency of the heart, a hardness that once fully realized is both blinding and shocking (once you are fully cognizant of its weight and consequences.)  One day you will wake up and like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, declare that everything is vanity. He got everything he wanted, produced great works, enjoyed great wealth, and chased every desire and whim, experienced every luxury, and still found himself empty inside.  Why?  He turned his heart away from the Lord and sought not the Lord with his whole heart but feignedly, with lip service. (Jeremiah 3:10)

So, what is the answer to overcoming complacency and redeeming loneliness?  A good place to start is to realize that above all else God wants your heart.  He will be satisfied with no less than all of it and you will never be satisfied unless He can permanently claim it as His own and He is your chief joy and purpose.  Surrendering your heart to God leads to surrendering your time, feelings, and motivations.  This must be done daily for we must take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him. (Luke 9:23) The choices we make when we don’t feel like yielding are especially important, for this is where diligence enables the discipline needed for success in finding what we are really after (whether we realize it or not):  God and His heart’s desires for our lives.  No matter what other desires of our heart we may obtain, pursuing anything less than the desires of God’s heart for our lives ultimately leads to one dissatisfied day after another until no hope is left.