Too Comfortable

Josh 18:3 "How long will you neglect to go and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers has given you?"

Joshua had a question for seven of the tribes of Israel…"what is taking you so long?" Only five of the tribes had inhabited the territory that had been given to them. The rest were kind of sitting around doing nothing. Now you would think that since they had crossed the Jordan and gotten to the promised land that these people and their leaders would be anxious. I remember when Georgann and I built our house. It seemed like almost every night we were out here looking at what the builders had done that day. We could not wait to get the keys and move in. This urgency did not seem to hit these seven tribes. Why not? Were they comfortable where they were at? Were they nervous? Didn't they know what to do or where to go? I have a feeling it was a little of all three. The result was neglect. The word for neglect actually means to let drop, to slack, to relax. Frankly, they got lazy.

That is the problem with getting comfortable. We let our guard down. We start to relax and take it easy and forget about the fact that there is more out there…more land to get, more battles to fight, more victories to achieve, more that God wants us to possess. We get nervous because we think that we are going to lose what God has already given to us so we want to hang on to it and not venture out any further. And then sometimes, we simply have no direction. We don't know what it is that God has for us and we stop asking. Those who are there to help us fail to show us what to do…so we get like these seven tribes and get fat and comfortable and lazy.

Not Joshua. He got in their face. He said: "What is the deal with the laziness? This is what you need to do. Three guys from each tribe go out and survey the land and then bring a report back to me. We will have a lottery to see who gets what." Joshua had a challenge and he had a plan. When the people saw the challenge, when they embraced the plan, they did it. No more laziness. No more neglect. No more couch potatoeing. It took a leader…it took a challenge…it took a plan to overcome nervousness and comfortableness.

I know that we have some challenges ahead of us as a church. We can't stay where we are forever. We are growing too much and there is a limited amount of time on our lease for the property that we are renting. We have to do something. Oh, it would be easy to be comfortable and lazy. The property that we have rehabbed is very nice, but it is not the "…land which the LORD God of your fathers has given you." God has something else. What is it? We need to find out. We need to have a group of guys survey the land and bring us back a report. Thankfully, that is what we are in the process of doing. When the results come back, put out the challenge. I know that I can't allow myself to get comfortable. Neither can the people of Lake Ridge.