August 30, 2026 | Overcoming Complacency

This is actually the third time I've been here.

I've been here eight years, and this is the third time I've preached this passage.

Either I'm running out of material, or we haven't gotten it yet.

Or more specifically, I haven't gotten it yet.

This morning I'm primarily preaching to myself, and that is no joke.

I know preachers like to say that, but I really am.

This is for me.

You can listen.

And when you hear it, you'll often think of someone else.

Oh, I wish my grandkids could hear this.

Oh, I really hope my spouse is paying attention.

But just think about yourself and what's going on in your life.

And I don't want to, I just want this to land the way it's supposed to land.

And those who have sensitive consciousness can let it be filled with grace.

And those who need to be stirred up can be stirred up.

You know what I mean?

So I'm not mad.

I love you.

I just want to preach the word to you.

Everybody wants a prophetic preacher until the preacher starts preaching prophetically, right?

So let's go to the Lord in prayer before we get into the word.

Lord, I I would say I don't know, Lord, why we're back here again, but I I know my own life.

And I suspect there are many in here who need to hear this.

And I know many have not even heard this passage yet.

Don't even think about it.

And we've heard it before.

Maybe last time we heard it, we were hearers and not doers.

I just ask whatever needs to happen this morning, Lord, that you would do what you do with your word by your spirit.

Do it in me.

Change me and change my brothers and sisters here.

In Jesus' name, amen.

My wife and I have gone through several phases of working out and trying different things to stay in shape.

One of the phases we went through, I want to call a boxing phase.

My wife did something called piloxing.

Anyone in here ever done pilocing?

Wow.

It's a combination of Pilates and boxing.

I have no idea how they came up with that.

Perhaps a fight broke out in a Pilates class and they said piloxing.

Well, I was not that brave, so I stuck with a legit real boxing class.

I'm not punching one another in the face and things like that.

Uh at but I was in a real boxing gym working on the footwork, hitting bags, wearing the gloves.

Very, very, very painful, a very serious workout.

And I just want to tell you, I am a terrible boxer, just letting you know.

But one thing I learned in that class is you have to keep your guard up.

And if you don't keep your guard up, you're gonna get clocked in the face.

And what's interesting about this boxing idea is that it's a metaphor actually used in the Bible for the Christian life.

Do you know that?

Paul uses this idea of boxing to talk about disciplining in his body and training and self-control and living the Christian life and following Jesus.

We gotta fight the good fight.

Gotta keep the faith.

But my question this morning is this What happens when we're fighting the good fight?

And then we start to let our guard down, and we just get complacent.

Our guards down.

We're more vulnerable to getting hit and knocked out by a variety of bad decisions, a variety of sins.

I mean, many of you have stories of when you were complacent, you're like, yeah, I kind of let my guard down and my my spending got out of control, or I let my guard down.

I was guarding my mouth and my tongue, and then I just started going off on someone or cussing too much, you know, got let my guard down and start stopped walking with the Lord during this season of my life.

And boy, it really created a mess.

And that that's your past.

But here's what I ask right now.

Right now, in your life, today, not yesterday, today, where are you vulnerable to being knocked out?

Where are you kind of letting your guard down, apathetic, noncommittal, and complacent?

I want you to hear me this morning.

Complacency never feels like a crisis.

And that's exactly what makes it a crisis.

So this morning, I'm gonna try to use God's word to try to hit you in a good way, to stir us up, to say, hey, something's going on in our lives that's not necessarily the best.

We need to deal with that, and today will be that day.

And it's gonna be as we look at Proverbs 1.

So if you want to go ahead and look in chapter one of Proverbs, I want you to understand that the context is a father instructing his young son and his parents trying to get their young son to walk in wisdom.

And the way that he does this is he gives us this imagery of a woman, and she is shouting.

I'm so glad that Tracy read the word this morning.

To have a woman reading the word of God, I should have had her shout at you more because that's what this woman does.

