Being At Ease, but then Being Shattered
Most people would love to get to the place in life where they could just put life on "auto pilot." They long for the day that they won't have to work, and they can just sit back and relax. This is even true for some Christians when it comes to our spiritual lives. We feel like they have done our spiritual work. We are doing well in the things of the Lord, so we begin to slack off, to be at ease. That is a very dangerous state of affairs for a believer. In fact, God will not let us get away with this for very long before He shatters our complacency. Job was blessed by God. He and his family were living in ease when all of a sudden disaster fell upon them. (Job 16:12) Job admitted this to his friends. Then, he graphically recalled that God shattered him. He seized him by the scruff of his neck and smashed him to pieces. He set him up as a target for His arrows. This may be a good clue as to why God allowed Satan to attack Job. It is worth it for us to look into it, too.
Being "at ease" is a military term for us today. It means that we have the permission of our superior officer to stop being at "attention." We do not have to be listening for the next command. We can relax. Yes, there is a time for relaxing. There is a time to be "at ease" like when we are on vacation. However, in our every day lives, we need to avoid living at ease. We need to be spiritually alert to whatever the Lord would say to us. We should live in readiness to carry out any command. When we fail to live like this, we stop growing spiritually. We become stagnant, and we actually drift farther away from the Lord, instead of staying close to Him. God knows this is very detrimental to our relationship with Him, so He has to try to get our attention. He will try to turn our heart back to Him, sometimes by sending difficulties, so we have to depend on Him once again. Therefore, let's guard against being at ease in our spiritual lives and avoid needing to be shattered by God.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read Job 18-20.