Before now, I never liked going home at the end of a school session because of the fear of not being faithful with my Bible study, prayer or other spiritual exercises. I already planned that I wasn’t going to go home this year, until December. Nothing was going to make me. But I forgot that God had His own plans, and He could make me do as He pleased.
Well I went home. And I went straight to making a time table and I put it where everyone could see, so that they’ll know when to disturb me and when not to. Did this work? Yes, but if they weren’t going to disturb, the enemy had other ways. I was faithful with my Bible study, and my prayer life. I didn’t seem to have any issue whatsoever as things were going well. But then I started getting satisfied with just the 1 hour 30 minutes Bible study and 1 hour prayer time. I felt like that was all for the day – I’d done my own part, so the Holy Spirit wasn’t to disturb me. I was also faithful with the different tasks assigned to me (from church) due to the constant electricity. But I had the time to acquire more, but I wasn’t making use of it.
One morning, I woke up with a prophetic word on COMPLACENCY. I knew it was for me, but I thought it was only to a certain degree based on how I defined complacency in my head. Normally, when I get words like that, I always liked to study to get a deeper meaning of what the word really meant. But to show you how complacent I was, I didn’t. I just moved on like nothing happened.
I stopped following my time table in some areas, apart from the area of Bible study and prayer. Then, I fell into watching movies and started coming up with excuses to be in the sitting room, were the television was. I had very good plans – to read books, listen to messages, and do other productive things with my time but here I was watching it all slip away because I wasn’t diligent in following my timetable and I was hard of hearing. I achieved little or nothing during this season.
Complacency for me was born out of the feeling that I’d had enough, so there was no need to try to get more.
Because of my lack of diligence, I fell into lust attacks amongst other things that I had no business falling into. The marriage idol which I had fought and overcome in the past came back again, and I wasn’t even fighting as I was supposed to. I just kept giving excuses in my head. It became hard to be disciplined.
I knew I had to wake up. I was beginning to despise my walk with God, but God’s love is too big, He held me up and helped me get back on my feet. I spoke to my discipler about my struggles after I had a really strange dream, and thank God I told her because I wanted to wave it off as usual. She spoke words of encouragement that helped me greatly, and I was ready to fight! Around that time, we started the prayer chain and indeed, having a partner helped me to be disciplined. I was accountable to my partner who was also accountable to me. We kept each other in check. Shortly after, the Prayer Marathon began too. Because of it, I’ve been able to draw closer to God more than ever before. It was the stepping stone to my deliverance. God was already teaching me not to walk by sight but by faith, even in the place of prayer. There were some days I’d look at the prayer points, and think, “I sure don’t feel like praying this today,” but then, I had to remember (that was the fight God had to put me through) that, God had poured on us (me included) a spirit of prayer and supplication. So, every day, I pushed myself and kept going on and on.
During the Pentecost weekend, I went aside where I spent time with the Lord in Bible studies and prayers. There, complacency was highlighted to me again by the Holy Spirit. He described it as a stem from both pride and laziness. One major thing I got out from that study was that; I had felt victorious because I had overcome in certain areas where I used to fall before. I felt satisfied and in the process dropped my sword (the word of God). I was studying the Bible, but I wasn’t using what it said to fight off the attacks I was having. When the battles came, I would just give in. Picture a soldier in battle with a shiny sword. When the enemy came, he’d just show off the shiny sword and not strike with it. That was how I was. I was a Bible reading, tongue speaking, but non-fighting warrior.
God’s ways are higher than our ways indeed. This holiday was for cleansing and in His mercy, He wasn’t about to let me waste it. I understood why I had the attacks –He used them to get my attention. He used them to wake me up so that I could learn to be a sword wielding warrior. It reminded me of Haggai 1, when God frustrated the people so that they could get up and build the temple. God has a sense of humour indeed. From that study, I saw the many ways I had been complacent and everything made more sense. His word is indeed sharper than a two-edged sword.
From feeling like I knew all there was to complacency, I knew that I didn’t know a bit. Going aside made me lighter; I felt renewed and cleaned up to a large extent. I learnt that the way you fight Complacency is by being DILIGENT and FERVENT. I learnt not to walk by sight but by faith because complacency tends to make you walk by sight and give you a false satisfaction. It is what makes us mark ourselves (I used to do it a lot) and then feel we’ve done enough when there is more to do.
I also found out that there is strength in unity, indeed. Just a few times when I would call brethren or message them, or they sent me a message, and we laughed together, I felt stronger. This is a big deliverance for me because I’ve had to come out of every shyness shell, and embrace the blessings I have with brethren. I was always a lone fighter. I never liked sharing my problems, even with my discipler, who was also my friend. Of course it was pride. Pride that made me think I was too old to still fall into sin. This made me see people’s victories in areas I was facing, as far reaching. I felt I couldn’t attain it. But seeing testimonies of how brethren went through the same things and fought their way through gave me hope!
When I was told to read this story,I thought to myself well, it’s just going to be like every other story I had come across but I was wrong.
Here is a story of diligence and God’s love to man. I learnt that complacency is pride in a form.
Thank you so much😊