And Proverbs chapter one, start in verse 20.

Look at woman wisdom.

Wisdom shouts in the street, she lifts her voice in the square, at the head of the noisy streets, she cries out.

At the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters her sayings.

So what this is is wisdom is personified as a woman, and she's addressing a passerby at a busy intersection.

It's a place where it's filled with people in the street, as you see the city square or the city gates.

She's crying aloud, and we'll see later on that she's crying and offering counsel, wisdom, reproof.

And she a little bit later throws in a little bit of mocking.

It's crowded.

She's trying to get people's attention.

It reminds me when I was uh living in Santa Monica, I would go and I would be a street preacher with a microphone and a big speaker on the promenade, third street promenade there in Santa Monica, packed with people, and I'm preaching the gospel, I'm shouting, and people ignore me, and they continue to shop as I scream.

Woman wisdom is trying to get the attention of a specific person.

Notice in verse 22.

How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?

And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing, and fools hate knowledge.

Now, I think what she's doing here, she's targeting these naive ones.

She's simple ones.

She doesn't want these naive ones and these simple ones to turn into scoffers and fools.

She's saying, look, you can't live your life without intentionality.

You can't live your life just not being deliberate.

You will drift, you will coast, and you will remain complacent.

Now, what I'm about to do is what I'm supposed to do and obliged to do as a preacher.

I'm going to give you three obligatory illustrations.

But it's not the one I really want to tell you.

I'm going to tell you these three, and then I'm going to really tell you the one I want to tell you.

Okay, you ready?

So this is Preacher Speak.

Here we go.

Let me explain to you this idea of complacency.

Let's first start for the year 2000.

This little startup, Netflix, makes a trip to Dallas to meet with Blockbuster.

Blockbuster billion-dollar industry, 9,000 stores.

Netflix comes in, makes their pitch trying to sell their company for$50,000, and Blockbuster essentially laughed them out of the room.

They're rule in the day.

They're gonna be there forever.

They now have one store left.

And Netflix is worth billions.

Blockbuster thought, you know, we're doing great.

We're awesome.

No one can touch us.

Okay, that's business.

Let's la let's now move to sports.

I remember exactly where I was when I was watching the Falcons and Patriots Super Bowl.

The Falcons were up by a little bit in the second half, 28-3.

Instead of continuing winning, they just tried not to lose.

How'd that work out for them?

The Patriots came back, won it in overtime.

And the last one I want to give you is a little historical.

Has to do with these people called the pilgrims, who risked their lives, traveled to America, crossed the seas, many died, getting sick, and all the stuff they overcame to land themselves here.

Built houses, got everything up and going, and then they had a little city council meeting.

They're like, let's build a road and head a little bit out west.

Nah.

They voted it down.

Here are people who crossed great adventures and sea and danger.

And what do they do now?

They just coast.

Nah.

But I really don't want to talk about business.

I really don't want to talk about sports, and I certainly don't want to talk about the pilgrims.

I want to talk about you.

Let's be for real and be honest about those who moved to the village.

Let's just be totally honest, okay?

They're little check boxes that you're trying to check before you moved here.

Maybe not everybody.

I'm not saying this is sinful.

Just hear me out.

Don't get mad at me.

Listen, we want safety.

So you investigate it.

Oh, the village is surrounded by gates.

It's a gated community, so it's safe.

Check.

You've worked your whole life, you have a pension, you have retirement 401k, you have security.

Check.

And then you want activities, right?

You want to have entertainment.

There's so much to do.

There's always something going on in the village.

Check.

So you've checked all the boxes.

You've come to the village.

And here's something I really want you to think about.

It seems like that you get to a point where you say, I've arrived.

I'm finally here.

And you're living your life surrounded by pillows.

It's like your life was one big pillow.

It's comfortable.

Oh, it's so soft.

And there's nothing wrong with a pillow if you're gonna take a nap or go to bed.

