Complacency

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta warned that the devil tempts us not so much as to harm us but to kill the God in us. One sure way to kill this God in us is to influence us to be complacent. At times, life is so smooth-sailing that what need for God do we have? At times, when we have deepened our relationship with God and received many blessings from Him, we feel "honoured" with the awareness that not everyone has been as blessed as us. And then, we grow in complacency and lose the vigour, zeal and sincerity in our search for God, thinking we've already "found" Him. With complacency and a decline in our intensity of prayer, we can be sure we are disallowing God to deepen our love and faith in Him and when we've "used up" the existing blessings and graces He has blessed us with, we will run dry like the sand in the desert. 

Faith and love for God can never be stagnant. We may feel as if it is stagnant but in actual fact, they either multiply or divide, the final result either gets larger or smaller. If we pray fervently and sincerely, our faith and love for God will grow stronger and deeper; if we do not pray fervently and sincerely, our faith and love for God will diminish. Is there another option in between praying and not praying fervently and sincerely that we can choose and that can lead us to have our faith and love at the same level, in undying constancy? The devil does not wait patiently for us to decide to pray or not pray. As soon as we waiver in our commitment to be firmly connected with God in our prayers, he is more than happy to jump in and influence our hearts even more.

Guard against complacency with humility and sheer honesty with ourselves of who we really are before God. When we examine our conscience daily and honestly, we will be well aware of how sinful we really are. Perhaps we only see the bad things we have done but remember also the good that we have failed to do. For God gives different talents to us so that as His body, we complement one another in doing whatever we can to serve Him in His people. For the fact that we don't fully utilise all our gifts to the fullest to serve God is already a deprivation of others of the good they could have received from us otherwise. When we have failed to use our lives to the fullest for God's Kingdom building, we join in the contingent of lukewarm disciples who speak of loving God but show not in the ways we live. In so doing, we make ourselves a hindrance to God's love to others as we reject being God's instrument and messenger of His love to the world. With this rejection, we are rejecting also God's Holy Will for us to be His disciples. 

Let us open our hearts today more fully to God, to be more aware of His holy presence in our hearts, our lives and all around us so that we may be more aware of His invitations in the silence of our hearts to pray more sincerely and zealously today and that in so doing, He can fill us with His Holy Spirit to move our hearts into a deeper love and a greater faith in Him.

19 October 2010, Tuesday

6.33am