Complacency Enough is Enough... Over the past few months we have been looking at how can we make our life all that it was meant to be! All that God wants it to be. We have been challenging you to think about how you spend your time and we have been asking you to think about your comfort zones. Many of us never leave our comfort zones and stretch out to see what we are capable of. Now we are going to look at the silent killer of complacency… So do you always do you best? Do you always seek to improve and get better? Complacency is defined this way… a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's achievements. We think that we have arrived and there is nothing else to work on. What we do is good enough, and we don’t need to try any more. Some people call this working smart “do only what you have to, to get by.” People who live this way say things like, “I could do better, but a B is just as good as an A.” “I could do more but I will have to put in more effort, people are happy with what I am doing now, so why bother.” Complacency kills us silently because we are so pleased with ourselves that we think there is nothing more we need to do. You become so caught up in all that you have done you don’t see the need to do more and work harder. You become satisfied. To write the best story of your life you have to strive, you have to strain, and push for something more. If you are happy with what you got chances are you will not get anything more than what you got. We all can fall victim to being complacent it is an easy thing to do especially when the expectations that are around us are low, and just keep getting lower. To beat complacency we have to rise above the expectations that the world puts on us and set our own expectations and rise to the challenge. Proverbs 1:32-33 says 32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; 33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.” Those are some pretty sharp words. the complacency of fool will destroy them. God does not call what He creates fools that often. He has a ton of grace. Here it is written that those who live in complacency are foolish and that very thing will destroy them. I Love the contrast of verse 33 and how it states that if we are not fools we are listening to God Himself and though we are striving and going for more we will be safe and at ease as we strive for more. I considering striving for more to the the opposite of complacency, because striving for more means that you are always looking to improve and grow. It does not mean that you are dissatisfied, it means that you want the best and that means you have to give your best. Even if we have worked hard we can still fall into complacency, take a look at this parable Jesus told. In Luke 12: 16 And he told them this parable:“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. ’18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? ’21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” This is a reminder to me that I must always keep going and never just do my best and then call it good. God longs for us to offer our lives to Him for Him to use. We must rise above expectations and go for more. God’s love is always there and it is great, but just because I have gone this far does not meant that I am ready to stop. Keep reaching!
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Comfort Zone Breakers How do you break out of your comfort zone? I mean it is called a comfort zone because it is comfortable and it is a nice place to be. It just doesn’t create the best life possible. It just creates a life. So how do you bust through your comfort zone and see your life become all that it was made to be and all that you want it to be! It is a process it is a journey. Like with any journey you have to take the first step. So what is the first step? Decide you want to change, make a commitment to change. Then take the first step. Get rid of your excuses and go for it. Take a look at this awesome verse a great promise to us from God! Joshua 1:9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Now that is a power verse if I have ever read one. God is talking to Joshua right before he was to lead God’s people into the promise land. A land filled with giants. They were supposed to go in and defeat all these different people and claim the land for themselves. Now get this the people that Joshua was leading were very comfortable in the place they were. They have been hanging out in the desert for forty years and God had been providing everything that they needed to survive. Water from rock, breakfast from the ground, and dinner from the sky in the form of falling birds. They were comfortable. Yet they were not living the full live that God created them to live, so now it was time to step out and God gave their leader the promise in Joshua 1:9. So you need to remember that that promise stands for you today and you can move past the normal life that you are living at this time, and move out of your comfort zone and take the life that God made for you to live! So back to the steps, Step one get rid of the excuses and decide to change. Step two understand this God Works Through our weaknesses to Accomplish His Big plans. Your weakness can become an excuse to keep you in your comfort zone. But God works through our weakness. Step three realize this Courage is not the Absence of Fear. We talked about that last week and how we were not given a spirit of fear, and that is true, but you still may have fears to work through. Courage does not take away all fear, but it does give you the strength to defeat the fears that you have. Step four is simple to read but not simple to understand, but every successful person who has step out of their comfort zone understand it. You Can’t Get To Success without Risking Failure. Yes that is true. Every successful person has experienced failure on the road to success. Many of us are only one failure away from success. We just have to give it one more try and not be afraid to make the jump, and risk possibly failing again. The fear of failure has kept many people from being all that they could every be. These are the top four steps to breaking out of your comfort zone. I Chris personally challenge you to break out of your comfort zone and do all that you can do to be all that you can be every single day! The days of hiding in the shadows and living in the comfort zone are over… What is your biggest fear? What is your smallest fear? Did you know that there is a good chance that you were not born with that fear. Actually we are only born with two fears, the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. So what has brought us these fears? How did we come to get them? The truth is we all have fears, but the real question is what are we doing about those fears. Why do we keep them in and allow them to direct the direction of our lives. Believe it or not it has a lot to do with your comfort zone, the place where you spend most of your time. That is why it is caused a comfort zone, because it is nice, safe and well extremely comfortable. You have the same friends today as you did yesterday. You average the same grades year after year, because you are comfortable doing the same thing over and over. When someone challenges you do to something do you do it? Do you go for it or do you start making excuses and listing off reasons that you can do it. That is your fear of leaving your comfort zone, that is the fear of living keeping you in the exact place. You may think that you are getting ahead, and making moves, but if you are not challenging your fears, then really all you are doing is going through the motions. Check this out from the Bible. 2 Timothy 1:7 says this: 7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self discipline. Now what this is telling us that our fears are not from God, but from the world and from the thief. If we really believed and trusted in God for all things then we would know that all things are possible. We would live like followers of Jesus we would have faith in God. Now understand this, it is impossible to please God without faith. When we live in the comfort zone we are not living with faith, we are living out of fear. We are not living out of self discipline we are being lazy and carless with the life that we have been given. So what are your dreams the ones that you really want, the things that you want to do no matter what. How will you achieve them without faith, how will you ever take that first step to go for them if you will not leave your comfort zone. Living out of passion and living for the dreams that you have for your life is challenging and pressing. You will have to overcome your fears and you will have to leave your comfort zone and take steps that push you beyond your limits. This will take faith, and for faith you are going to have to know who God is and what He has called you to do with your life. Knowing what God has called you to do is a big deal, knowing who you are in God is a big deal. You will have to joinery with Him to learn these things. I am not talking about a quite time, I am talking about really digging in with God and asking Him to tell you who you are. A quite time is nice but wanting to shake up the world will call for something more. You could continue to live the life that you are living or you could discover what it really means to live. That requires you to live beyond your fears. This type of living will require you to please God with faith, faith in Him and the belief that He will show you all you need to know. So you decide there is an incredible life out there just waiting for you to live in it, but you will have to leave your comfort zone. You will have to move where there is danger and discomfort, to only find that once you take the first step there was nothing for you to fear, except staying in the comfort zone. |
Cover Articles from Extreme Faith MagazineWritten and Posted by The XGT Experience Team of leaders Archives
October 2015
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