But it's a terrible way to live your life.

Because if you work so hard to make sure everything falls into place and you're completely comfortable, are you sure that's not complacency?

Are you sure you're ready to act when God calls you to act?

It seems like this is where I get in, I get in trouble in my own life.

If I just want to coast along, I'm gonna find myself coasting downhill because that's the only way you can coast is downhill.

Nobody ever coast toward holiness.

No one ever coast toward prayer.

No one ever coast toward serving others.

The Bible is very very in your face in Hebrews.

It says we must pay more careful attention lest we drift away.

There has to be this deliberateness in our life.

There has to be, hey, pay attention.

If you have surrounded yourselves where everything is working out for you, you're checking all the boxes.

Be careful.

You might find yourself in a place you don't really want to be.

So let this lady scream at you.

It's okay.

You can take it.

Let's look back in the word and look at what she says now in verse 22.

She says, How long?

How long, oh naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?

It's not asking for your reasons, it's asking for a date.

How long will this non-deliberate, non-purposeful, just coasting through your life, how long is that gonna last?

No more staying put.

And so if you found yourself, you're like, yeah, that really is the way I've arranged my life.

I mean, because I know you don't want to do this.

Did you realize that unless we make decisions and that we're deliberate to follow the Lord, we really will coast in places we don't want to be?

I was just tipped off by something before I came in here.

Um The Warners.

I'm sorry to call you out again, the Warners.

Mary Reed and Bob.

They've been married, I think today is today the day.

69 years.

That doesn't just happen.

You don't just coast into 69 years.

You're making deliberate decisions day in and day out to stick with it, to keep going, to serve one another, to love one another.

And and many of you in here are like, yeah, I kind of I want stuff like that to happen in my life.

That doesn't just happen.

Doesn't just happen.

There has to be this deliberateness.

And if you don't have that in your life, the question that this lady is asking is how long?

Look at verse 23.

Turn to my reproof.

Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you, I will make my words known to you.

Oh, this is good.

Turn to my reproof.

This is a call to repentance.

Repent, repent, repent.

Turn from walking in your foolish, complacent path and walking in foolishness, and turn to the path of wisdom, because without repentance, there is no forgiveness.

And so, some of you, if you've drifted into drunkenness, there is this turning that needs to happen.

If you drifted into sexual morality, there's this turning that needs to happen.

If you drifted into your complacent, your bad attitude, complaining attitude, the way you treat other people, you're disconnected from fellowship.

You got to turn.

And that's the idea we talked about repentance.

You turn from your sin and you turn to the Lord.

But get this, we said this as well.

You're not leaving your sin there and turning the Lord.

You're taking your sin to Jesus for forgiveness.

So there's this turning, even in the book of Proverbs, turning from this life that you don't want to live, finding forgiveness in Jesus.

And then look at verse 23 again.

It says, I will pour out my spirit on you.

I will make my words known to you.

So the idea is that I'm living this way, but if I give up this way, I don't know how to walk with the Lord.

I don't know if there'll be power there, I don't know if there'll be help there.

And even in the Old Testament, it's saying, you will have wisdom, you will have power to walk with the Lord.

Even if you shake yourself awake this morning, you say, How am I gonna do this?

Well, it's not about you doing it.

It's about you relying on the Lord and abiding in him and say, I'm gonna follow the Lord now.

Wake me up.

And who is ultimately wisdom?

Jesus.

In the New Testament, Paul calls Jesus the power of God and the wisdom of God.

And so we have Jesus speaking truth to you this morning.

And like I said, I'm preaching to myself, so I just want to out myself here and say, you know, I have seven kids, and you know, you sometimes you start strong, you're cranking along, and by the time you get to the number five, six, seven, you're just worn out.

And I've been convicted that I'm not pouring Jesus into these last two kids that are left in my house, the way I pour Jesus into the other ones, I'm not giving them the word as much as I gave the word to the other ones.

