Complacent

 
     To try to elaborate on something you really cannot explain or understand yourself is a task I have yet do effectively.   I'm so bad at it that I have erased over and over what I am trying to write next, like I seriously have been sitting here for 15 minutes and have gotten this far.

   Here is what I've found so far.  The people I have been able to relate to and I feel understand are those who have also been re-worked by God secondary to experiencing something beyond their normal every day routine. So far relating has happened through reading books by people I have never met and likely will not ever get to sit down with and say YES, YES, YES!!!   Lets just add here that the fact that I have read more books since going and returning to Ukraine is a testament to God that a work is being done in me!  Listen, I BARELY read when I was supposed to for College, so to read on my own without any grade depending on it is the work of God. 

   Lets also share some truth.  If you're the judging type you'll have a hay day with this...I have never read the Bible in it's entirety. Never.  That is terrible, I know.  I have been a believing Christian since I was 16.  Insert the Preacher voice here that says "Believing is not the same as living and it's hard to live out what you do not understand."  I know verses, I know stories and I ABSOLUTELY know the sacrifice Jesus Christ made in order to save me from my sin.  However I didn't know the context to those verses, I didn't know the reason for the stories, and while I knew the sacrifice that was made for me, I had yet to fully understand the sacrifice WE should make for Christ.  I had become complacent in knowing what I knew about God and the life I was living.

 Now before you start yelling at me about how we do not have to do anything or sacrifice anything to receive the Grace of Jesus Christ, let me yell back (with kindness and smiley faces) I KNOW!  Here is what God is showing me though.  Receiving this FREE (to us) gift of Grace paid for at the cross is not the end to the story, it is the beginning!  We've become complacent with this grace and wear it around and flaunt it and shout to the world that we don't have to do anything for it, and listen you are right.  But here is where we are wrong, or where God showed me how I was wrong.  We do not have to do anything FOR it.  However, you bet your life that we should be doing things BECAUSE OF IT!

"If we convince ourselves that we have reached a point of satisfaction in which we are comfortable with our faith and do not feel the need to move any further toward pleasing God and getting out of our comfort zone, we have lost the battle, and have been deceived by the Enemy." - Grayson Oliver

As hard as it is to admit, complacent was what I was prior to leaving.  It wasn't something I created on purpose, but Satan has a way of leading us away from the desires of God when we are not fully equipped with His Armor to protect us.  Thankfully while in Ukraine God exposed me of this by showing me a world beyond myself filled with people who will never experience God if those who HAVE experienced God are resting in complacency.

I did not want to return to that.

Receiving Grace is not the finish line, it's the firing of the Gun that startles our bodies into the forward motion of running the race.  However when we become complacent in our race before it is finished we deprive God of using us for His glory.

Death is our finish line, Eternity is our prize and complacency is the thief of God's great race He has set before us.

You know it's coming so here it is.

"Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.  And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" Hebrews 12:1

Spoiler Alert: It has nothing to do with Cross Country or Track, unless of course you are running to glorify God and that my friends is a race worth running.