And I'm like, Lord, I am so complacent.

So, so Lord, help me stir me up.

And so each time uh that I talk to my my two that are left about Jesus this week, I would take my Bible to their rooms and I would say, I'm here to kick Satan in the teeth.

I want to read the word to you right now.

And I can't do that on my own.

I can't be consistent on my own.

I need the Lord to pour out his spirit upon me.

And asking him to pour out his spirit upon you as well, that you can make decisions, see where you don't want to be, and have some movement and tracks in your life to do what he wants you to do.

And it's ultimately what you want to do too.

All right, let's look at verse 24.

I mean, this is not gonna get pretty.

I'm really gonna just stop there, repent, and speak.

I wish I could stop there, but this gets brutal.

Look at verse 24.

Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention, and you neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof.

I will also laugh at your calamity.

I will mock when your dread comes.

When your dread comes like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.

The father is trying to teach his son the consequences of rejecting wisdom.

He says, The wisdom is saying you refuse to listen.

I've stretched out my hand, and now I'm gonna laugh at you.

I'm going to ignore you.

You dismissed my counsel and proof that I try to give to you.

Now I am going to reject you, laugh at you, and make fun of you.

That's some brutal imagery right there.

I told you so, and you didn't listen.

Let me share a big I told you so from your era.

This is this is just a little history here that I may be way off, but let me share it anyway.

There, there is um back in uh 1962.

You may remember that four kids from Liverpool auditioned for uh Decca Records in London, and Decca Records in London turned them down.

They said, you know, uh guitar groups were on the way out, and the boys had no future in show business.

And you know, the band was the Beatles.

And within two years, they were the biggest act on earth.

Now, here's the part that you might not know.

Um, it was pretty much one guy who turned him down.

It was an executive.

And for the rest of his life, he could never escape that.

He would turn on the radio.

Oh.

Oh.

That was a decision that he made that he had to live with, that kind of followed him as the man who turned down the Beatles.

And that's what this wisdom does in Proverbs 1.

She doesn't just let you fail, she plays it back in your face.

And you're saying, that's kind of like the soundtrack of my life, right?

For some of you, you're like, you keep playing over and over and over again the failures you've made in your life.

It's like this loud speaker that's saying, I told you so, but you wouldn't listen.

And I know many of you, you want you wish you could go back and do it different, and you feel like it's just always in front of you.

Why did I do that?

Why did I live that way?

And I'm not gonna leave you hanging here because I still believe there's grace, there's mercy.

And this guy who rejected the Beatles got tipped off somehow by George Harrison, who said, you know what?

Go check out this new band.

And he went to go check out the new band.

And this executive didn't make the mistake the second time around.

He ended up signing the Rolling Stones.

See, that's kind of that grace idea, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I've blown it in the past.

There's forgiveness, there's grace.

I could be moving forward.

But wisdom does not let you off the hook yet because she's still trying to stir you up.

Look at verse 28.

Oh boy.

Then they will call on me, but I will not answer.

They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me, because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.

They would not accept my counsel.

They spurned all my reproof.

So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satiated with their own devices.

Oh, that is brutal.

They're so brutal.

It's like they ran away from wisdom and now they want it.

She's saying, nope.

Because wisdom is not retroactive.

It's like I want to undo all my past sins.

Okay, I want it now.

I want it now.

Let's just undo it.

No, there's still consequences.

I mean, there's imagery.

I love these clips on online of robbers who break into places, and then the place automatically locks them in.

I love those clips.

Because they made a bad decision, they got in there, they're stuck, and you'll see some of them looking at the camera, begging, please let me out.

I won't do it again.

Too bad.

That's kind of what wisdom is doing here.

Wisdom is not retroactive.

You cannot call on wisdom after the fact and expect her to undo all the damage.

So I want you to kind of think about this because grace forgives the sin, it doesn't refund the years.

Now, I know we'll get, we'll say, we'll comment on that in a second.

So it forgives a sin, does not refund the years, but we'll talk about something positive in a second.

But if they hated knowledge, they would not fear the Lord, would not follow counsel, despise wisdom, well, they wanted the fruit of their own way.

Well, now they're going to be satiated with their own devices.

God says very clear in the New Testament, Galatians 6, 7, do not be deceived.

God is not mocked.

For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

Don't play games with God.

When you put stuff in, that's what's gonna come out.

I know that's tough.

I know that's tough.

We're gonna have something positive in a second, but no, let that land.

Now look at verse 32.

For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them.

But he who listens to me shall live securely, and I will I will be at ease from the dread of evil.

So this whole thing is a preemptive strike.

It's a warning to scare the youth, those who are younger, from living a life of complacency, a non-committed life.

And we know it's a matter of death.

That the complacency of fools will destroy them.

And I'm not just talking about destroy in the temporary sense.

We know the complacency of fools can destroy people for eternity.

There may be people in here, and you will go to hell.

I know I'm gonna say this wrong, but I'll say it anyway.

You will go to hell not because you rejected the gospel, it's because you kept putting it off.

Just kept putting it off.

I'm just trying to sort things through, I'm not quite sure.

And I understand that, I understand that, but you keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off.

I'm not against Jesus, I'm not sure why I stay.

You're putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, and then you die.

It's complacency of fools will destroy them.

Today is the day of salvation.

Today is the day to say, I'm not gonna put it off any longer.

I'm gonna embrace Jesus Christ today.

And for those of us who are believers in Jesus and like, whoa, our past life, our bad decisions in the past, I want you to know this.

This is the best news ever.

What the we could say, what the locusts have eaten, remember this phrase?

God's gonna restore.

And so here's here's the best thing today.

On the cross, Jesus reaped what you sowed.

And on the cross, you reaped what he sowed.

You get that?

So on the cross, he gets all the stuff I did.

He bears it, he takes the full wrath of God, and I get his perfect life.

Everything he so I get the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.

That is amazing gospel grace, and that's what I stand on and live in today.

Yes, there's still consequences for my past, yes, there's still stuff hanging around, but there is good news in moving forward in Jesus Christ.

Last part of verse 33 says, But he who listens to me shall live securely and will be at ease from the dread of evil.

That doesn't mean that difficult things won't happen to us, but at least difficult things won't happen to you because of your foolish decisions.

And this is where the gospel shines.

Jesus talks about my yoke is easy, my burden is light, living at ease in Christ.

Today's the day.

How long today's the day to wake up?

And I just I just want to share what's I mean, the thing is what's so bad about me is I share my thoughts and I share stuff that's going on inside of me.

I'm like, should I be telling the church this?

Well, I'm gonna tell you anyway.

This past week, as you know, Dolly Parton died at 80.

My dad died at 80.

And so I started doing the math.

I mean, I could die today, I get that.

But if I don't die today or next few days or next few weeks, maybe 80's my spot.

And I was thinking, okay, from here to 80, how do I want to live?

Especially, you know, being a pastor.

And here's one of the ways I can just kind of end up there.

Number one, for me, just coast along and don't create a scandal.

There's plenty of pastors out there with scandal.

So if you just avoid scandal, you'll be doing good.

Coast along and challenge the church, but don't don't challenge them too much because there's gonna be too much of that.

And I concluded for myself as that I just need to make sure that I drive on only paved roads, no off-roading.

And I mean that metaphorically.

Just pick the path that is the easiest, drive on paved roads, no off-roading, try to make things as simple as I can and enjoy my pillow life until I'm with Jesus.

But if you're a believer, that's not a very good option.

When I was doing my boxing classes, I also took a class.

I'm not joking, there's a whole gym for this.

I also took a cage fighting class.

The moral of the story is don't mess with your pastor.

Now, I don't know anything about cage fighting, but we're doing cage fighting exercises.

But one thing I do know is that you are caged in.

You can't say, Well, I'm gonna cage fight right now.

I'm not gonna fight.

I'm gonna go over here.

You can't get out.

You're in there.

And I really think it's in the Christian life, there really is no out here.

There is no way that you can live your life without fighting.

The Bible gives that imagery throughout.

And so if you choose not to fight the good fight, it's not gonna go well.

And instead of fighting, you're trying to put more pillows around you, stay on the paved road.

You don't want to live that way either.

You don't want to live that way.

You want to be open to what God wants to do in your life and he wants to say in your life, the steps he wants you to take, the walking with him.

That's what you want.

Every single person in here wants to walk with the Lord.

We really don't want the pillow life as much as we think we do.

So, what's it gonna take to wake you up?

How long is you're gonna stay in complacency?

There's grace to move forward.

And I believe it happens one day at a time, one decision at a time.

And when the Holy Spirit starts convicting you, listen.

Many of you know that I've been praying for years for my 18-year-old son who was away from us in a facility.

Um, and now he's landed in another facility and we've reconnected, we get to see him now, sort of.

Uh, he's in Cersei, Arkansas.

And I get this.

They have visiting hours, and I can't go see him for another two weeks.

I was supposed to see him today, but they won't allow it, so two more weeks I get to see him.

And it the visiting hours are from 12 to 5 on Sunday.

And I thought to myself, I don't want to preach and then get in the car and then drive two and a half hours there and then drive two and a half hours back.

Anybody get like that?

Like God has given me a chance to reconnect with my son, and I don't want to drive.

I just want to stay in my chair Sunday afternoon.

I deserve it.

And that's the voice we all hear.

I deserve the pillows.

I I just preached, I just did work for you, God.

And that's the voice we need to push out.

Say, Lord, we'll do whatever you want us to do.

We'll leave the complacency behind.

We are filled with the Spirit, and you will give us power to face whatever we need to face for this day because we're gonna live the deliberate life focused on Jesus.

What do you think, guys?

Hang on.

I know, I know that's the way you want to live.

And so let's just ask the Lord to do such a work in us, okay?

Let's pray.

I kind of just want to walk you through a prayer here at the end.

If you just want to be bowing your heads, and let's just first acknowledge that God is sovereign ruler of all.

God is in control of everything in your life.

There is nothing happening to you right now that God is not sovereign in control.

There's nothing that's a surprise to him.

And his love for you is not a theory because he demonstrated his own love toward you while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.

So you're not here walking with a reluctant God.

And so we can come before him and say, okay, where have you been complacent?

Let's just go ahead and just in your heart, in your mind, just tell them if it's purity, marriage issues, not loving your kids, ignoring somebody, financially irresponsible, lazy with your body, wasting your time, reckless with your words, out of control, dreaming and fantasies, bad attitude, whatever it is, just go ahead.

He already knows, so just tell tell the Lord.

And Lord, we're asking for forgiveness.

We know that the sins that we have sown, you reap them on the cross.

And we're asking for forgiveness and power to turn away to walk the path of wisdom, to walk in freedom of forgiveness and the cross and resurrection power of Jesus, not to gain our way to heaven, it's because we're already going there.

Lord, show us what to do next.

Like when we leave here, may this not just land flat into nothingness.

Maybe you need to call someone to reconcile.

Maybe you need to tell your spouse you're sorry you want to work on stuff.

Maybe you need to write someone an email.

Maybe you need an accountability partner.

Maybe you need to get into a small group, spend some quiet time in prayer and the word with the Lord.

Lord, just show us.

Maybe you need to get in the car, like I need to get in the car and just drive.

So, Lord, show us what it looks like to trust you, to not try to always check the boxes to make sure we're comfortable and secure and entertained.

Because the pillow life is not the Christian life.

Call us to walk with you, take up our cross, and follow you.

And may you give us the power of your spirit to do that today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.